Remember when people made fun of Alan Grayson for this:
He was right:
IDAHO FALLS — On the last weekend of August, Jason and Jenny Steinke talked about their future. For the first time in a while, it looked positive. Jason had just landed a good-paying mechanic job with benefits. Jenny was set to be a grandmother.
That weekend, they found time to escape for a quick Island Park camping trip, one of their favorite activities. Several weekends prior the couple drove from their home in Idaho Falls to Grand Targhee Ski Resort, where they listened to music and rode the chairlift to the top of the mountain.
“We just enjoyed each other’s company,” Jason, 43, said recently. “I’m grateful for those three weeks, because they were three really good weeks.”
Yet something weighed on the couple. During the Island Park trip, Jason and Jenny talked at length about her worsening asthma. Nearly a decade ago the 36-year-old had been diagnosed with the condition that inflames and narrows the airways.
The asthma flared up every so often, once requiring hospitalization, but hadn’t usually required much attention. Without insurance, Jenny sometimes obtained short-acting inhalers from a community health clinic. Other times, she bought them off friends who had extras.
The inhalers usually helped. But over the summer months Jenny needed them more frequently. On the camping trip she was using her inhaler every hour, Jason noticed. The more she used it, it seemed, the shorter the duration of relief.
Still, the Steinkes didn’t panic. With Jason’s new job at Utility Trailer, they would finally have health-care coverage. The insurance was set to kick in Sept. 1, two days after they returned from the camping trip. Surely Jenny could wait until then to see an asthma specialist, they told each other.
“Now that I had insurance, we were going to try to get the asthma under control,” Jason said.
I don’t need to tell you how this story ended, do I?
Bitch all you want about the Democrats not being pure enough or good enough or progressive enough, one party is actively trying to kill you, and it ain’t the Democrats.
Ruckus
Grayson is the blue collar democrat. Fights hard, talks like a sailor, doesn’t seem to give a shit if you don’t like him. It shows in politics and seems somehow undignified. Yet how often has he been right? More than when he’s been wrong, I’d venture.
Edmund Dantes
Plain and simple. She didn’t have to die, and she won’t be the last unfortunately.
Arm The Homeless
As a resident of Floriduh, I am keenly aware of the sociopathy at the dark heart of conservatism.
Coming to a newspaper near you: Ammendment 1 funds which were supposed to go to land buy-backs is being funneled into “grants” for communities to purchase repetitive loss structures. No assessment of whether it’s ecologically threatened lands, or whether there is continuity. Just a big ole reach-around for communities who may, or may not be mitigating their floodplains in a responsible manner.
But we still won’t take federal funds to ensure the working poor get health coverage.
Trentrunner
I like Grayson’s staunch advocacy, especially on health care, but I’m calling it now:
There’s something off about him. His affect, arrogance, and just a gut feeling that we shouldn’t hitch up this particular horse.
He will be involved in some terrible corruption scandal or worse. He’s off.
22over7
I wonder what the poor widower’s hospital bills are like now.
Bobby Thomson
OT, but Bamz negotiated a debt/budget deal through 2016 elections. Calls for cuts to Medicare and SSI disability payments.
Arm The Homeless
@Trentrunner: Even in the Orlando area, he seems persona non grata.
‘But he fights!’, is the usual response from state Dems. We have a horrible party infrastructure here in the Gunshine State. The power centers are really far-flung around here. But we also have a lot of transplants who brought their olde tyme religion, and their checkbooks.
japa21
@Bobby Thomson: Would you be so kind as to express specifics?
Marc
@Bobby Thomson: The SSI trust fund is broke, and unlike the general budget case, doing nothing leaves the program with less money rather than more. Obama has taken maximum advantage of budget inertia to prevent cuts in other areas, but his bargaining position here is weak. I’m not surprised that they got their cuts, for the same reason I’m not surprised that the Republicans didn’t get their way on other changes in the budget.
Explainer here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/us/disability-benefits-face-cuts-in-2016-trustees-say.html
ruemara
Greyson is a rich bombast whose legislative accomplishments are thin. I find him to have a huge ego, his divorce is an embarrassing shit show and I’m not sure how his current campaign can succeed. However, he is right on this and has been right. Considering my feelings on him and other preening progressive faces, it should also demonstrate I live my principles of get the fuck up and vote for that impure Democrat. If he’s the winner of the primary, I’ll probably be donating & making gotv calls for him.
