Watch Jimmy Kimmel's moving monologue about his infant son's heart surgery, and why we must save ACA

I got a similar letter last year and it was simply… wrong. My insurance still worked fine. Nobody at CareSource could figure out who actually sent the letter.

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This is hands-down the best thing I’ve seen this year. Not even a contest.

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Then donation isn’t the problem. Idiots are the problem. Put the blame where it’s due.

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THIS. Thank you for putting into words what’s been in my mind for months now.

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I was born in 73 and had my surgery just before my second birthday. Apparently, my particular defect can now sometimes be corrected in utero.

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I understand why Jimmy Kimmel said we can’t get involved with “partisan squabbles” - describing the situation this way causes less resistance with moderate Republicans and conservatives.

But we all know which side is dragging it’s heels in and making it a squabble. And it’s not the Democrats. The Republican party has fought against the sanity of health care reform for decades.

I’m very, very glad that Obama won reelection so that the ACA was in long enough to dig in, and show it’s value. It seems that, with a lot of people’s efforts, that will continue.

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Sure, but i see no reason to let establishment, corporate-friendly Dems off the hook. Like, you know, Obama, who hardly cited at all the value of single-payer/Medicaid for all, let alone pushed for it.

I’d love to see initiatives that I agree with go further. But we should all remember that Bill and Hillary Clinton tried a less establishment, less corporate-friendly approach with health care in the 1990s and it went down in total flames - at the height of Bill Clinton’s popularity.

I’m for what works. This worked. If we can get a less establishment, less corporate-friendly situation that works even better for the poor and middle class, I’m all for it. But until then, I don’t intend to let the hypothetical perfect be the enemy of the current good, you know?

Besides which, to the main point, “partisan squabbling” is still an inaccurate representation of this.

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I really don’t see why anyone else should have to pay for my health care should I fall on rough times. Excuse me (COUGH HACK!). It’s a matter of individ…individ…AACHOOO!! Sorry about that. It’s a matter of individual responsibility. If people can’t be bothered to take care of themselves (ALARMING PHLEGHM EXPULSION THAT GOES ON FOR AN UNCOMFORTABLE INTERVAL!) it’s of little consequence to others. You may wish to move to the other end of the bus.

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Yes I have seen this type of comment many times. I find the lack of empathy for others quite disturbing, as well as the complete lack of shame in admitting this. Thank you for so concisely articulating the challenge.

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This is what I don’t get with the whole “choice” line of BS the Ryan and cos. keep selling: you can only choose from the doctors that take your insurance.

Me? The only criteria I need to worry about is whether I am comfortable with my doctor and/or if I can find a different one that is taking new patients. I can go to any hospital or any random clinic in the province. In other words, I have a hell of a lot more choice than you do.

Our system isn’t perfect, but the US one terrifies me.

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Problems she doesn’t have yet
No worries though… once she does have medical issues (and she will), and no healthcare (gaps in coverage could become holes impossible to climb from), she can still blame you.

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I doubt it. You’ll always be able to pay privately for care, have a personal physician on your staff, etc. But the rest of us would have a reasonable minimum of care.

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Not all of us. I think my mom and dad were socialists but didn’t know it, even though they called themselves Democrats; and even then, they weren’t registered, paid-up, card-carrying members of the party. And my dad never bitched about “those damned Commies”, that I ever knew of, but he did like arguing with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

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He also cheated on my mom with the same married woman from about 1974 to 1988. He also prevented me from joining my high-school swim and track teams because, according to him, we couldn’t afford the physical. When I wanted to enroll in college under a Pell grant and asked for tax records to take to to my counselor at school, he said he made too much money for me to get one. Which is bullshit. But I never questioned him; I wish to fuck I HAD.

Sometimes he was a neat dad…but great? No.

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Oh, sorry to hear those things. I guess it obviously does take more than one characteristic to qualify as a great parent.

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[quote=“someguy, post:33, topic:100238”]
3) The rich will get the same medical treatment the poor do if fully socialized healthcare comes to pass.

I doubt it. You’ll always be able to pay privately for care, have a personal physician on your staff, etc.
[/quote]No, the ultra-rich will be able to do that. The merely “rich” (i.e. single-digit millionaires) won’t be able to. Considering the average “pre-insurance” price of a severe illness hospital stay is into the $millions, if you’re not making 8+ figures you’re not realistically affording that on your own.

Even if the pricing were sane enough, you’ll end up with the issue that hospitals are where you have to go to for access to machines like X-Rays, MRIs, etc. etc.

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Oh, the poor. :slight_smile:
You’re right, paying out of pocket will only be for the ultra-rich, but I can imagine a supplemental insurance that well-off people can purchase that makes things a little nicer.
We all get the hospital stay with single payer. Supplemental insurance gets you a private room. Maybe a waiting lounge instead of the public waiting room. The hospital equivalent of TSA pre-check, whatever that might be.

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Exactly. Insurance facilitates business. Without it much business could not exist. So … businesses all rely on a ‘socialist’ mechanism (sharing the burden of risk). If all the GOP-supporting, ‘free market’, tax- and regulation-hating business owners need to be so free and independent why don’t they all self-insure their own risks instead of acting mutually?

The first insurance companies were mutuals - owned by their members; the co-operative principle is more widely an important element for society at large to even be able to exist, and the brainwashed who vote against their own interests on the grounds of ‘socialism’ need to have this pointed out to them at every opportunity.

It’s like Thatcher’s idiotic “there is no such thing as society” writ large and worn as a proud badge by every socialism-fearing, right-wing idealogue, while ignoring every single collective act or effort their society ever undertook. The dissonance would be painful to them if they were capable of independent analytical thought.

So, yes, the collective acts and achievements of business and society DO need to be “stated that way” in the hope of making enough voters think twice (well, once would be a start), of making them reconsider their assumptions - enough to maybe make a difference electorally.

(Sorry for what was not the first ‘rant’ on this today. I’m rather wound up by it all, as you may discern.)

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I believe that before the 2018 elections, Trump will have come out in favor of single payer.

Which poses the question, will more heads explode on BoingBoing, or on Breitbart?

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