Wait until you reach 55 years old and discover you have to continue working at a job that is chipping away at your mental health because you hate the work, but you cannot afford to go out on your own and start a business or change jobs because you've got a family to keep insured, they have pre-exsiting conditions, you have pre-existing conditions, and the insurance companies won't touch you because they consider you too much of a risk. So, the logical thing to do is to continue to waste your life in a dull job that doesn't offer you any personal satisfaction or otherwise enhance your life except with a pay check and insurance, and then both of those can be taken away at any moment. When you reach that stage in life, then think about all those who "are lazy and abuse the system." Their numbers aren't not that great. But right now there are hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed people who fit the description I provided who cannot find work and will not find work for a long time. And it's not because they are lazy and like to abuse "the system." So, you think these people should be prevented from accessing quality health care?
Or how about the guy who, despite having health insurance, is finally dropped from coverage because he's cost the insurance company too much money for a life-threatenining chronic condition (MS is a good example) and he and his family, after going through every possible means to keep themselves going have to default on the mortgage, lose their home and take out bankruptcy. But if he had access to quality medical care that was guaranteed to him as a citizen, he and his family could maintain the little dignity and independence they have. You want to deny that person?
There are thousands of different reasons people end up needing medical care that they cannot afford, even with the insurance that they currently have, who are required to lose everything just to continue to receive minimal treatment by going on welfare. Do you think that is cheaper in the long run for a society than just owning up to the fact that part of a decent, caring civilization is to offer the best quality health care to every citizen, regardless of their particular situation?
Are you aware that the Third Reich's answer for the chronically disabled and those with diseases that could not be cured by 1930s medicine was to load them up along with the seven million or so Jews and ship them off to concentration camps where they were eliminated? Yeah, many more millions were eliminated not because they were perceived as a political threat or threat of watering down the racial profile of German culture. They were shipped off and incinerated simply because they were crippled, blind, deaf, had a birth defect, and also because they were considered or discovered to be homosexual. Is that the solution you think is better than offering public health care. Or would you rather see people with this problems left on the side of the road to rot? I can take you to many third world countries where that's what happens. I'm sure it would make you feel real special inside to witness that kind of inhumanity.
I'm a 65 year-old gay male who has never had children. By your reasoning, I should have been allowed an exemption on my state and federal income tax in the USA so I never had to pay for a service I never needed or used: public education. After all, why should the government put the touch on me to educate your children? But it doesn't work that way. We all have a vested interested in educating our citizens and we are just as obligated to provide the best health care we can offer, because it benefits out society. You are simply interested in what benefits you, and I completely understand. Since Reagan became president, the focus has become "what's in it for me?" rather than "how does it benefit my society?" The former is just plain greed. The latter is understanding that you don't live alone in a society and have an obligation to keep your society healthy. In turn, it will provide you with many more benefits than just "What's in it for me?"
How fucking hard is this to understand? For some reason the current iteration of the GOP doesn't get and neither do the Tea Baggers.
