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[chlorinegoddess]

You know, I find it odd that so many Americans have been willing to step up and donate $10 via text, or buy a tshirt, or send money to the Red Cross, or whatever else they do for Haiti, but have proven completely unwilling to pay a little bit more in taxes to help provide healthcare for themselves, their parents, their children, and their neighbors

Comments

[kitkatlj]

I like this post.

[caseyptah]

I don't find it odd at all. It's one thing to see so much suffering on TV and decide to make a one-time gift to help out in the only way you can. It's another thing to sign up to give thousands of dollars to the government annually for the rest of your life.

Seeing as how 40 percent of Americans pay no income tax, I have a hard time feeling like I have to do MORE of my part to help them out with their health insurance.

Not to get all conservative on you, but I don't think raising taxes is the answer.

[chlorinegoddess]

It's a good point. And I fully appreciate the difference between a voluntary donation and coerced forcing-money-from-your-paycheck. This was more a passing observation than anything else (which accidentally turned into a rant about the whole Massachusetts thing which has been severely irking me, but not for the reason that it seems to be irking the rest of the Democratic populace. Even NPR. Seriously, NPR. I expected better.).

But regarding your point: personally, for me, it's less about raising taxes than reallocating my income. We pay so much, as a nation, for health insurance. If I could spend the same amount, or even a bit more, and more or less ensure that I - and everyone I know - would have appropriate coverage for the rest of my life, sign me up.

[caseyptah]

Right. I mean, the whole health care system is broken and the whole health insurance system is just fucked. I feel like we need to wipe the slate clean or something and rebuild it from the ground up. And there are so many problems! For instance, one of the things that drives up costs is that uninsured people end up going to the emergency room for their care and costing tons of money which hospitals never collect, forcing them to raise prices in generaal. But then you have the people with great health insurance who, BECAUSE they have great health insurance will go in for every little scratch and demand an MRI or two, or three. And that brings up the costs of our insurance premiums. And it's just a big, big mess.

But generally, I think the government could do a lot better job of budgeting and if they raised my taxes only a little but I knew that it was being used efficiently to provide health coverage, I would be all about that. It's just hard to picture the government doing anything efficiently... ever.

[chlorinegoddess]

True, true. Which, in a way, gets back to my secondary point - why can't our government get anything done properly, ever????

(As a side note, when I was working at the Science Museum, they got rid of 100% coverage and people pitched a fit. I was like, really, people?? One hundred percent coverage??? That's just insane.)

[nightswatch]

Sigh. Yeah.

[salieri]

In the past few elections I've tended to think those who didn't vote because the candidates weren't good enough were being short sighted. But if it turns out that the democrats just can't govern under any circumstances then I really can't think of a reason to bother voting for them.

[userj]

it's not exactly the democrats fault that the senate has ridiculously stupid rules and that the republican party has decided not to participate at all in the legislative process.

When bush had majorities in both houses, you did not in fact see the democrats fillibustering EVERYTHING. In fact I think the only fillibuster threats were for lifetime judicial appointments.

Anyway, the senate bill is really horrible, actually, basically because of the threat of the fillibuster. I'm not sure I would want that passed.

Obama has made countless comments/speeches/etc about the moral imperitive of health care legislation. Doens't get as much attention as things like death panels and "bailouts" though.