“I don’t want to support freeloaders.”
He stopped; his argument against any kind of universal healthcare consisted of nothing but that one soundbite. [1]
That kind of argument pisses me off – because the guy was proud of paying for his health insurance.
And that made him a stupid self-serving hypocrite.
It’s like the “free market” meme that annoys me to no end. See, the thing about insurance is this: When you purchase insurance, you’re either paying for freeloaders or being a freeloader yourself.
Think about it. You are either paying for others on the plan who are sick (some much sicker than you will ever be), or healthier people are paying for you.
If this guy really wanted to avoid the freeloaders, he would have to pay for all of his own healthcare out of pocket, cash and carry.
I was a car accident two years ago. The ambulance bill was over $200 – and that was with insurance. If I remember correctly, the ambulance transport alone originally cost over a thousand dollars. That doesn’t count the ER nurses and doctor, or the CT scan and X-rays, or the radiologists who read those.
I don’t know about you, but I know that absorbing a sudden bill of a couple thousand dollars would sure hurt.
The idea that avoiding universal health care is about “keeping freeloaders out” is a hypocritical idea – unless you never have health insurance again. [2]
Can we move past this stupid overwrought hand-wringing fear that someone, somewhere, may get a “free ride” now, and get onto the real merits and drawbacks of plans?
kthxbye.
[1] I heard about this exchange; I didn’t witness it personally.
[2] And as a side note? I love how wingnuts are blaming current problems with their insurance companies on “Obamacare”… even though “Obamacare” (whatever it ends up being) hasn’t happened yet. ::shakes head:: While the wingnuts are complaining about the system they are fighting to keep, they blame it on the guy trying to change the very system they’re complaining about. That takes some serious cognitive dissonance.