ACT LIKE AN AMERICAN! - here's a wingnut's response to the need for health care reform:

[proud2BlibKansan]

People in this country need to get off their lazy butts and take care of, and provide for themselves and their families. MAKE HAVING INSURANCE A PRIORITY. It should come before cable, before designer anything, before cell phones, and before plasma tv's, and tickets to the newest show at the Sprint center. If you don't like the percentage of your income that it takes, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Educate yourself. Learn a new skill. Get a better job. Do something on the side, start your own part time business.

ACT LIKE AN AMERICAN.

Americans take care of themselves, we don't go around whining and expecting the damn nanny state government to wipe our a*ss*(*es for us.

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/5552#comment-33429

[jtrockville]

1. Right... we should forego everything just so CEOs can make tens of milliions.

Why not just our paychecks direct-deposited to the insurance industry?

[madaboutharry]

2. I would wager that the writer of this comment doesn't

have a pre-existing condition. Lucky her.

[Kerrytravelers]

4. Does stupid count as a pre-existing condition?

[Kerrytravelers]

3. What a wonderful human being this one is.

So, according to this person, everyone without health insurance has money, but just doesn't want to bother with insurance?

So... what about people who have been denied because of pre-existing conditions? What about people who are dropped because of an insurer decided that sick people cost the insurance companies too much money?


Wow. What a wonderful person it was who wrote this tripe. What a complete fool and tool. It's a shame anyone is that stupid. And votes.

[bkkyosemite]

7. Or everyone is just lazy so that' s why they don't have money or a job. This is typical repub view

disgusting. I know I got one in the family.

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. I pointed out the unemployed who can't afford insurance must be lazy then

I used a local company as an example. Let's see what she responds with.

[scorpiogirl]

24. That's exactly what they think!

I recently had a conversation with someone who thought that 17M people without insurance who make 50k-75k are ALL uninsured voluntarily. Never mind, he has no basis for this opinion other than he thinks they should be able to buy insurance on that salary. Must be nice to live in such a simplified reality in your mind.

[Hello_Kitty]

26. There are DUers who think like this person

Actual quote from a member of this board on the subject of the uninsured: "They have money for cell phones, cable and the latest fashions."

[rrneck]

5. A lovely prayer at the altar of corporate profits. nt

[OKNancy]

6. Oh yeah... so easy to say

Let's see at age 60, I'm supposed to re-train. Right.
Don't have designer anything or a plasma. I could give up cable and my phones however since I need them for my job, that would be stupid.
I could give up everything and it still wouldn't cover the $1200.00 per month the insurance companies want.

When premiums are 40% of your income, no amount of scrimping can help.... unless of course you go on welfare and medicaid.
I'm sure the writer of the above would approve of that.

As Obama said, " It's kind of hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots"

[Warpy]

8. These witless elitists just don't have a clue

how dependent their rotten lives are on low wage labor, the invisible people who do everything from grow and harvest their food, slaughter and pack their meat, prepare frozen and restaurant fast food, pick up their garbage, and the list goes on and on and that's just touching on one part of it.

Were we a nation of 100% academics who graduated college, ditches would be undug when the water lines break, water would not be pumped and sewage purified. Gas stations would have nothing to sell and no one to sell it. No one would be able to build, sell, or repair their cars or maintain the roads to drive them on. They'd be drowning in their own garbage as they died of starvation and thirst.

All necessary work deserves a living wage, and that includes access to help when the worker gets sick. That's really the bottom line, and these cheap labor conservatives have yet to make the connection between corporations' lack of customers and workers' lack of adequate wages.

Stingy, short sighted and stupid people will always take the labor of others for granted. They will always fail to contribute to charities to make up the difference between marginal wages and survival.

And that, Virginia, is why big government needs to step in to promote the general welfare.

[peacetalksforall]

9. Classic libertarian?

[givemebackmycountry]

10. What a typical Repuke asswipe...

"People in this country need to get off their lazy butts and take care of, and provide for themselves and their families".

Yeah asshole, just like AIG and CITI and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and Bank Of America...

Right?
Right?

Stupid Repuke.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. LOL That's what she was replying to!

I posted the salaries of several insurance company CEOs and this was her response. She also said some bullshit about me not being allowed to tell a private company what to pay its employees.

