Updated title to better reflect content. :-)
My head is virtually spinning on its axis.
My local newspaper - which isn't nearly as conservative as it used to be - printed a wingnut's view of why we don't need health care reform / a public option. His answer: we don't need any of this stuff because health care is free. Yeah. He really wrote that. He also wrote a lot of other things that make less sense than Beck's craziest ramblings. My only coherent thought right now is HOLY SHIT!
Our local paper publishes just about any letters, even really smelly ones. This one is the smelliest one I've ever read. The editor wrote a 1-paragraph correction of the bullshit, and did a fine job. I'd like to write a letter of my own, but I can't get past the HOLY SHIT! expression currently whizzing around in my brain.
Here's the letter and the link:
Who needs a public option when there’s already free care?
Dear Winchester Sun:
In response to the letter of Nov. 24 about the health care system, this woman says we are dropping off like flies because we can’t get health insurance. That’s a lie.
I haven’t had insurance for 11 years, and I haven’t worked for five years. I just recently broke my leg and still got medical attention. The hospital will not turn you away. Just ask the 12 million illegals in our country that also get medical attention at the cost of the taxpayers to the tune of $50 billion a year.
She also mentions that we don’t have a free market.
I, the opposition, do believe the system needs to be fixed, but not by the president.
What needs to be done is the hospitals and doctors need to reduce their charges. The insurance companies give the hospitals what they want without a fight, and the hospitals and doctors know this, so they take advantage of the insurance companies.
Next, the government should reduce taxes and stop spending. And stop relying on taxpayers to pay their health care and wages. If you read the Constitution, it states that the servants of the people should serve the people in their offices without pay or perks.
The government is doing something illegal, which is taxing the people on their labor, which is not considered income. The government is overstepping its bounds stipulated in the Constitution. They were given only 21 tasks to perform.
Where does it say they have a right to throw you in jail for five years if you don’t get government insurance?
The government should remember its place and lower taxes like Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s. That way jobs will come back, and we will have prosperity and medical insurance and a lot fewer people dying in the streets.
By the way, Jesus is a conservative, not a liberal.
Larry Renicker
Winchester
The Editor's reply (same link as above):
Editor’s note: Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that legislators are to serve without pay, nor has the Supreme Court held that an income tax is unconstitutional. Under the legislation, the penalty for not having insurance is a fine based on one’s income, not a five-year jail sentence. Finally, the cost of covering the uninsured for free in emergency rooms is one of the reasons medical care and medical insurance cost so much for everybody else, and is therefore one of the main arguments for health insurance reform.
OMFSM. HOLY SHIT! I don't think I've ever read or heard so much incorrect information and out-of-somebody's-ass bullshit in my life.
Help! Help! Help! Somebody out there must be calmer than I am. Somebody out there must be more rational than I am right now. Somebody out there must know the alleged 21 tasks. Somebody out there must know the tax burden before and after Saint Ronnie. Somebody out there must know how little money a beginning ER doc makes.
Please - if you can read that letter and remain sane, post some suggestions for a reply. You could even send your own letter to the editor (the link near the top of the page opens an e-mail to the editor). I can't think well right now.
My impulse at the moment is to write a letter suggesting that the government immediately stop spending money - on his income (he doesn't work, so he's sucking at the government teat somehow). Who finds the money when he pays the rent? Does he think that money is heaven sent?
There sure is somebody gaming the system, all right - the guy who wrote that letter and is proud of getting free health care at the hospital. I want to demand that he pay back my share of the tax dollars supporting him and his fucking broken leg. I want to insist that that mo-fucking leech work for a living like everybody else, or starve and get sick enough to wish to his god that he had decent health care. I want to go to his home and cram a copy of the Constitution of the United States - not whatever constitution of whatever country on whatever planet he read - into his eyeballs. I want... I want...
GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm going to bed before my head explodes. I'll answer any comments in the morning.
Thank you for letting me vent. I needed that.