Obama's Health Care Overhaul: Your Opinions

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by casey35

Well let see, we have people who dont work they dont want to work so us tax payer pay their bills. We have those who dont want to take their kids to the doctor they would just perfer to take them to the e r. We have those who are druggies that we pay for. You know what i am one who is tired of paying for those who cant get off their ass and work. I paid for my own son being born. When i went to set up payments they treated me like shit because i did not have medicaid. What the hell is that. I dont take no hand out from anyone. I think the health care is bad but i dont think the government running it is any better. I know my opinion is not your taste but guess what i dont take anything from anyone i pay my own way in this life.

Casey:

As to your second point. I'll tell you as a parent. When I didn't take my son to the doctor, it was because I didn't have health insurance!

As far as your paying your own way in life:
Please answer the following:

1) How much money did you pay and to whom did you pay it, for the road you drive to and from work on?
2) If you have ever had to call the fire department, how much did you pay and to whom did you pay it?
3) If you have ever called the police, how much did you pay and to whom did you pay it?
4) If you use the public library, how much do you pay and to whom do do you pay it?
5) Who do you pay to insure that your employer maintains a safe work environment?
6) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have someone test the medicines you take for safety?
7) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have someone test your food to make sure it is safe.
8) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it, to ensure that the person in the semi next to you, doing 60 mph is licensed?
9) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay for the air traffic controller who makes sure that the plane you are on doesn't fly into another plane?
10) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to make sure that criminals are locked up behind bars where they belong?
11) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have your mail delivered to you daily?

Your statement that you don't take anything from anyone simply isn't true--UNLESS--you live off the grid. But you are here, on the Internet, so that tells me you are not off the grid. You are using satellites that you don't lease time on. You are using microwave transmission towers that you don't lease time on. You make use of hundreds of little services that you pay your taxes for but that you do not pay for directly. Some portion of your taxes goes to pay the NIH and CDC workers who maintain public health but you have never written a check to the NIH or the CDC. Some portion of your taxes go to pay the police but you have never paid an individual cop for showing up. Some portion of your taxes goes to pay for the roads but, toll bridges not-with-standing, chances are you don't pay to drive on the surface streets in town.

As one Supreme Court justice said at the beginning of the last century "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society". There is an entire infrastructure, supporting your "I'm a self-made-woman" illusions that you utterly take for granted. If you had to pay for all those invisible services that make the wheels of modern life turn, it would be prohibitively expensive.

Now, again, if you live off-the-grid none of that applies to you but you're using a computer, which means you're on the grid, and I know, for a fact, that you aren't paying to rent satellite, microwave and fibre time. Yet, your electrons flow over the same pathways that my electrons flow over because we pay into it *together*.

[casey35]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Casey:

As to your second point. I'll tell you as a parent. When I didn't take my son to the doctor, it was because I didn't have health insurance!

As far as your paying your own way in life:
Please answer the following:

1) How much money did you pay and to whom did you pay it, for the road you drive to and from work on?
2) If you have ever had to call the fire department, how much did you pay and to whom did you pay it?
3) If you have ever called the police, how much did you pay and to whom did you pay it?
4) If you use the public library, how much do you pay and to whom do do you pay it?
5) Who do you pay to insure that your employer maintains a safe work environment?
6) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have someone test the medicines you take for safety?
7) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have someone test your food to make sure it is safe.
8) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it, to ensure that the person in the semi next to you, doing 60 mph is licensed?
9) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay for the air traffic controller who makes sure that the plane you are on doesn't fly into another plane?
10) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to make sure that criminals are locked up behind bars where they belong?
11) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have your mail delivered to you daily?

Your statement that you don't take anything from anyone simply isn't true--UNLESS--you live off the grid. But you are here, on the Internet, so that tells me you are not off the grid. You are using satellites that you don't lease time on. You are using microwave transmission towers that you don't lease time on. You make use of hundreds of little services that you pay your taxes for but that you do not pay for directly. Some portion of your taxes goes to pay the NIH and CDC workers who maintain public health but you have never written a check to the NIH or the CDC. Some portion of your taxes go to pay the police but you have never paid an individual cop for showing up. Some portion of your taxes goes to pay for the roads but, toll bridges not-with-standing, chances are you don't pay to drive on the surface streets in town.

As one Supreme Court justice said at the beginning of the last century "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society". There is an entire infrastructure, supporting your "I'm a self-made-woman" illusions that you utterly take for granted. If you had to pay for all those invisible services that make the wheels of modern life turn, it would be prohibitively expensive.

