I'm hereby blaming this thread on alcohol. And possibly boredom.

   So I heard some stuff on NPR today about the basic healthcare reform ideas being bandied about by the leading Rep/Dem candidates. Without going into more detail than I'm willing to peck into this fucking keyboard right now, one thing really stood out.

  There is one candidate that put forward that healthcare should be mandated, ala car insurance, complete with unspecified penalties for the uninsured.

   Now I don't know how the particular automotive insurance laws are where you, gentle reader, are. But where I live if you're convicted of driving drunk, even upwards to six times in five years, you can get work/school/emergency driving privileges before you even leave the court. Especially if your lawyer has lunch with all the judges.

   But if you get caught driving without insurance, you car is towed on the spot and even if Jebus Himself is your lawyer, you can't get driving priveleges under any circumstances for 6 months.

  So in effect the law is saying that its much more acceptable to drive while impaired and risk the lives of the other people you might plow into, than to drive uninsured.

   This always seemed not only fucked up, but the obvious effort of a money dripping insurance lobby, which got exactly what it wanted.

   But to do this to healthcare WITHOUT making it affordable to the vast amout of people out there who need it but would prefer to eat and have a roof over their heads first, is, for lack of a better term, fucked up.

    Eh.

   End of political rant and stuff.

Politics more like LOLitics ha ha

After a while I just started telling myself I was in a really funny show starring me, and after that happened everything stopped making me upset.

And I never got angry again, not never ever.

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LuckyGuess wrote:

And I never got angry again, not never ever.

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Manditory insurance, like manditory seat-belt laws, seems at first to be a violation of whatever Constitutional amendment can be paraphrased as saying, "You can do whatever the fuck you want as long as you don't hurt others."  However, both were instuted to keep insurance down.

Because the insurance companies had to pay for you AND the other cunt who didn't have insurance, rates were higher before everyone had to have insurance.  Similarly, accidents with seat belts were more costly for the insurance companies, thus driving the costs up.

But what the fuck manditory health insurance will do, I don't know.  You don't get any of the benefits of auto insurance; in fact, it should be the opposite:  the more people who have health insurance, the more the insurance companies have to dish out.  Are they going to send people without health insurance to jail (where they will presumably be paid for by the prison's medical budget)?

The fact is there are certain questions in this country that there are no easy answers for:  Health Insurance (which has the problem of the people who pay for something being different from the people who recieve the benefit), Social Security (which has the problem of politicians not being able to keep their hands off any money being saved for any reason for any length of time), Iraq (which has the problem being we can't get out without a major Middle Eastern disaster), etc.

The problem is that politicians who have any well-thought-out, complex answers to these problems will never get elected, because most Americans can't (or won't) understand anything that doesn't fit into a sound bite.  So we get these assinine "solutions" which will never work.  So we have to wait for the guy who will say he's going to do something really simple and easy to understand, but secretly want to do something that will actually work, and then get booted out for "lying" because any solution to these problems will have short- and probably middle- term pain involved in the long-term resolution.  (Something else Americans can't or won't understand.)

As for drinking laws vs. insurance laws... well, don't get me started on how overregulated alcohol is in this country.

What I find hard to believe is that mandatory health insurance is considered a more viable solution than universal health care coverage. The only real difference is that you'd get one included with your taxes.

Never mind that fact that forcing people to do stuff (and threatening them with legal action for non-compliance), on the premise that "it's good for them", is one of the telltale signs of fascism. I direct your attention on that one to the statewide smoking bans, the ridiculous "war on drugs", and the checkpoints designed (ostensibly) to make sure everyone's wearing their seatbelt. The government is not supposed to be taking its cues from a clingy, overprotective mommy, who is all too quick to nag her over-stressed, heavy handed husband to punish Little Joey Citizen, whenever he doesn't feel like putting a coat on before he leaves the house.

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ZMannZilla wrote:
Never mind that fact that forcing people to do stuff (and threatening them with legal action for non-compliance), on the premise that "it's good for them", is one of the telltale signs of fascism. I direct your attention on that one to the statewide smoking bans, the ridiculous "war on drugs", and the checkpoints designed (ostensibly) to make sure everyone's wearing their seatbelt. The government is not supposed to be taking its cues from a clingy, overprotective mommy, who is all too quick to nag her over-stressed, heavy handed husband to punish Little Joey Citizen, whenever he doesn't feel like putting a coat on before he leaves the house.

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I went to a strip club last night.

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matclarke wrote:
I went to a strip club last night.

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I demand we pass a law making it illegal for strippers to deduct dollar bills shoved in their ass cracks for tax purposes. Makes me sick.

It should be illegal to spend money that's been in an ass crack at a restaraunt where the same person who handles your food also handles the money.

Also, it should be illegal not to have sex with me if I ask.

And what's the deal with airplane food?

I counter 'dying in the streets/going to prison for being to poor to buy insurance' with being taxed until your pods pop to feed a bloated, not fit for purpose organisation that seems to actively encourage microbe flavoured death ala MRSA/c. difficile. And expecting to be grateful for the experience.

 For 'Aeroplane food' answer substitute 'Aeroplane food' where necessary.