Damn shame that kind of story is a rule not an exception.
yellowdog
@Ruckus: I’ve met Grayson. He’s an asshole. He might say some good things sometimes but. . . still an asshole.
Gin & Tonic
@japa21: The WaPo article is a lot less specific.
Gimlet
@yellowdog:
And GWB is fella you’d like to have a beer with. There has to be more of an emphasis on policy and less on personality, but not totally ignore it.
Pogonip
I don’t understand why (many) Americans want to exist like this.
Elizabelle
RE Grayson: some good messaging, with an asshole for the messenger. There has to be someone else who can advocate effectively and represent Floridians well.
Grayson sounds like a Sunshine State Trump-like figure.
Iowa Old Lady
@yellowdog: So sort of like Anthony Weiner.
Ben
@ruemara: You can count the number of divorce’s in this country that aren’t “shit shows” on one hand… or foot.
singfoom
@Pogonip: 30+ Years of growing up / being an adult awash in the myth of self-reliance, where somehow with your W-2 job you’ll be a millionaire before you know it, somehow.
There’s nothing wrong with self-reliance per se, but we’ve somehow elevated job OVER health. Insurance should have never been tied to employment, it’s just a quirk of history that we’ve decided as a culture CAN NEVER BE FIXED.
Over this woman and others’ dead bodies evidently.
Patricia Kayden
“A White House report, released in June, said that if the 22 states that had not expanded Medicaid at that time did so, they would prevent 5,200 deaths every year.”
This sentence says it all. Which party actually runs death panels? Sarah Palin should be asked about this repeatedly until she snaps.
RSA
@Pogonip:
They don’t, of course; they just don’t care enough that other Americans have to exist like this. See gun control.
Good story, JC; makes me want to cry.
ruemara
@Ben: I know. But you can also count on one hand a personal shitshow does not get used by the opposition.
goblue72
@Ruckus: The Hippies are usually right.
Pogonip
@RSA: It makes me want to move. Unfortunately countries that will accept people my age are at least as bad as this one.
goblue72
Moloch must be fed.
These people are not Christians; they are heathens. They pray at the twin altars of Moloch and Mammon. They dress in masks and wear the robes of the priest, but underneath – blood-worshippers one and all.
Bex
This is not about Alan Grayson. Whatever kind of person he is, in this case he was right. This kind of thing should not happen in “the richest country in the world.” We need to change this and Obamacare is the first step. Personal note, I’m glad Jenny got to see Grand Targhee. It’s a beautiful place and I’ve been lucky enough to ski there many times. Condolences to her husband and family.
Gimlet
@Marc:
Coment on the internet
there was a 20% increase of DI beneficiaries during the Obama Administration. If the increase during the Bush Administration had been a similar, the DI rolls in 2008 would have been only slightly over 6 million rather than the 7.4 million.
Bush entered office with the DI rolls at 5,035,840. This number grew at a rate more than twice that during Obama. Bush showed a 44% increase by the time he left office (the 2008 figure provided).
Solvency is dependent upon employment. Employment which includes contribution to the OASDI accounts.
dogwood
@Trentrunner:
I agree. I never claim to know what public figures are “really ” like, but I have impressions of them. Grayson strikes me a pretty self-important, self-indulgent, undisciplined man. I could very well be wrong. But if he were elected to the Senate and ended up involved in some personal or professional scandal, I wouldn’t be surprized at all. Had the same impression of Anthony Weiner, and when the story came out, even though it was Breitbart peddling it, my gut instinct told me it was probably true.
JPL
Not to make light about such a sad situation, but I doubt trading chickens for treatment would have helped.
kc
Anybody wanna talk about this?
RSA
@Pogonip:
I know what you mean. A few years ago I seriously looked into it myself.
p.a.
@RSA: google: cardboard box + curtain rod + sparrow
Bobby Thomson
@Marc: I would add only that we’ve been down this road before and it won’t shock me if there are last minute hold outs to stick up the deal.
Gin & Tonic
@RSA: It is a good story. I especially like the part about the doctor, who gave up administrative work to go back to clinical work
dogwood
@ruemara:
I respect your opinion and decision. I think party loyalists and serious policy voters most generally care more about a candidate’s positions than his or her personal life. How else would David Vitter get reelected to the Senate and have a good chance of getting elected Governor? If Jindahl weren’t so universally hated right now, Vitter would be have nothing to worry about. I just think people need to be clear-eyed and well prepared for the potential fallout when they vote for personally risky candidates. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Schlemazel
“death by poverty”
Welcome to America at the dawn of a new millennium.
