velvetpage: (cat in teacup)
velvetpage ([personal profile] velvetpage) wrote2009-08-26 07:29 am

So tired.

Naturally, I was too worked up to sleep well last night. Figures.

I'm so very tired of the "socialized medicine will force you to see doctors you don't want to see, have procedures you don't choose, and force you to die when the government says you should" rhetoric. (That's almost a direct quote from a friend of a friend, but I've seen it in a dozen other places.) It looks to me like people who are primed to dislike the plans for reform that are being floated are also primed to see options in the plan(s) as requirements. So, elderly people being given access to counselors to plan living wills = health care workers deciding when Granny will die, and circumcision being encouraged (which I haven't seen anywhere, actually - I'm wondering if it's a mishmash of two separate items recently in the news) = babies being taken away from their parents to be circ'ed without parental consent. Oh, the inability to renew plans that don't meet the new minimum standards is in there, too - "We'll all be forced onto the government plan because they won't let us renew the old plans!" It's all misinformation and scare tactics, combined with a healthy dose of, "I'm a conservative and NOTHING that is generally labeled Socialist is going to happen on my watch!"

Time to get this day underway if I'm going to be ready for the meeting by 9:30.

[identity profile] lyricmaniac.livejournal.com 2009-08-26 08:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I've been staying out of it. :D Me is smart.

[identity profile] velvetpage.livejournal.com 2009-08-26 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)
I know you're probably closer to her point of view than mine, and I respect that. It's not the fact of the differences that bugs me, it's the misrepresentations, especially the ones that are built on misunderstandings (deliberate or otherwise) of Canadian or British health care. Also, the "Obama is trying to steal all our freedoms" rhetoric drives me absolutely insane. You don't agree with him? Fine. But don't accuse him of a nasty agenda behind the scenes. It's rude and ridiculous.

I'm probably going to bow out with the next comment. If I weren't so sleepy that I keep forgetting it's in a private journal, I probably would have bowed out already.