patrick.net

My reply to a reader who called me an "Obama zombie" for supporting medical care reform that would save her ass along with the rest of us.

Hi Kerri,
it is off-topic, but I watched both my parents die last year, and I know for a fact that our insurance system sucks. My parents were bankrupted by the current system while they died, though Medicare did provide them good quality care. (They incurred big expenses before getting on Medicare, and even when on Medicare, drugs and other costs were beyond their ability to pay. Ultimately they had no money left, at which point Medicaid paid for my mother.)

I don't like excessive government, but Obama's plan is just to give the OPTION to carry government insurance to compete with the private bloated bureaucracy that is already worse than any government plan. Private insurers make more money if they deny you care and let you die. Talk to anyone who's been through a serious illness in the US, then compare that to anyone from the rest of the industrialized world. Hell, Americans fly to India to get treatment because that's better than dealing with our current system!

Obama's plan leaves all private doctors and hospitals private like before. Maybe it does partly socialize insurance, but police, firemen, elementary school teachers are all socialized and all work pretty well. Medical insurance could be like that. Right now, we pay more and get worse medical care per dollar than in any other industrialized country, because people protecting the insurance and drug companies poked the right nerve in your lizard brain.

Here's a perfectly true quote from some guy on my site:

"Asshole republicans don't even know what they're protesting against - a threat to their right to be anally raped by big insurance companies? Just puppets dancing around, with the good ole boys of the GOP pulling the strings, who are then off to pick up their big fat check from Blue Cross and Kaiser... You are being PLAYED, sucker."

Patrick

#politics