Breath Insurance
Hey, I just had the best idea:
How about, in addition to health care, we tie the ability to BREATHE AIR to employment status? And for the people who ARE employed, we can have a private industry built around deciding whether or not people are worthy of breathing. But the catch is, the breath insurance businesses will have a disincentive to allow people to breathe because the more people inhale the less money they’ll make, somehow.
Holy crap, this is GENIUS!
And then we can have situations like:
“Sorry, your lungs are too big. BREATH DENIED!”
Or:
“You have air in your lungs already.”
“But I’m exhaling. In fact, I’m speaking to you right now, meaning my lungs are putting out the air that’s inside them.”
“Sorry, you already have air in your lungs. My hands are tied. BREATH CLAIM DENIED!”
Or:
“You have asthma? I’m afraid your breath isn’t covered due to a pre-existing breathing condition. Maybe if your breaths were more efficient. BREATHING DENIED.”
I mean, seriously, fuck, why not, right? This is what conservatives and morons seem to want is private industry controlling whether we live or die, so why not let’s just go right ahead and make it a quick and direct process, huh?
Jabberwock
September 6th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
It is freaking unbelieveable how the right-wing fringe has warped the health-care debate! With the so-called “liberal” media concentrating on the wack-jobs waving their “Obama is a Nazi!” signs and toting guns, the people who are truly working to reform health care have been shunted to a soapbox in the corner.
At least now, with Congress coming back soon from their summer recess, we’ll soon have a vote on this health care program. Hopefully, they’ll be enough votes from the Democrats and the few remaining GOP moderates to hold off a GOP filibuster and get this thing on Obama’s desk.
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I still believe that we can keep the public option in the bill that ultimately passes Congress and we can start bringing health care prices back down to earth. I believe that deep down Democrats realize that if they break out the white flag now, they’ll end up paying a steep price in the 2010 midterms.
But, let’s say we do succeed in passing “Obamacare”. Dollars to doughnuts those wack-jobs at the town halls will raise the roof over it and Obama’s polls will probably go down considerably. But once regular Americans realize that the sky hasn’t fallen and their milk hasn’t curdled (and the wack jobs go back to their caves), they’ll realize that this is a good thing. And thus (I believe), Obama’s poll numbers will start going up again.
But right now, the reason there’s so much hand-wringing over this is that people are scared spitless over the economy (unemployment is edging toward 10 percent) and they’re saying “I don’t know if I’ll be working next month or if I’ll be able to keep my home or retire. Let me at least have my health care!” But keeping the status quo will be far more costly in more ways than one.
September 6th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Man, Jabberwock, you’re usually pretty good about being fair, but…damn. Is it that hard to acknowledge that at least some of us just don’t want the government running it? That maybe not everybody who’s opposed to your positions is some sort of capitalist-fetish lunatic who would fellate the corporate world if they could? Is it so hard to understand that some of us would just rather keep our options open than trust the federal government to look after our good health the way they look after our privacy and financial solvency? Christ.
September 7th, 2009 at 12:12 am
@commodorejohn: I replied to your comment on the front page, actually, but I’d also like to make one quick comment here as well in the form of a forced, awkward metaphor.
This is basically what you’re doing:
You have a really delicious piece of cake and you’re really enjoying eating it. There’s someone else near you who doesn’t have a piece of cake but would really like one.
Scenario A (What the government seems to actually be proposing, if you’d pay attention to what Obama was actually saying instead of getting swept up in all this echo chamber shittery about death panels and killing grandmothers and taking away people’s existing plans — none of which is actually being proposed): Someone comes along and tells you “okay, you can keep your cake, but I’m going to give this other person who doesn’t have any a piece of cake as well.”
Scenario B (The single-payer system that I’d prefer, which, sadly, nobody seems to be offering): Someone comes along and tells you “okay, I know you really, really like that cake, but I have this other cake that’s substantially less expensive and in fact tastes even better if you can believe it and is popular and beloved basically everywhere else in the world, but you’re going to have to give up the piece you currently have in order to eat this one, but at least this way everyone gets a piece.”
And so, inexplicably to everyone around you, you slap the box of cake out of the person’s hand and stomp on it until it’s totally inedible, and then you wander off blissfully eating your own cake while everyone else starves to death.
And then maybe your boss yanks your plate away from you before you’re even done with it and tells you “NO MORE CAKE GET OUT” and now nobody has any cake.
There, are you fucking happy now?