[alfredo]

22. Tell her the rate of increases in premiums will soon put health insurance

out of the reach of the middle class. Sure it is bad to price yourself out of a market, but the current leaders of the industry are making sure they will be multimillionaires and billionaires well before that happens. They got theirs, the rest of us can just curl up and die.

[Hello_Kitty]

12. Sounds like some DUers talking about uninsured people

I've had more than one discussion with people here who think that people don't have insurance because they are selfish and irresponsible and spend their money on cell phones and plasma TVs.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Excellent piece on that topic in the NYT today

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23sun1.html?ref=opinion

[L0oniX]

13. Yea ...let's take all the money that supports the economy and give it to the insurance sociopths.

[Hello_Kitty]

19. Who deny you coverage when you need it most. eom

[Bluzmann57]

14. Well, where to start?

I can't speak for everyone, but in my case, I don't have a plasma tv, I have a cell phone, more on that later, I wear blue jeans and tshirts from Kmart or Target or places like that, in otherwords, bargain stuff, and once upon a time, I had a part time business which is the reason I got a cell phone. The business went under because of the recession. No big deal, I still have a "regular" job which pays the bills and provides decent (expensive) health insurance. It also happens to be a UNION job, and I'll bet the writer of that tripe, er, comment hates Unions.
So commenter, try educating yourself and looking around. The world is in a recession and the health insurance industry is a virtual monopoly which means they can charge whatever they want, can deny coverage whenever they want, and can cancel policies whenever they want.
Finally, "Get a better job". Where? In Communist China? In Mexico? How about Pakistan? I think maybe the commenter should join the military and see the world. Just a suggestion.
edited for awful typing. The ol' two finger method just isn't getting it done.

[madamesilverspurs]

17. And that letter writer is probably the first to forward

those chain emails about how the world owes its existence to kind-hearted, compasssionate Americans who rush to send soldiers to spill American blood and nobody else ever does that and nobody appreciates us, especially France. . .

[bridgit]

18. Well then I do agree: Act Like An American!! - stop spending money on products that show up broken

And that includes the opinions of RW neomorans

[TahitiNut]

20. So, a government "OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people" is anti-American?

Fascinating.

:eyes:

[Iggo]

21. He's right about one thing.

"If you don't like the percentage of your income that it takes, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT."

Thanks. And we are.

[jmowreader]

23. Way too many people are required to have cell phones for work

Also, I would really like to know: The standard Republican/Libertarian answer to anyone who can't afford to get health insurance, after they get rid of all their stuff, is to retrain for a "better job." Which has three problems.

First, how do we know what the "better jobs" are? They change so rapidly. I remember when the MCSE was supposed to be the key to your future prosperity, and all these people ran out and got them at huge expense for training, testing and so on. Then the MCSE market got flooded, and now an MCSE by itself won't do anything for you. Now what is it, A Plus, Cisco cert, MCP, your own laptop, digital camera, cell phone, car not less than 3 years old...and for that you can expect $12 per hour, or to be paid piecework. Lots of jobs have had the same things happen to them: they were good, then they got flooded because they were good and now they pay retail wages.

Second, how are you supposed to afford this training?

And third, what happens when employers decide they are tired of paying YOU fifteen dollars an hour and dump you for "Ben" in Mumbai, who will work for seven?

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. We got rid of our land line and have only cell phones in our family

[valerief]

27. "If these lazy asses bought fewer plasma teevees, hospitals would have enough

plasma for patients and the costs wouldn't be so high! Bootstraps! Amerka! I want my country back! I have an IQ of 75!"

Although if fewer people had cable tv, there would be fewer Faux News viewers.

[Hello_Kitty]

28. There are DU members who think the same thing and that's why they're for mandates.

I kid you not. I've gotten into a discussion with more than one DUer who thinks that young uninsured people just need to buy fewer trinkets and stop going out on the town. The thing is, despite the fact that people under 30 are more likely than other age groups to go without insurance, most of them (about 70%) actually have insurance. So when you see a young person with nice clothes and fancy gadgets, the chances are that person has health insurance. But that's the image of the uninsured that people have.

[valerief]

29. Oh, please don't tell me real DUers think plasma teevees are made out of

blood plasma.

[Hello_Kitty]

30. LOL. Not that.

But they do think that people who are uninsured can really afford insurance and they're just not buying it.

[valerief]

31. Yeah, the bootstrap meme. nt