Arrggghhh! VIRGINIA!
Mar. 23rd, 2010 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseI have said it before, and I will say it again. My family didn't participate in the Jamestown colony in order for the Commonwealth of Virginia to do things like sue the Federal Government over universal health care.
If anyone wonders why I avoid what is technically my family's home state, this is why. They have become so overwhelmingly Conservative that I think Margaret Thatcher would seem like a liberal in comparison.
I have had "socialist" health care for a good chunk of my life (military dependent for my first 23 years, two years as a student in Britain, two years as a taxed worker in Belgium).
In the US, I have had to be declared indigent to get antibiotics for pneumonia after my COBRA ran out when I was unemployed. If![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thorbol and moria923 hadn't paid me to be their reader, I might have had far worse problems with getting essential medications. And eanja has been a genuine lifesaver (as indeed many other people who helped me during my deepest depression have been).
Every day, I see the problems that occur when people have to put off doctor's visits or can't afford medications.
And now Virginia is wearing a pretty new hat on its ass.
If anyone wonders why I avoid what is technically my family's home state, this is why. They have become so overwhelmingly Conservative that I think Margaret Thatcher would seem like a liberal in comparison.
I have had "socialist" health care for a good chunk of my life (military dependent for my first 23 years, two years as a student in Britain, two years as a taxed worker in Belgium).
In the US, I have had to be declared indigent to get antibiotics for pneumonia after my COBRA ran out when I was unemployed. If
thorbol and moria923 hadn't paid me to be their reader, I might have had far worse problems with getting essential medications. And eanja has been a genuine lifesaver (as indeed many other people who helped me during my deepest depression have been).Every day, I see the problems that occur when people have to put off doctor's visits or can't afford medications.
And now Virginia is wearing a pretty new hat on its ass.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 03:56 am (UTC)This really hits home. My mom has/had cancer and is uninsured (and too young for Medicare). She used her life savings to pay for her hospitalization, surgery, and care. She may have another form of cancer that she can't even have it diagnosed because it costs too much money and she has none left. She also has diabetes and pays for her medication and doctor's care herself. She's currently unemployed too, but can't get aid because -- get this -- she makes too much with unemployment to be eligible.
Yeah, we need a fucking healthcare overhaul in this country!
That said, I wonder if the Commerce Clause argument (of the U.S. Constitution) raised in that article is going to be found to be valid by the current Supreme Court. I know that a federal domestic violence act had been found unconstitutional because the Court held that it exceeded the authority the federal government had under the Commerce Clause. (As a bit of history, most civil rights legislation was implemented under the Commerce Clause). While health does, indeed, impact interstate commerce (at least I think so), I think this is in for an interesting, i.e., annoying, legal fight.
It makes me want to scream.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 01:39 pm (UTC)Virginia was the last state to accept integration, although busing issues actually got to be worse in Boston and some other Northern cities.
Commerce at least seems like a plausible way to appeal healthcare, but seriously, we are the only country in the world where the leading cause of personal bankruptcy is medical expenses. We need to fill in the cracks.