A Moment On The Soapbox
Thursday, 3 October 2013 12:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsIn response to a post on Jay Lake's blog on how his health circumstances can be considered an anecdote, but to him it's his life, I replied with the following:
You can disagree with me for sure, especially on the point that even with care my sister might still be dead -- we all have to die of something after all -- but on this issue I feel like the Spanish swordsman in The Princess Bride. "Promise me anything." "Anything." "I want my father back."
As for the lunacy in the House right night now, if you really think the Dems should be the ones to "compromise", by gutting the ACA rather than trying to fix things, then you have missed the point. And the latest proposal to kill the tax on medical devices, which helps fund the ACA, then you're proposing to make the funding get worse. It's akin to cutting the taxes on the rich to promote jobs, then failing to get either jobs or revenue, complaining that the only solution is to cut the budget. Oh yeah, we tried that, it didn't work and apparently we're not allowed to fix it.
The current health care system -- the best healthcare in the world -- missed millions of people, denied coverage to those who needed it and left families within one or two months of bankruptcy if something bad happens to their health. The Affordable Care Act was designed by conservatives to help that without going all National Health Service on everyone. Perfect? No. But better, closer.
When something isn't working, fix it.
Dr. Phil
Anecdotes are not data, true. But too many people look at their own lives and say I don't need health care (right now), why should I pay? But as you say, anecdotes are real individuals.
Had the ACA been in effect perhaps ten years ago, I could have this discussion with my sister. Instead she had no health insurance -- she had what appears to be the pseudo-conservative's Don't Get Sick plan -- and died two years ago of metastasized uterine cancer she didn't even know she had.
Talk to more and more people and suddenly those anecdotes start looking like data. Data which lends support to the idea of an inhuman policy plan to kill Americans.
Much of the rest of the First World shakes their head, wondering how you can do this to your own people.
The answer seems to be, we're not the pseudo-conservatives' people.
Dr. Phil
You can disagree with me for sure, especially on the point that even with care my sister might still be dead -- we all have to die of something after all -- but on this issue I feel like the Spanish swordsman in The Princess Bride. "Promise me anything." "Anything." "I want my father back."
As for the lunacy in the House right night now, if you really think the Dems should be the ones to "compromise", by gutting the ACA rather than trying to fix things, then you have missed the point. And the latest proposal to kill the tax on medical devices, which helps fund the ACA, then you're proposing to make the funding get worse. It's akin to cutting the taxes on the rich to promote jobs, then failing to get either jobs or revenue, complaining that the only solution is to cut the budget. Oh yeah, we tried that, it didn't work and apparently we're not allowed to fix it.
The current health care system -- the best healthcare in the world -- missed millions of people, denied coverage to those who needed it and left families within one or two months of bankruptcy if something bad happens to their health. The Affordable Care Act was designed by conservatives to help that without going all National Health Service on everyone. Perfect? No. But better, closer.
When something isn't working, fix it.
Dr. Phil
