[Nuclear1]

What the **** is the point of everyone who's given their lives for the US to make it a better place when we can't give nearly 15% of the population access to a doctor?

And to these people who don't want it, the sentiment is "What the **** is the point of everyone who's given their lives for the US to make it a better place when the government can force something upon us like this."

Millions of people didn't want racial integration.

Millions of people didn't want women to vote.

I stopped caring about what the other side has to say about this when they tried to turn this into a "welfare makes people lazy" deal.  All this is really about is about a bunch of rich ****s who see this as an issue of "paying for a sick guy's medical coverage will make me slightly less rich than I am already" astroturfing the National Mall by getting a bunch of Cold War hysterical rednecks whipped up in a frenzy about threats of communism which don't exist, and getting their bought-and-sold Congressional representatives to spout lie after lie attacking the healthcare bill until absolutely zero action can be done in Congress, leaving reform to die due to inactivity.

I tried to be nice earlier, but I've just had it up to here with this nonsense.

This isn't about government forcing something down people's throats.  This isn't about even the minor threat of socialism taking over the US.  This is about how a few really, really rich people can convince a bunch of really, really stupid people to screw their fellow American by denying them right to life.  

I don't know how many times I need to repeat myself on this.  I'm not attacking people who have legitimate questions about reform--I fully invite them to join in the debate.  I'm angry that a lot of people don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to their opposition, and yet no one in the federal government has just come out and said "go **** yourselves, you're killing your neighbors."  No, not all 44 million of them will die if this doesn't get passed, but 120 die every day, 3700 per month, 44000 per year.


EDIT:  I'm not directing this at you, but if you're going to play devil's advocate, I'm just throwing this all out there.

[Kosh]

oh, so first they were stupid, now they're just manipulated,

It is entirely possible it is a combination of the two.

or maybe these are the same eople who voted for Bush because he cut taxes?

He didn't cut taxes for them, he cut it almost entirely for the rich. My middle class parents didn't see a dollar from those tax cuts.

so you want them to be forced to buy your insurance for you against their will without getting anything in return, I see, how noble of you.

We are going to end up paying for their care anyway, in the form of emergency room visits because they didn't get the preventative care they needed to prevent that in the first place. The cost of preventative care is far far below what it costs to go to the ER.

of course it still doesn't change the fact that they don't want it and you are trying to force it down their throats whether they want it

A lot of people didn't want an end to segregation or slavery. Just because they dont want it doesn't mean it isn't good for them.

or not because you have a more elite intellect than them and are above being manipulated by politicians and the media..

Don't underestimate the effects of Rush Limbaugh/Fox news/etc,. The stuff they have on their shows really is very manipulative and heavily distorted.

Frankly while I generally support a public option, my concerns are over how it is going to be paid for with our massive deficit and that it doesn't go far enough into addressing the real problems of our system (hospital's overcharging for one thing).

[iamzack]

I didn't lose my primary health insurance because I'm lazy, I lost it because I turned 18. I've been on my parents' insurance my whole life, and I've got a good number of health problems, some of which are chronic.

If I didn't have health insurance two summers ago, I would probably have never gone to a doctor because of the cost, and I just might be dead now.

There are 44 million people who, if they get that sick, have a good chance of dying from something perfectly treatable. I'm lucky to have parents with employer insurance. But I am ****ed, through no fault of my own, when I lose Tri-Care.

I don't deserve to have to choose between bankruptcy and good health just because some jackasses think I should just "pull myself up my bootstraps" or what the **** ever.

Besides, it is pretty assholeish for someone to think their money is more important than my *life.*

[General Battuta]

We are going to end up paying for their care anyway, in the form of emergency room visits because they didn't get the preventative care they needed to prevent that in the first place. The cost of preventative care is far far below what it costs to go to the ER.

This is a good argument and needs to be brought up more often.

[Bobboau]

I want y'all to hit ctrl-f and type the word lazy and hit enter several times on the last few pages, and see who typed that word.
-strawman

I consider even more important than my life my freedom, my ability to think and to act in accordance to my own will. I want to be allowed to do things that are known to be unhealthy or unadvisable, I don't need a good reason, walking along the grass on a sunny day exposes me to deadly UV rays and can give me cancer, but I don't care I want to feel the warmth of the sun on my face. there are millions of people who do things like this, eat fatty foods, have unprotected sex, drive motorcycles, smoke cigarettes. these are things that can be quantifiably proven to be bad, and yet they still want to do it. I don't care if it is economical, I don't care if it's fare, if the people who will benefit from something and the people who will suffer from it both agree that they don't want it, how the hell can you justify it? this exemplifies a mind set of authoritarianism, that people must be controlled for there own good, once you accept that I don't see how you can have any sort of freedom, let alone liberty. oh yes, you just winced when I used those propaganda words there didn't you, now my opinion isn't an opinion any more, its the crazed ranting of some stupid redneck, i'm hardly even human anymore.
you know maybe I just happen to like the principals of life, liberty and blah blah blah that my country was founded on, maybe I would like there to be one place in the universe were I won't have to worry about having sausage outlawed. I'm not saying this as an asinine reaction, I really want to know, if there are nations in this world who have liked this problem, and all the other 'social justice' problems, or at least done a lot better than we have, aside from the expense of a ticket, why don't you move there? clearly most of the country doesn't subscribe to your philosophy, clearly what you thought this country was it isn't, why are you trying to impose your will on s lesser beings when the thought of trying to break a tribal culture of their savage ways (I hope the irony of some of the words I use in this rant is not lost) and become more civilized is an abomination? we just want to be free! leave us the **** alone! if there was any ware left on the planet to run to, I would, and let you have even my home, but there isn't, as constrained and curtailed our liberties are this is the freest country on the planet, this is the last stand, I have no where left to run to.