Now, again, if you live off-the-grid none of that applies to you but you're using a computer, which means you're on the grid, and I know, for a fact, that you aren't paying to rent satellite, microwave and fibre time. Yet, your electrons flow over the same pathways that my electrons flow over because we pay into it *together*.

Well geez, I think i do pay for most of that, due to the fact I pay taxes and home owner insurance. Pay state taxes and county and city taxes. Pay taxes on everything I have or use. I do not have medcaid or food stamps. I dont sit on my ass and draw money from the government. So I do pay my fair share in life.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by casey35

Well geez, I think i do pay for most of that, due to the fact I pay taxes and home owner insurance. Pay state taxes and county and city taxes. Pay taxes on everything I have or use. I do not have medcaid or food stamps. I dont sit on my ass and draw money from the government. So I do pay my fair share in life.

You seem to be missing the point so I'll try this again.

You claimed, erroneously, that you pay your own way. That doesn't mean that you pay *part* of something and others pay *part* of something. If I'm 'paying my own way' to the movies, I'm not putting in a dollar, and my wife puts in another dollar, and the person who is behind us in line puts in yet another dollar and so on. Rather, it means that whatever gouging I'm about to endure at the box office, I pay every red cent myself.

You pay taxes. I pay taxes and by doing so, we ALL, can afford things like roads, satellite connections, etc. that (and this is the really important bit) would not be able to afford to pay, out of our own pockets, by ourselves. That is not "I pay for everything myself" which is what your original statement was, Casey.

You draw innumerable benefits from the government that you do not actually pay for directly because you cannot afford to do so. You may *think* that you are completely self-contained, dependent upon no one else, but that is an illusion. It is an illusion maintained by the hard work and sweat of thousands upon thousands of ordinary workers, who get up every morning and go to work for the government--local, state and federal. THEY maintain the roads, so you aren't being charged $2.50 a quarter mile to get out of your neighborhood. THEY maintain the air traffic control system so you aren't paying the truly exorbitant amount you would have to pay if you had to contract that on your own. THEY keep the streets safe and show up when your house is on fire, services that would be prohibitively expensive if you had to pay for it yourself. One day you're going to get old and you're going to start collecting Social Security and Medicare. Will you THEN be 'lazy', 'sitting on your ass'? Think carefully before you answer because that's a lot of people's parents you're talking about if you're going to say those retirees are lazy, shiftless and of no account.

You are not 'self-made'. A whole network of support created a society that is not, just to take one obvious example, Somalia. If you lived in that society, you would be too busy trying to just take care of the daily necessities like clean water to do whatever it is you do.

I have to make one last comment on your boasts (and they are boasts) about how hard you work and your complaints about how others are lazy. My day began at 5:15 this morning, I will be off work in about 10 minutes and then I will go to class and be in class until about 8:30. Tomorrow, I have a 'short' day that will mean I leave the house around 6:30 and home about 7:00 and then I'll have a couple of hours of homework to do before Thursday when I'll have another 6:30 to 8:30 kind of day. The next three *years* of my life is going to look like that and then there'll be a year of working part-time (at the same job, my boss wants to hold onto me that badly) while going to school full time for another year and three month practicum in a lab. THEN I get to find another job in a lab someplace.

I bring this up because it seems to me that the people who *most* begrudge those who collect welfare or are on disability or social security or medicaid are those who boast loudest and longest about how hard-working they are. In the meantime, many of us get up and pull insanely long days, have not much in the way of days off because of outside commitments with things like, oh, school and yet, for the most part, we aren't the people I hear shouting about how lazy other people are. I don't begrudge people on welfare or disability or unemployment or medicaid what pittance they get. I don't begrudge that my tax dollars go to pay for people to be on welfare or what-have-you. One, I'm too busy to begrudge them that; two, I am far too aware that I am extraordinarily lucky to live in the comfort that I do; and three I am all too painfully aware that but for a twist of fate, there goes Adrienne Davis.

Now, you'll react however you react. You'll look at those who are less fortunate than you and perhaps you will see them and realize it could just as easily be you there, or you may look at them and see someone who is lazy, shiftless and don't want to work. That's all on you. But I have to say that I find it instructive and interesting that those who yell loudest about how hard working they are are the also the first people to complain about others who don't work as hard. I take PRIDE in being able to push myself longer, faster and harder than almost anyone around me. Maybe I'm just too high on that feeling of being a superwoman to begrudge those who don't have it as good as I do.