Universe - O Anna - 1: SoMuchToSay holds forth on the Health Care debate

So there’s this whole health care reform hullabaloo going on right now. Town hall meetings are turning into Come-to-Jesus throw downs, a lady with several missing teeth crying about ‘her America’ being taken away has been turned into a sound bite, Rush Limbaugh is looking positively apoplectic and some guy is walking around with a picture of a tree with a gun strapped to his thigh. It appears that if talk of reform isn’t a harbinger of the apocalypse, the protests against it might be.

Now, I admit that I haven’t really been paying very close attention but I’m up to date on the basics:

• Lots of Americans have no or inadequate health insurance
• The GOP believes that this isn’t a problem
• We don’t really know how to fix this health care problem
• Obama suggests that the government should subsidize health care
• According to the GOP dictionary the term “subsidized health care” is synonymous with communism, socialism AND fascism. (I'm pretty sure that this is impossible but whateves.)
  

My thoughts on the topic are as follows:

• I am finding it rather difficult to be vehemently for or against a plan that doesn’t exist yet.

• The whole Thomas Jefferson quote regarding the Tree of liberty:

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.”

That was a little creepy in the 1770s and it still is now. However, this does bring me to something that I’ve been festering over for quite some time now. This comparison of the Colonists in the American Revolution and Republicans now? Well son, it just don’t work. American colonists were fighting because they were not directly represented in Parliament, whereas Republicans are (and have consistently been since our government was formed) represented in Congress by directly elected representatives. You are not being repressed. You just lost. Now, I understand that losing sucks, trust me, the vast majority of my voting tenure has been marked by defeat. Seriously though, please oh dear GOP, find a historically accurate analogy.

• Death Boards, if that’s what we are going to call them, already exist. They’re just run by doctors employed by your insurance company rather than those employed by the government

• I strongly suspect that many who are currently opposing health care reform at the top of their lungs have have had very little interaction with their insurance company. After months of scintillating debate with BlueCross BlueShield in regards to the necessity my having received chemotherapy for diagnosed cancer, I have learned that nobody is less cooperative or helpful than insurance companies. This includes Post Office employees, the IRS, University of Florida Registrar, DMV employees and cops after you've called them "orciffer."

• Do you like Winston Churchill? Seriously, everyone likes Winston Churchill. He’s the guy who brought down the Nazi regime! Saved thousands of Jewish children with the Kinder Transport! Adopted the crazy sleep-for-15-minutes-every-2-hours system of the Souix Indian Warriors! Seriously, what’s not to like? This is cool stuff! Oh…except for the fact that he basically invented socialized health care in England. Super cool and smart guy who (much like our dear President Obama) recognized that even poor people need health care.
  

• Can we please stop using the Canadian and British socialized medical systems as the main source of comparison? This is as ineffective as No Child Left Behind being modeled on a failed system of scholastic assessment. Let’s take a looksie at say…France? They may have gotten their ass kicked in every military conflict since Napoleon was exiled but their medical system seems to be working quite well.
  

• Barack Obama is a natural born citizen – get over it.