Thursday, July 12, 2007

Why Universal Health Care?

Amanda Marcotte explains:
... my argument for universal health care is pure selfishness: We citizens who pay for insurance deserve to get some return on our investment. In Bush’s ideal world, we’d all have to write checks to insurance companies once a month and, if we get sick, we’ll be generously granted a shot of morphine before being shoved out in the snow to die, while the insurance companies are free to liquidate what’s left of our assets to pay themselves back for the cost of the morphine and the labor costs of closing the door as it hits you on your way out. We’re not there yet, but it’s basically the end goal of an industry that exists to make money by denying care. I want a return on my health care dollar. I want the money I pay in to come out in benefits to me, not in checks made out to stockholders. Pure. Selfishness.