Ryan
What I can’t fathom is why she chose to be born with asthma in the first place. After all, Trump cut his teeth in Brooklyn after borrowing a million from his dad. I mean, why do people get being born into the right family so wrong?
tazj
Why don’t some Americans care if people don’t have health insurance? For the evangelicals I know they don’t want government to have anymore involvement in healthcare because of euthanasia (death panels) and abortion. Nothing in the world is as bad as abortion. People dying because they lack health insurance, so what abortion. People dying because of gun violence, so what abortion and so on. The government is incompetent and inherently evil(especially under Democrats) and can’t solve problems. Never mind that birth control, education and subsidies could decrease abortions. God is going to punish the U.S. until we outlaw abortion and gay marriage. Really, that’s a conversation I had with a relative the other day.
Other people don’t care because they lived through their life with no health insurance or poor heath insurance and consider it a sign of their personal virtue that they’ve never needed it, instead of considering the fact that they been really fortunate.
Some people have worked hard at jobs they hated to have health insurance and believe that other people getting it for “free” isn’t fair. They just don’t see the benefit to the country as a whole or to them if everyone has health insurance in the country. They also can’t see themselves needing help someday.
mclaren
@ruemara:
There, fixed that for ya.
MaryRC
@Pogonip: This is a comment under the original article:
Stop using this sad story to further your political agenda. Here in Idaho, and in the gap, my wife very nearly died and we had no money. I saw to it she received treatment. Nobody is ever refused treatment in the hospital. We ended up in bankruptcy, but my dear wife is alive today and we have recovered financially.
“We got screwed and we’re proud to say so!” is an odd sentiment to express but unless this guy is trolling, he seems to think there’s something patriotic about it.
mclaren
@tazj:
Because, as I have explained over and over and over and over again, America was founded by puritans, the David Koreshes of Europe.
These puritan fanatics think that suffering is good. Suffering ennobles. Therefore the more suffering, the better. “No pain, no gain!” That’s America’s bizarrely sadistic motto.
It therefore follows that if you get sick, you need to suffer. The more you suffer, the better you will be morally uplifted. If you suffer until you die, that’s the best possible outcome of all.
America’s puritanical culture delectates in suffering and torment and hates and fears pleasure and joy and the human body. Sickness offers a reminder that our bodies are corruption, impure, and temptations toward sexuality, the ultimate evil. Americans hate and despise their bodies, and adore torture and suffering. American loath joy and fear and abhor pleasure.
Being healthy is pleasant and therefore suspect. Americans dote on torturing innocent victims because their sick twisted puritanical mindset says that this is good for the victims, it will uplift the victims and purify them. Consequently Americans love watching sick people suffer because this is the only way to uplift and purify the sick from the despised corruption of their physical bodies.
America is a deeply sick culture. There’s an intimate connection between the massive gun-violence killing sprees and America’s desire to see sick people suffer and scream and die slowly writhing in agony.
Sadism, cowardice, brutality and bully-worship form the basis of American culture. We eagerly tortured and raped and mass-murdered our way across a continent inhabited by six million native American indians, few of whom are left alive today. When we ran out of Indians, we started in on the blacks. Now that torturing and murdering blacks has become politically incorrect, Americans have no choice but to start in on each other. As with the Aztecs, the blood-lust will not be appeased. Americans always need new victims. Brown babies in third world countries burned alive…blacks gunned down in the streets like dogs…sick white middle class people screaming and dying in agony from treatable diseases. To the sick twisted mind of an American, it’s all good — each death a strawberry in hi/r mouth.
mclaren
@kc:
Since I predicted that the debt ceiling was a non-issue, no, not really. Nothing to talk about. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Pogonip
@RSA: Did you find any prospects? I’d be happy to learn the language, whatever it is. Life here has become ugly and disheartening. I’d like plumbing and electricity but that’s negotiable.
sharl
@MaryRC: Other commenters gave him a right and proper hammering for that comment, almost all of them with logical and thoughtful arguments. As of this moment, he hasn’t returned to dispute the points they made.
J R in WV
@ruemara:
After his blunt statement about the Republican health care plan:
1. Don’t get sick;
2. If you do get sick, die quickly!
I contributed to one of his re-election campaigns, which of course led to my continued reception of emails from him (or his staff). They usually seemed pretty straight forward Democratic progressive positions.
