My response to my fundie cousin's fb petition to repeal ACA:

[intheflow]

It will save the country money and contribute to the public health. You won't be paying to bail out hospitals because poor people wait until they're desperate to go to a doctor and the only doctor available is at an emergency room. Also, less chance of epidemics spreading because again, poor people will get preventative healthcare (less expensive than emergency care) before infecting everyone with their illness. All other first world countries offer socialized healthcare, this isn't even socialized - it's paying into the private sector. As such, it will create more jobs in the private sector. Final point I'd like to make: this makes our country more Christian since Christ was big on giving comfort to the poor and healing the sick.

Listening for her head to explode and post to be deleted in 3... 2... 1...

[elleng]

1. Thanks, flow.

Saving this for fb discussions! We have opportunities to educate!

[GoCubsGo]

2. Excellent reply!

I hope you'll keep us filled in on their responses to it. I'm interested in hearing whether or not it all sink in, or if they make some idiotic, nonsensical excuses.

[intheflow]

6. One of her friends "liked" my post.

Another one fretted she didn't know where that money would come from, since "Those who don't have it now can't afford to pay for it no matter what!!!! We have never been able to afford insurance!!"

I replied she just made an excellent case for socialized medicine.

She came back with even more exclamation points: "Honey, I do NOT want someone else to pay for what I can't! That is irresponsible! This once wonderful country was founded on the principle of free enterprise and working for what you want. Handouts were not part of the deal. Someone will have to pay eventually and it will most assuredly be the tax payers - US!"

L.O.O.N.Y.

[JHB]

9. She's already paying for health coverage for other people

If I understand the situation correctly (no link handy), Americans already pay more in taxes for health care (for Medicare, VA, government employee coverage, Congress' coverage, etc.) to cover part of the population than the English or Canadians pay to cover everyone. And then, on top of that, Americans pay more for private insurance to cover the basics if they can afford it or get it through their employer. And then the aforementioned emergency room care for those who have no hope of repaying high costs because their problems were left untreated until they became critical.

[GoCubsGo]

11. Yep.

I worked in a hospital billing office during a couple of summers during college. The people who couldn't afford to pay had their bills written off, and the costs were rolled into the bills of all the other patients and their insurance companies. I don't know what fucking planet these idiots live on, because it sure isn't Earth.

[JHB]

10. On another point, the country was NOT founded on "free enterprise"...

...it was founded on opposition to tyranny, and the mechanism that served that goal was breaking up the power: separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. Concentrations of power invite abuse, so create a system that breaks up that power.

Lets not forget, money is power too. We did have ways of breaking up concentrations there: regulations against excessive consolidation that reduces competition, high marginal tax rates (with certain loopholes to avoid top rates) to change financial decision-making*, estate taxes to break up massive fortunes over generations, etc. They worked, and we spent most of the Cold War with this system. If it's "socialist", then we were "socialist" and what were the Soviets?

By the 1970's that system had gotten creaky in places and needed some fixes, but conservatives had no interest in that. As I like to put it (see my sig line), they've worked to dismantle the economic system that beat communism and send us back to the economic system that spawned it.



*for example: once you're already up in the economic stratosphere, is it a better use of resources to use pay incentives (raises) for employees than to just pocket those myself? The math on that shifts if Uncle Sam takes over 2/3rds of the extra gravy you might have given yourself.

[treestar]

13. Yet she can't afford to pay it for herself now

So she'd be the one getting the hand-out. And does she admit she is just not working hard enough to have it?

[Capt.Rocky300]

3. Excellent........

I also liked the simple way Congressman George Miller put it on "The Ed Show" last night......."The American people now have access to affordable health care that can't be taken away."

[dynasaw]

4. Not Sure It Won't Be A Waste of Your Time

and breath. Fundies don't function logically, and are incapable of connecting the dots.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. Yes, but fundies do have moderate friends

and they will also be able to get the other side of the argument from posts like this. I am all for it, and do it regularly myself. You never know who will be reading.

[Thinkingabout]

7. A friend's new company offered their employees $104 a month

Health insurance, dental insurance, disability insurance and life insurance. Because so many signed up the price dropped. This is in place for them without force and this can happen in other places also.

[intheflow]

8. Wow! That's a hopeful sign!

[HappyMe]

12. Good reply.

[progressoid]

14. Just tell them the individual mandate is a Republican idea.

[intheflow]

15. +10