Along the lines of yesterday's discussion of how your neighbors and friends are becoming unruly over taxation, Mary sent me a link to this video from the Columbus Dispatch. The paper videotaped a protest over the pending health care legislation, where some angry libertarians showed their worst side as they reacted to a protester claiming to have Parkinson's Disease. They apparently were not pondering What Would Jesus Do? during the following exchange:
A man in a baseball cap and dark sunglasses crouched over the man, who was sitting on the ground, and offered some unrequested advice to the protester.
"If you're looking for a handout, you're at the WRONG end of town. Nothin' for free over here. You have to work for everything you get."
Suddenly a man in gray suit pants and a button down shirt burst through the crowd with his wallet and conspicuous cash in one hand near his waistline and a dollar bill in the other hand. He announced his intentions to the crowd nearby.
"No, no! I'll pay for this guy. Here you go."
In a derisive manner, the man in the suit pants extended his arm and tossed a dollar bill into the protester's lap. Then, referring to the dollar he just tossed, he said,
"Start a pot. I'LL pay for ya."
As the man in suit pants turned back into the crowd, he flipped his right hand in a dismissive gesture toward the man, as if to be rid of him. But as he disappeared into the crowd, the protester could be heard saying he didn't want the man's handout. This prompted the man in the suit pants to reappear abruptly and, obviously angry, to point to his own chest and shout at the protester.
"No! I'LL DECIDE when to give you money!"
The man in the suit pants then tossed yet another dollar at the protester.
"There! There's another one. There you go."
The man in the suit pants was clearly saying that he'll decide whether and when to issue benevolences within his community. The shouts of Obama is a Communist in the background were meant to suggest that health care reform is creeping Socialism. It will be too bad if The Great Society comes to an end at the hands of morons like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and their vacuous supporters.
Again, I remind you that these libertarian zealots are otherwise good people, your neighbors, the people sitting beside you in the pew or at synagogue. But they have gone too far by filling your kids' textbooks with nonsense, bringing education to its knees, and emasculating our cultural institutions. There's more of this nonsense on the horizon as Christie's budget forces untenable cuts in services at city hall and much larger class sizes and countless lost programs in our schools. The damned kiln will be only the first thing to go, believe me.
The cost of 'charity care' is embedded into each hospital bill. Fortunately for the insured, that cost is invisible to them as they pay a constant deductible or co-pay. If that amount were suddenly NOT padded into the bill of the insurer as it is now, hospital costs would become visible. Because ALL WHO HAVE INSURANCE are receiving the benefit of socialized care, we don't know how much we are paying for thehealthcare for others.
ReplyDeleteSuppose the next time you went to the hospital you were expecting to pay a $25 co-pay. And the bill comes to $25 for the co-pay plus $55 for other care not billed to your insurance. The costs of paying for the working poor would now be visible. It is a direct tax to each bill.
People might well have allowed the working poor to buy their own policy and pay for their own co-pays or deductibles. The perspective is the only thing that changed in this. The costs are the same on a macro level, but it is distributed amongst those who would otherwise be willing to contribute to the system.