So I’m willing to kick in a little, maybe for the primary race, where he’s running against a blue-dog former Republican, and certainly for his campaign in the general later on.
I have learned about his divorce, etc. which seems a little sleazy, but if I’ve learned anything in 60+ years it is that divorce brings out the worst in everyone. People you have never heard raise their voice wind up with restraining orders, for example.
So I’m willing to cut him a little slack on the divorce stuff.
He is independently wealthy from successful civil suits against giant fucked-up companies, I believe, and that makes him less likely to become embroiled in corruption involving his public offices, I hope!
Some people can never have enough, and only time will tell if he is one of those. But in the meantime, anyone who can come up with “Don’t get sick; if you do, die quickly!” is a Democratic politician worth keeping around. A slogan for the ages!
Renie
what a horrible story – i don’t understand what is happening to this country – too many elected people in this country are psychopaths.
Pogonip
@MaryRC: I believe there is a law that the ER must stabilize you, but many people are afraid to go because of the financial consequences. I myself take the attitude of our masters–if I can’t pay, I’ll walk away–but most people abide by their training that You Must Pay Your Bills, even if it kills them.
Not that I encourage stiffing respectable merchants, but literally dying to pay is ridiculous.
RSA
@Pogonip:
My best prospect was still in the early stages of arranging for a visiting position at a western European university where instruction is in English, but my wife got sick and I had to give up on those plans. Doesn’t prevent me from encouraging others, though! :-)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@MaryRC:
One of the most depressing comments I ever saw online was from a guy who had no insurance and had cancer. His plan was to get treatment for as long as he could afford it, and then die. And he thought this was far more moral and virtuous than having insurance, because he was going to do it all on his own.
I honestly don’t know how we’re supposed to help people so fanatical that they really do prefer to die a slow, painful death alone than to accept the collective assistance that is insurance.
RSA
@p.a.: Oh, yeah.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: I wouldn’t want a Congress made up entirely of people like him, but we do need people capable of doing what used to be known as rabble-rousing.
EthylEster
@yellowdog:
yeah, that’s my take, too.
goblue72
@mclaren: Yes, well, except for the fact that the Puritans had a strong sense of the common weal – and the Puritans culture of fiscal probity and frugality was a function of their strong sense of personal resources being direct for the benefit of the common good.
Where hence does modern American liberalism trace its origins? New England – that place colonized by the Puritans. Why is New England rife with universities, museums, hospitals, etc? Puritans and Puritan culture.
You are once again off the deep end.
Omnes Omnibus
@goblue72: Noting also that Puritans were actually quite sex positive. And in favor of universal education. FWIW.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus:
Exactly. We need a few more Democratic assholes fighting on our side. Not a whole lot, but a handful.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
The ignorance of your comment is what’s depressing.
The vast majority of doctors diagnosed with cancer opt for minor palliative treatment and choose to stay at home and die with their family. Despite all the hype about alleged “progress,” modern medicine has not made much headway in curing any cancers other than the exotic ones like childhood leukemia or Hodgins’ lymphoma — both of which strike a vanishingly small percentage of the general population.
The plain fact of the matter is that if you get diagnosed with a serious carcinoma, you’re better off getting a morphine pump and staying at home until you die.
See articles like “Why Most doctors like me would rather die than endure the pain of treatment we inflict on others for terminal diseases,” The Daily Mail, 26 October 2015.
Also see “How doctors choose to die,” The Guardian, 8 February 2012.
Many of the commenters here labor under the delusion that doctors are geniuses who practice magnificent modern medicine, a science able to cure most of our ills.
The reality is that doctors are glorified plumbers with an average IQ of 100 who persist in prescribing treatments that scientific studies show don’t work — and that modern medicine is a grab-bag of kludges that mostly treat the symptoms of illnesses, without curing the underlying illnesses themselves. Doctors cannot cure most diseases today, from tendonitis to back pain to knee pain to diabetes to arthritis, and efforts to claim that they can are just more of the ludicrous hype the American medical profession has indulged in for nearly a hundred years.
