Despite The Awesome Speech.. Some Would Still Prefer to Believe the Lies

Despite last nights very direct speech, some people with whom I communicate with via Facebook still insist on believing the lies and some still have no clue what they are talking about.

For example. Today, I , a self employed entrepreneur, was told by someone that "those people that are uninsured should just go get a job and work for it like my husband does". Uggh.. comments like that just make me want to throw my hands up in the air and bang my head against a wall. I wish there was a clue store, because this person really really needs to buy one. She obviously doesn't know that the vast majority of the uninsured are working families, either in jobs that do not provide coverage or in a small business that can not afford the high premiums. Those who are then what she was trying to imply were "lazy" or non employed (by choice, not by default) and who aren't making an income are NOT uninsured. They get their insurance FREE through medicaid. Self employed are NOT unemployed. Perhaps she needs to learn the difference in the two.

I would love for her to stand in front of a person that lost their job in this crappy economy and who has been pounding the pavement, in some cases for over a year now, and say that to their face. This person, by the way, is a stay at home mom (nothing wrong with that) with three kids. Husband is employed with benefits.

She needs to think and think long and hard about this scenario. What if the company that her husband works for lays him off tomorrow? Does she even have a clue what the cost of covering her family would be under cobra? Well given that the average cost is $12K for a family of 4, and she is a family of 5, I'm sure she'd be quite shocked at the bill that comes in the mail for the cobra coverage.

Is this person not aware that there are plenty of people, like myself, that are ready, willing and able to pay for insurance but then are refused coverage for a pre-existing condition. It would be important to note, by the way, that this person that I was debating today could very well be "disqualified" for health insurance or charged at a much higher premium because of their weight. That's not a knock to her for being on the heavy side, but it's just the reality of it.

But I should have known I wasn't going to get a good and meaningful debate out of this person when the question she posed on her Facebook wall was "What do you think of Obama's Death Panels?"

I guess some people on this issue are going to be just completely hopeless to reach or reason with.

Then there is the crowd that debated more intelligently but who's stance is that they simply do not trust the government and truly believe that this reform Obama is proposing is a complete takeover of the health care industry. I get that these people are afraid of the government. But.. WHAT about the government makes you so "afraid"?

See, it's complex. I don't fully trust the government or politicians either but I don't trust them because I feel that most, if not all, of their decisions are based on who paid them the most to vote they way they voted. In other words, our government has been bought and paid for by the highest bidder. Most of the ones who most strongly oppose this health care reform INCLUDING the "blue dog" democrats are politicians who take the MOST money from insurance lobbyists.

The entire thing is quite genius on the part of big corporations and special interest. On the one hand they decry that the government can't be trusted but on the other side they are the ones that are corrupting the government. All of this happened while we were all too busy with our "pop culture" to pay attention to our own political and government system. As we became complacent it became easier and easier for special interests to overtake the government.
Let me ask you this. If we were debating a reform that would actually LINE the pockets of insurance companies and increase their profits, do you really honestly think that this debate would be so heated and so polarized? No! It wouldn't! We probably would not hear hide nor hair of the reform if that were the case. But,be it as it may, this debate IS so heated because when, for the first time, our government is actually working in the interest of the INDIVIDUAL citizens and NOT in the interest of big profits, those with the money to throw around (and hence the weight) throw it around and do everything in it's power to defeat it because they DO not want this reform to work because it is NOT in the best interest of their profits.. even though it is in the best interest of this countries citizens. They , those that are in the pockets of the corporate interests in this matter, go on TV, radio and what have you , and outright LIE to the American public creating false rumors about death panels, free medical care and coverage to illegal immigrants and so on and so forth. They play into the public's most paranoid fears with propaganda. They demonize the President, they demonize the government. And the sad part is the public buys it and eats it right up. Some have been so far gone that no matter WHAT the President says, they are not going to believe him.

See, the concept of government is NOT an evil one, not in a democracy. However, the lust for money and anything motivated by money is what is the "evil". Governments quest is simply to govern and to protect the public from being taken advantage of by policing actions and creating laws that allows our society to live in harmony as a civilized

Perhaps its more fun and exciting to demonize the President of the United States and call him Hitler than to actually listen to reason.

Uggh.. The entire thing is just infuriating. That even after that speech, where he talks about HOW it's gong to be paid for and how it's NOT going to be paid for, it still wasn't enough for some people. I mean what did you want him to do .. throw out ALL the numbers line by line in the budget? WE would have been there for not hours, but days. He said it people..loud and clear and here it is again;

a) the public option, for one, will NOT be funded by public tax dollars
b) Cleaning up and clearing waste in medicaid/medicare (which is outlined in several ways in the bill, including electronic medical records to make the administrative costs less, more streamlined and efficient and eliminate paperwork . All of which will be beneficial to the private markets as well.)
c.) BUDGET CUTS in other areas of spending if need be.

How much more specific beyond going into it line by line can you get?

Listen. Our taxes are going to go up, but NOT because of health care but because of a war in Iraq and Afghanistan and because of the billions of dollars used by the government to bail out Wall Street (again..those big corporations... who weren't screaming and crying about government spending then huh? No talks of Hitler or fear mongering from the corporations then was there? )Funny how when now some of our tax dollars will actually be spent on helping us CITIZENS each individually with a much needed reform is all this dirty back and forth going on.

Needless to say, another FB friend is gone from my list. It's not because she has a different opinion. It's more that her opinion is based on ignorance, incomplete facts and figures and once again, when I illustrated a point supported by actual facts, she had no real intelligent comeback beyond the empty "all those uninsured should go get a job". Is that all you got?