I guess it goes without saying that I disagree with every word of this.
Healthcare delivery doesn't lend itself to free-market concepts. And it shouldn't.
At some point the fiction that any market is "free" or unadulteratedly capitalist has to be sloughed off. We are, as a society, beyond that fable.
I guess it goes without saying that I fundamentally disagree with every facet and nuance of your stance.
Health care lent itself to the free market quite well prior to government intervention. There was no crisis, there was no need for federal intrusion.
If "we as a society are beyond that fable" it's only because of the lies espoused by unabashed socialists such as, well ..... you.
You worked in society's underbelly and wrongly saw an oppressed class of poor folks just trying to make it. I worked in the same pool of cess and saw it for what it was -- a segment of society determined to do as little as possible and live off the work of others. You wrongly saw denied opportunity. I saw opportunity ignored and/or squandered. You wrongly saw a need to redistribute wealth. I saw a need to take advantage of the opportunities provided to make your own way.
Everybody can't be rich. It doesn't work that way. But you can't tell me with a straight face that the opportunity to rise above does not currently exist for everyone legally in this country. I choose not to be responsible for the abysmal life choices made by those who don't.
Don't get me wrong, wes. I have no problem with short-term assistance. I have no qualms about helping people who find themselves in difficult situations. But only on a short-term basis, to give them a chance -- education, re-training, job preparation, etc. -- to find a way out of it.
I unilaterally oppose, however, the life-time entitlements that have become accepted by that particular class. They get "disability" checks. They get WIC. They get food stamps. They get ADC. The kids get "crazy checks." They get subsidized rent.
The government has used Section 8 to turn quality apartments and housing into squalid slums. Then when the formerly nice apartments fall into disrepair and decay, the residents (who are paying little to nothing) agitate and insist on something better because "their house isn't as nice as their neighbors." So the government forces Section 8 on another nice complex. The tenants move, the ones who just destroyed the old complex move in and the pattern repeats itself. I've lived that too. The first apartments I lived in started to accept Section 8 tenants. Six months later, after the second time my apartment and car was broken into, I moved. When that complex accepted its first Section 8 tenant two years later? I moved again. Every time I moved I had to pay substantially higher rent because the Section 8 hordes were artificially inflating the market.
We've got an entire subclass of people now who are in the second, third and fourth generation of living on the dole. Ethel Lee is a prime example. She filed for disability because she was "down in her back" when she was 18 years old. She had "bad knees." She pumped out seven kids by multiple different men. All of them lived in public housing and drew government checks. None of them worked. I personally heard her tell her 16 year old daughter -- who already had one child -- that she needed to have another one because they needed the additional check for it. None of her kids ever even thought about working. Well, one worked at Wendy's for a short time and was ridiculed by the rest of the family. Then she got pregnant, quit the job and moved into Rosedale Courts on her own and one the dole.
I paid for that. You paid for that.
And now you want me to pay more? You think I should give Ethel Lee and her ilk a fucking "baseline?"
You honestly believe that the addition of another lifetime entitlement is the answer?
That's only palatable to me if there are consequences for her actions. She made the choices. Her kids made their choices. Her children went to the same schools mine would have, would have had the same teachers, would have had the same classes. They would have better chances to get financial aid for college than my kids, a lowered standard to be accepted, more help. I can easily make the case that Ethel Lee's children actually have BETTER opportunity than my kids do. So I should pay for their failures when they elect NOT to or are not motivated or encouraged to take advantage of them?
You are more wrong about this than you could ever imagine.