Your typical American doctor hasn’t got a clue about the scientific method, when asked about Bayes’ Theorem will stare at you like a guppy in a pet store fish tank with his mouth open, and if grilled about the interaction of the various drugs s/he prescribes will typically fumble and bumble and stumble and bungle like an undergraduate who comes in to take the final exam after never having attended a single lecture.
mclaren
@goblue72:
Crackpot nonsense supported by absurd cherry-picking. In reality, the rise of public institutions like libraries and universities came not from the Puritans in New England, but from the robber barons in New York and areas south.
Andrew Carnegie funded the first American public library — not puritans.
Puritans spent their time hunting for people who had unauthorized sex, and burning witches. The first recorded execution in America was of a teenaged boy alleged to have had sex with a chicken.
So much for your laughably ignorant and foolishly false claims about the supposed enlightenment of the puritans in America.
Naturally, the overwhelming majority of social scientists and historians agree with my assessment. Standard stuff. Fanatical Americans must ignore all evidence in waving their giant foam finger and proclaiming their sick twisted degenerative culture is “The greatest country in the world!”
Pathetic.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren:
According to Edmund Farwell Slafter, the first public library was founded in Boston by the Rev. John Checkley at the Old State House sometime between 1711 when Boston’s Old State House was built, and 1725.[6]
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: There frequently are.
However, the FL Dem shyteshowe being what it is, they’re run out of the party as often as not. One long-standing friend, very active in the party on the Gulf Coast, did so badly that he relocated back to DC (where at least known as honest, reliable and productive). FSM only knows what the local machine replaced him with.
There’s no incentive to work for the party at the local level unless you’re “in”. And unfortunately the “in” Teahadis are far better positioned, both publicly and financially (Vern Buchanan is hardly an exception, either in fundraising or shenanigans).
BretH
I couldn’t care less about Grayson’s personality. I want more legislators who can do this: http://youtu.be/cJqM2tFOxLQ
Or this: http://youtu.be/mOf_5a1kH1o
Anyone who doesn’t like it can feel free to revisit the last 30 years or so of Republican rule.
Pogonip
@mclaren: What country do you live in?
boatboy_srq
@singfoom:
The US has elevated job over family, education and personal time; that it’s elevated over health is hardly surprising. The fairy tale my generation was told – about how in the future greater productivity will mean more time with family, schooling, volunteering and just about everything else – has long ago been proven hollow. Consider the new “connected” society: when your boss can call you at 3 am on a Saturday while you’re on vacation and drop some new emergency on you that you have to deal with, there is no such thing as being away from work.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@mclaren:
My 51-year-old brother died of lung cancer this summer. He left three kids under the age of 18. Go fuck yourself.
Pogonip
@boatboy_srq: I would not do well in such a position. I am a member of the lucky, organized minority. My contract makes it so expensive for my boss to bother me at 0-dark-thirty that–surprise!–it doesn’t happen.
I agree with you that most American workers prefer the situation you describe, though I never understood why.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): My condolences on your brother’s untimely death.
boatboy_srq
@RSA: Not too many years ago I was approached for a job in BeNeLux working for the EU. There are ways to get somewhere out of the US if the means can be found.
(No, I haven’t heard anything since then, but I have recruiters who remain optimistic).
boatboy_srq
@Pogonip: I had a friend who, rather than risk that call, took teaching jobs. Technical teaching jobs. With classes lasting one week each. With each class in a different city. To which he would have to fly. In which he would need a hotel… He said he preferred it to being at the beck and call of a BlackBerry. I asked him when he cleaned house; when he spent time with his pets; when he spent time with his friends; when he was home long enough to do more than sleep and wash clothes which he would then have to immediately repack. He couldn’t answer me.
seaboogie
@kc: In reference to your link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/us/politics/congress-and-white-house-near-deal-on-budget.html what I noticed was the shot of Boehner walking away from the podium which featured the placard “Sign The Bill” – telling story in one picture. Nicely done.
Thought about the fact that there is a whole industry of folks who make such signs, and a person responsible at each event for making sure the sign/messaging gets across. And that reminded me of this perfect Obama moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cngi0g_FQvM
Pogonip
@Renie: The majority of those who bother to vote wish to be represented by psychopaths. I don’t understand their thinking either. And I admit there are more of them than of you and me, which is why I wanted to move.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Pogonip:
Thank you. I understand the point about overtreating the elderly, but telling young people with children that they should just lay down and die if they’re diagnosed with cancer is fucking heartless.
