Don't "penalize the successful" so everyone can be taken care of. What utter rot.

My Republican friend emailed me this:

I will continue to call the socialist policies socialist if the shoe fits... no matter what version of it it is. There is a HUGE difference between providing services for the citizens, such as schools, libraries, the military and 'spreading the wealth'. Equalizing the citizens by penalizing success is just wrong no matter what you call it. I call that socialism.

I call it corporate socialism when the US government, for the past eight years, funneled billions to corporate interests though war profiteering, through tax breaks to oil companies (what good did those do? They had record profits, they could have paid tax). To me that's a "spreading the wealth" wealth from the middle-class to the upper class.

Helping people who are sick or injured is not what I call "spreading the wealth" or penalizing the successful. I call it not punishing the families of those who were as prepared as they could possibly be, yet were not well enough prepared.

Here's a quote from another friend:

What is a person like myself to do if my insurance company cancels me? I only have insurance because I was a member of a group, then the group was canceled, and I kept insurance through a government program, HIPAA. I pay almost $600 a month, I can only see a doctor twice a year, and if I'm canceled, which I can be at any time, all the money I've put it into it is lost (since I haven't made a claim). And it will literally be IMPOSSIBLE for me to get individual health insurance again. I might not even be able to get group insurance though an employer.

Then what am I supposed to do when I need a colonoscopy, which everybody over 50 should have. The last time I had one without insurance it was $5,000. For 2.5 hours in the hospital.

If, God forbid, I had a serious illness or heart trouble, that would be hundreds of thousands of dollars without insurance. Even with insurance it can be tens of thousands.

Now--if they cancel me, which, as I said, they could do once I made a claim--what happens? Do I sell my house? Do I lose my life savings?

DO YOU THINK THIS IS RIGHT?

Should I be penalized because I was sick--though no fault of my own?

Or, do we all pitch in to pay for universal health coverage that protects ALL OF US--everyone who is in a precarious position even when they do manage to get and afford health insurance?

You cannot possible tell me that the health insurance and healthcare system in this country is working, that it is even equitable or fair.

Can you? Can you tell me that I should lose my house if I get sick?

Can you tell me that I shouldn't get health care because for-profit companies say I'm a bad risk--even though I've already paid them $50,000 and claimed nothing?

The healthcare and insurance situation in this country is horrifying--it can literally worry you sick. If I'm lucky enough to make it to 65 then I'll get medicare--which is socialism. Is Medicare bad? It's socialism pure and simple and has been derided by the right since it was created. It's also saved the lives and property of millions of families. Is that bad?

Even if you work for a big corporation and think your health insurance is secure, it's not. You could be laid off, as almost 400,000 Americans have been in the last six months. There's no guarantee once you stop working your insurance will continue--or that you'll be able to afford it.

And if the company you worked for goes into chapter 11 then all bets are off for retirees or those who were laid off. The Republicans in the senate wanted automaker retirees to no longer be funded.

My Republican friend then goes on to explain to me how for-profit corporations should be running hospitals (if not schools and everything else) because they're so much more efficient.

I had a interesting conversation with an ER Doctor. She used to work at the new hospital here in Durango. She quit last year to pursue another interest. She spoke about the difference between the non-for-profit hospital and a new surgical center run by Doctors for profit. She said the non-for-profit was run by a board with no concept of how to keep employees happy and how to just plain keep employees! The turnover is huge. Therefore the quality of care drops. Her words, not mine. On the other hand, this new surgical center desires to make a profit so it strives to keep good employees by treating them well and paying them well. They require good customer service to stay in business competing against the nfp hospital.

Just because a non-profit board doesn't run a medical companies as effectively as a for profit-one isn't an idicator of what the government would do. In fact, the most efficiently run health insurance company in the country is Medicare, which by some accounts is 10 times more efficient than any private health insurance company.

And also note, that the doctor stopped being a doctor, something that took her almost a decade and several hundred thousands of dollars to learn. why is that? Because the current private insurance run medical system is just so good? No, it's just the opposite.

My personal doctor quit, too.

Why, because insurance companies were telling her what care she could give her patients--and not just in the way you think, meaning that insurance companies were pushing drugs as the ultimate care (which many of them do--"medicine by the numbers" they call it). No, it was a combination of insurance companies deciding what doctors should be paid (which was less than their costs, unless they turned themselves into a people mill), and their other insurance companies, for malpractice, that were bleeding them dry. She couldn't make a living.

Now, I'm sure I'll hear the whole "lawyers are evil and are just ambulance chasers" but there are legitimate claims. Some people die--or are killed because of true malpractice. People who a husband or father or mother who supported them and then are left out in the cold because of not just mistakes, but malpractice.

I guess those people should be penalized because the successful can't afford to pay into a national health care plan that will even protect them should they be stupid enough to end up unsuccessful at some point in the future.

And what about people who's health insurance now is precarious, because they had the bad sense to get sick?

Another friend writes me,

I lost three units of blood, yet my doctor wouldn't return my calls because I didn't have insurance. My blood pressure was so low I couldn't stand without blacking out and so low that doctors couldn't even draw blood, it wouldn't come out.

We went to a local doctor, who saw me without insurance, who arranged for a hospital to give me a transfusion (without insurance--which was hard) and required them to let me do it without spending the night so it only cost $1,500 for a transfusion, instead of $6,500 if I'd spent the night. All that took a lot of convincing on the doctor's part, because the hospital--a for-profit one, didn't want to bother with me.

So, again I have to ask--do you think this is right?

If you think the medical system doesn't need to fixed.

If you think that people (like yourself) don't deserve medical treatment.

If people should have simply die if they can't afford the $6,500 the hospital wanted for a life-saving transfusion.

That's why I'm angry.

We have a government which gave BILLIONS in tax breaks to Oil companies that are already making the biggest profits in the history of the world, but they can't afford to help law-abiding, tax-paying American citiens with health care--because that would be "Socialism."

This country was not born on socialist principles. More government is not the answer. Oversight is ok. But mostly government needs to stay out of my business!

Hmm--the so-called Patriot act allowed the government to be in your business your most personal business, more than any time in history. You're not a terrorist. You don't fit the profile at all. It's ludicrous to even waste their time listen to your phone calls and reading your emails and looking at your bank balances and credit card payments--and the books you checked out from the library.

Yet they did all that. They were not just in your business, they were up your ass.

Yet, meanwhile, when my friend needed help with a colonoscopy, this intrusive government was nowhere to be seen. They can't bothered withg you ass--unless they thought perhaps it was harboring terrorists.

So bring on socialized medicine. And tell me about how people have to wait for health care in the UK-but they do get it.

And don't use them as the be-all end all. Use a country like Australia where people get great timely care without supplemental insurance.

So let's stop with this preposterous propagandistic linguistic game of calling it "penalizing" anyone, when, in fact, we are protecting everyone.

It's all how you look at it. If you're so greedy you can't even pay to protect yourself, then of course you don't see why you should have to pay to protect someone else. Let's just hope that those people never need help. And oddly, it often turns out they do. And then they're not adverse to the government stepping in and giving them billions in bailouts, which they then give to themselves as bonuses.

Hmm. Interesting how that works. No, don't penalize them for goodness sake.

Penalize everyone else. That makes more sense.