[iamzack]

This is in no way the freest country in the world.

[Bobboau]

it's closest to the definition I use. what is a better country for you? why don't you go there and try to fit it more to your ideal I think that be a more efficient use of everyone's time.

and again, I'm not being a jackass, I really think it would be best if people went to the place that most resembled their ideal and strived to perfect it, than try to make there ideal the only one, or are you saying the US is the closest to how you think a country should be? this is one reason why I don't like big government, if power rested more at the state level, not only would you have a greater influence on it, there would be a greater diversity of environments that you could choose from, to find the one that is best for you, not be told what is best by the one monolithic government.

[iamzack]

What definition? 25% of the world's prisoners are American. We don't have the right to use an almost totally harmless drug for medicinal use in most states let alone because we just feel like it. I don't have the right to marry the half of the population I'm more attracted to just because some assholes think it's okay to impose their religious views on me. It's currently okay to fire or not hire someone just because they're transexual. Religious zealots bomb abortion clinics because their *opinion* on when life begins is more important than the lives of women and the doctors/nurses/receptionists who assist them in regaining their bodily autonomy. It goes on and on.

As for why don't I move somewhere better? Mostly personal reasons: free countries have cold climates, I'm poor, and I have such a hard time making new friends as to be prohibitive to moving very far away.

[Bobboau]

I agree that those are huge glaring problems, I stand by my position cause as ****ty as this one is, I can't think of a better country.

all of those problems stem from one group of people thinking they must enforce there interpretation of "correct" on everyone else, I think it would be best if we allowed people to have differences of opinion and didn't simply dismiss them when it was convenient. it would be better if we didn't respond to authoritarian intolerance with the same, because the only people who benefit from that are the authorities.

[iamzack]

The problem is that the majority of our leaders are perfectly happy with imposing the majority opinion of correct on the general populace. Any country with gay marriage and reasonable drug laws is automatically a better place, IMO. IT doesn't hurt that such places also tend to have less crime and considerably higher standards of living.

[Bobboau]

where do these leaders come from and how do they get there? it's a social problem and it needs a social solution, you can't fight authoritarianism with authoritarianism, it's the biggest fundamental problem with American society.

[Kosh]

it's closest to the definition I use. what is a better country for you? why don't you go there and try to fit it more to your ideal I think that be a more efficient use of everyone's time.

and again, I'm not being a jackass, I really think it would be best if people went to the place that most resembled their ideal and strived to perfect it, than try to make there ideal the only one, or are you saying the US is the closest to how you think a country should be? this is one reason why I don't like big government, if power rested more at the state level, not only would you have a greater influence on it, there would be a greater diversity of environments that you could choose from, to find the one that is best for you, not be told what is best by the one monolithic government.

I don't particularly care for bloated government either, but I don't like the idea of having my medical problems going untreated because I dont have insurance. The bottom line is that this would provide the very diversity you would want by providing real compition to greedy insurance carriers, who aren't likely to actin your own interest. The public option is just that, an option. You don't want it? Fine, you aren't required to have it, you can just walk away. That's real freedom, something we dont have.

[Nuclear1]

For God's sake Bob, it's not authoritarianism.  The majority of Teabaggers have health insurance...otherwise, they wouldn't be opposing reform!

I don't know how many ****ing times I need to cover the idea of "astroturfing".

[General Battuta]

I agree. As much as I try to empathize with opposing points of view, I simply can't see how public option health insurance is different from any of the myriad programs we already pay taxes to support.

[Bobboau]

so I can opt out of paying for it?
given how it's all optional and all.

[General Battuta]

I agree. As much as I try to empathize with opposing points of view, I simply can't see how public option health insurance is different from any of the myriad programs we already pay taxes to support.

Note that I emphasized different from any of the myriad programs we already pay taxes to support.

You can't opt out of paying for those either.

We all paid for the space program. I'd like to make everyone continue to pay for it. Governments exist because of their ability to coerce and I don't believe anybody thinks governments should simply go away. The debate is in exactly how much coercion should be practiced.

Public option health care seems to be an economic investment that will, in the long run, help everybody more than it hurts. Either you pay for their preventative health care via insurance, or you pay far more when they have to go in for care (via lost worker hours, healthcare costs, so on.) Either way you're paying. This way you pay less.

In any case...I don't believe the proposed public option involved a tax hike. So this whole debate is a red herring, isn't it?

I honestly hadn't put much thought into the public option debate before, but now that I do I find myself more and more strongly favoring it.

[TrashMan]

Freedom......such a strange word. Where does freedom end and opression begin? Is enforcing laws inherently bad? One mas hell is another man's paradise.

Reaching a concensus on this is pretty much impossible.
There's will always be people who think they are entilted to X and people who think otherwise.

[iamzack]

God help us that some people think they are entitled to affordable regular check ups. What greedy SOBs.

[Nuclear1]

so I can opt out of paying for it?
given how it's all optional and all.

What exactly do you have against giving people health insurance?

Cus the "you're taking my money!!!111" argument is getting really tiresome.  If that's all you've got against the public option, then all it does is make you look like a greedy SOB.

[General Battuta]

I don't know about that. I can certainly understand not wanting to pay more taxes. But was the public option going to involve a tax hike?