RSA
@boatboy_srq:
I should have mentioned my first experience, even though it was back in the 1980s: I worked for an international software company in Texas, and a job opened up in one of their German offices, so I transferred there. The company took care of my work permit and other such things. It was a great, formative experience for me, living in a little town outside Munich from age 23 to 28.
Of course, that’s also meant that for the past 25 years I’ve felt a pull to go back… (ETA: Fernweh. Of course the Germans have a name for such a feeling. And it is more general than just wanting to see Germany again.)
Booger
@mclaren: that’s some powerful writing, that writing there.
Ripley
Wasn’t there supposed to be a “YOU PEOPLE” in there somewhere?
rikyrah
Grayson is an azz.
But, I never made fun of him for THIS.
ON THIS..he was absolutely on the money.
NOTHING the GOP has done has proven him wrong about it.
Pogonip
@boatboy_srq: If you’re a doctor, or have some other critical skill, you expect middle of the night calls–and you expect to be paid accordingly. Somehow the last part of that contract dropped out of the American mind.
Back before every Goth chick had a pack in her purse, Tarot reading was a fun way to supplement your income. One reader I knew stopped giving people her phone number when an excitable client called “needing” a reading in the middle of the night. Then about five years later those 900 numbers became popular. Had she only known–!
seaboogie
@Pogonip: mclaren lives in the country of “her own mind” where she is the all knowing Empress, and we are all just idjits who don’t understand the power of how smart she is. If we would just shut and listen – ferchrissakes – we would see and acknowledge her awesome wisdom without question.
I can get a bit wordy when I tell a story sometimes, but experiece has taught me that if you are looking to follow the discussion and find a mclaren post, grab a ruler, and your “high-dudgeon-here-are-my-facts-slam-the-gavel” mass-spectrometer.
boatboy_srq
@Pogonip: 21st-century work ethic with 19th-century compensation. “We’re paying you all this money” is a common refrain: it would be motivating if it were true.
seaboogie
@efgoldman: you were writing yours when I was writing mine – BJ synchrony!
Pogonip
@seaboogie: Hee!
The actual, physical Mclaren has to live, eat, sleep, poop somewhere, though; I wondered where. (Unless she’s really Doug J, of course. When reading this site I always keep in mind that what appears to be a babbling fool may not exist, may be just Doug J having fun.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: I thought mclaren pooped here.
seaboogie
@Omnes Omnibus: Tip ‘o the hat to you, Omnes….
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: And it might even be true.
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: OK, you win. Where do you want your Internets sent?
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: Clean, non-poop covered ones, right?
J R in WV
@EthylEster:
May be, but he’s OUR asshole, and the R’s are his target!
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: Picky, picky.
Doug Gardner
@mclaren:
And thus was born the modern Republican habit of f’ing that chicken.
dopey-o
@seaboogie:
I always learn something from Mclaren. When the best lack all conviction, Mclaren generally surprises me. Interesting that Grayson is a jerk, and he wants to move America to a more just place. Are you saying that Mclaren is the same sort of jerk as Grayson?
More Mclaren please, sir.
Omnes Omnibus
@dopey-o:
No.
redshirt
@dopey-o: Yes, More McLaren, less Omnes.
pseudonymous in nc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Sara Robinson (who contributed to the Orcinus blog) called it medical Calvinism a long time ago, and that’s still accurate today, even post-ACA.
Too many Americans attach the morality of predestination to people’s health and the ability to get healthcare without penury. It’s astonishing bullshit.
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: You get what you pay for.
Sloegin
Best friend of mine since college died back in March from a mass found during a scope. No life insurance, he left behind a widow and a disabled 7yo daughter. He stuck around thru the pain and the chemo as long as he could. Because he had to. 6 years of chemo and radiation until all the treatments stopped working.
With no dependents of my own, if I found myself in my best friends situation, I’d do what the docs do.
lethargytartare
@Doug Gardner:
more made-up “facts” from Mclarenistan.
The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. Kendall was executed for being a spy for Spain
Brandon
Actually, no. No I don’t remember people making fun of Grayson for saying that.
Republican reaction was: “he’s a clown and he’s lying, we have a plan”*
Villager reaction ranged from: “Grayson’s a nutjob, didn’t you hear Republicans say they have a plan they are not sociopaths” to “well even if what he’s saying likely reflects actual outcomes, it’s impolite to say that about Republicans”.
Democratic reaction ranged from: “it’s impolite and he’s making us look bad” to “sorry for laughing, but its funny because its true”.
* Did not have an actual plan.