Health Care

An old buddy of mine wrote this on his Facebook page:

Hey obama - I'm Pro-Choice!! I'd like to CHOOSE my healthcare!! Thanks for stripping me of my freedom to do so, jerk!

Someone countered: "You can still choose your healthcare." To which my buddy replied, "Um... except for now you're forced to have it. Choose one: Forced Enforcement or Freedom."

Then I chimed in:

You're only "forced" to have something that: 1) you want anyway, and 2) you already had.

Some people may have chosen (and still may choose) not to have a health insurance POLICY, but that is only under the condition that they know if something catastrophic happened (e.g. a bad car accident), they are guaranteed to get emergency treatment--treatment that is only guaranteed b/c the government requires hospitals to treat people and hospitals know that the government will pick up the bill if the injured person is uninsured. If we did not already guarantee that kind of care, everyone--including you and the others opposed to this bill--would immediately get an insurance policy to cover it. So, you already had taxpayer funded, universal health care. We're just improving your benefits....Your welcome!

Opposition to social justice and corporate egalitarian efforts is always conditioned on privilege--privilege derived from government-enforced unity with everyone, including the poor and disadvantaged.

By the way, before I could even post this [within a literal 2 minutes], someone new [a white man] already responded to me with racially problematic overtones: "You have no choice slave!"

I imagine he would deny his racism, but it's hard to believe that the language and imagery he calls up were not sparked by seeing such bold comments next to the only Black face in the conversation.