In a comment on Senator Jeanne Shaheen's Facebook page, I reported that I could not afford insurance under the ACA:
Senator Jeanne, due to peculiarities in my circumstances, I am unable to afford coverage under the ACA. Health insurance is not health care. And at this point I have neither one anyway. Last month, I had to pass a kidney stone alone at home and then go to work the next day, business as usual. My retirement plan consists of various scenarios for suicide when I can no longer take care of myself. I guess this makes me the ideal citizen, as far as the conservatives are concerned. Work 'em 'til they drop.
Another commenter suggested this:
Really maybe you need to find a better job. personally I have never had a job that didn't offer insur(ance). (Actual post had a typo in the last word.)
I answered:
Forcing people's career choices in search of insurance is not freedom. It indicates a country run for the benefit of insurance companies.
Isn't that pretty obvious? Along with getting people to use the terms health insurance and health care interchangeably, we've conditioned ourselves to seek "benefits" as a survival need, in a wilderness where we have to grub for every resource. Those who control the wealth determine how it is doled out, even if that means working for the destructive economy or choosing to live at risk for the sake of what you believe in. We are all soldiers facing death for a cause, even if we conscientiously avoid using combat for conflict resolution. I happen to have ended up in a place where the job that suited many of my abilities and needs only briefly provided "benefits," regardless of my usefulness to the business or that business's service to the community. Society at large benefits from the unheralded life and death of numerous benefactors for whom no public buildings are ever named.
With a system of universal care, rather than profiteering schemes of insurance, freedom of movement, choice, and work will make our society more innovative and our citizens more free. By making health insurance a marketed commodity, we actually hurt many other aspects of the free market economy. If you want unfettered freedom, live in anarchy now and take whatever happens to you. If you want a reasonably free society with well-maintained infrastructure and civilized amenities, accept that some things cannot be turned to profit. Some things are autonomic functions of society, that need to run quietly in the background. These include health care and energy production. If either of those intrudes on the peace and progress of the human species, we're doing something wrong. Right now, those intrusions make up most of the news. The rest of it hinges on inanities like what color we want our neighbors to be.
1 comment:
The person who commented, "get a better job" is an example of what has been troubling the country since (and before)it founding- a kind of Calvinism (Puritanism) that holds that if you're poor or underprivileged it's all your lazy fault and god doesn't love you. It's the root of the social insensitivity that has a stranglehold on society and our government.
Healthcare has been commodified and conflated with health insurance and is the result of the worship of "free market" capitalism's Almighty Dollar -which has become the godhead of those who would style themselves as libertarians and proponents of "small government." Call it Corporate Calvinism.
Unless and until the people of this nation wake up and realise that proper and universal health care is a human right to be provided by their government, and NOT to be held a hostage of insurance conglomerates, nothing will change.
The role of government is to provide for the well-being of its people, and this is supposed to be the reason why we pay taxes. i would gladly accept tax increases if it meant that i could go to a doctor and pay with my own good looks and the taxes i paid in trust that my government cared.
Unfortunately, it seems that most of the citizens of this country have been lulled to sleep by the bollocks that come out of Fox News and many if not most of their elected representatives.
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