“The whole health care debate has obviously come too soon. Proper preparation would have consisted of sending out a questionnaire to evey Medicare and Medicaid recipient, asking them if they are in favor of government provided health insurance. Those who said no could safely be removed from the rolls. Then when the health care debate came around, there’d be a lot more support from people who don’t already have their government-guaranteed coverage.
What this debate comes down to, it seems to me, is less left vs. right than it is people who’ve always had affordable health insurance vs people who haven’t. This disparity masquerades as left vs right because more people in the armed forces are conservative, more of the poor are conservative, and more of the elderly are conservative. Those are the three groups who have most likely not had to worry about health insurance that much because, in an irony that would make me seriously clench up and vomit if I could look at it with any but the most corner-of-the-eye glance, those are the three groups that have the best government provided coverage.
I hope we get something out of this, but I have no illusion it’ll have any effect on me. I’m not poor enough to be covered by the government, and not nearly rich enough to afford to pay for my own insurance. All I can really do at this point is throw my hands up and hope fervently that everyone opposed to single-payer dies broke, of something expensive and painful. Pour encourager les autres.”
posted by rusty in the comments of “this article” on MetaFilter.
