Yesterday, I did something I haven’t done in a very long time. I cried at work. It was a coworker’s last day; she’s moving on to bigger and better paid things at a different organization. But that’s not why I cried. I cried because this phenomenal person dropped a bombshell on all of us just as she was walking out of the door. Yesterday morning she discovered she has cancer. The way she told us, all calm and matter-of-factly, was just a little too much for me. The tears poured out and I had to hide my face from her to keep her from crying too.
This woman is lean and fit. She jogs and works out, does pilates and eats healthy. She’s one of those super duper parents that is either coming or going from someone’s girl scout meeting or soccer practice or recital or something. We started out at the same level around the same time, and within a few of years–while I was still futzing around in the cubicles being a dork–she got herself promoted to middle management, then upper management. Because she’s got mad people skillz. But management didn’t change her. She became a generous font of insider knowledge. I was able to get my own significant pay raise after she gave me a lesson on how to play the game.
She was recruited by another company because she is so awesome. And because they met her demands, she said yes. She said yes not knowing that the day before her start date, the bottom would fall out of her world.
Will her new employer work with her as she goes through treatment? I don’t know. She still doesn’t know what the treatment plan will be. But I know she doesn’t deserve the shit she’s in store for. I know she hasn’t done a damn thing to put her in this horrible situation.
Fuck Mo Brooks and fuck every single asshole who thinks this is the kind of world where only shitty things happen to bad people. This is a cruel world that doesn’t give a fuck how many merit badges you’ve earned or how cute you are or how beloved you are. We have the power to alleviate a lot of pain and misery, but we won’t be able to do this if we continue to subscribe to stupid self-serving fairy tales. Please grow up, conservatives. At the very least, read the book you love to talk about so much. Jesus didn’t divide people into “good” and “bad”. He healed everyone, no questions asked.
It’s sad that people still think of healthcare as an individual issue and not a community one. Yes there are lifestyle issues that contribute to those costs, but there are also other factors far removed from lifestyles, and unfortunately sometimes illness and lack of care, or overly expensive care, has to touch a loved one to touch their heart. Very sad.
It’s amazing how so many politicians from the Republican Party, which claims to understand business so much better than us dumb libtards, don’t have the first fucking clue how insurance works.
OK so the Representative’s view of the world, taken to its eventual conclusion, is that there would be ***no ***pooled health insurance so the healthy may choose to just not pay in at all.
But y’know what? There’s also a lot of the RW who do not work out of a “just world” framework, they work out of a Book-of-Job-style “shit happens, and who am I to question it?” framework. They ***claim ***they are willing to take the risk that if they will be the ones suffering some day then they’ll just have to deal with it. 'cause God forbid they may be making life easier for someone else.
It just more of the same dumbassery from the party that brought you Paul Ryan and the fatal conceit of the ACA. Immoral, feckless bunch of wankers that they are.
Thanks for enlightening me - I now know that lifestyle has no effect on health outcomes, and that a single anecdote outweighs any number of statistics.
Incidentally, since people who incur higher health care costs should not have to pay more, I assume you will be paying for her deductibles and out of pocket costs in their entirety. Since you care so much about her.
What a ridiculously obtuse post from a ridiculous poster. You’re not even a good conservative or Christian, you’re just an asshole for being an asshole’s sake.
Yes, some people become ill despite a healthy lifestyle. But at the same time, there’s no question that smoking, obesity, drinking etc. *is *more likely to lead to lung cancer, diabetes, cirrhosis, etc.
By this same logic, should car insurance not differentiate between drivers with a good record, and drivers whose record of behavior makes them more likely to be in a crash?
I’m surrounded by good people who have done things right- or done nothing at all- yet have ended up in the hospital or worse. My grandmother had breast cancer. Never smoked, not obese- the doctor said " well, if a woman lives long enough she will eventually get this kind." my husband was born with defects severe enough he spent the first several years of his life getting surgeries and essentially growing up in the hospital corridors. His daughter landed in the hospital for the first of many surgeries at 15. A friend of mine from high school has a 12 year son who has been fighting leukemia for 4 years now.
Who the fuck gets to decide which of these people are deserving of affordable health care?
I can’t speak for Shodan, but I object to this charge. You cannot invoke religious teachings only when they are consonant with your desired outcomes and reject them when they are not. Your side demands a secular government, and are furious when religion is offered up as a reason for public policy.
Can’t have it both ways: I again don’t speak for Shodan, but if you want to accept the Church’s teachings on abortion as sound public policy I’ll get behind applying the Church’s teachings on medical issues as sound policy also.
But you cannot demand that your opponents agree that the public purse succors the afflicted in the doctor’s office because the Bible says to, and then angrily deride them for pointing out that “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” is also in the Bible.
Bad shit happens to good people. Bad shit happens to prudent people. Bad shit happens.
Leaving whole swaths of the country to suffer Bad Shit without support just because it’s inconvenient*?
What say we just put Ebenezer Scrooge** in charge of healthcare. That would achieve Mo’s vision even faster.
cost is the inconvenience in question
** pre-intervention model