There is a very good chance you will never need to drive a car. There are many options for you to find alternative methods of transportation. It’s not likely that you’ll find yourself absolutely in need of car insurance. Sorry, excuse my east coast metropolitan bias, you’re likely going to need car insurance too, so in a sense, that’s not even an optional law.

We are fragile beings. We get sick. We get hurt. We don’t plan on it. It happens. There is a pretty good chance you’re going to need medical assistance at some point in your life, and there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to need it multiple times. It’s pretty much inevitable. At a minimum, you’re going to need it in your twilight years. This is not an option, it’s going to happen.

So, since I think we can all agree that at some point you are going to need health care, you’re going to need someone to pay for it. Do you want me to pay for your health care? Cause if you’re not required to purchase health insurance, that’s what your asking me to do. Pay for your health care. Look, I’m a pretty generous person, I like helping others out.

How about we all help each other out. If we are all required to purchase health insurance, that lowers the cost for all of us across the board. If we decide to make it optional, my premiums are going to be higher, to deal with all the uninsured people who refuse to pay for their own insurance.

Is this starting to make sense to all the people who think requiring everyone to purchase health insurance is OMG SCARY OBAMACARE SOCIALISM?

By the way, the odds of repealing Health Care Reform are next to zero. Repeal will not pass in the Senate, so how about you start coming up with ways to improve the current reform, rather than trying to repeal it and start from scratch.

You know, do something productive, rather than destructive. How about it? I’d love to hear your ideas. I’m all ears.

To those of you who oppose the current Health Care Reform, how would you improve health care and lower costs?

You figure we would have learned our lesson back in the late 40s:

McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term specifically describes activities associated with the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, “McCarthyism” soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.

Today, the method of McCarthyism is to scare the tea bagging, town halling crowd that folks who want a modernized health care system, one that has made the insurance industry the most profitable in America, despite the fact that we rank somewhere in the upper 30’s in the world in terms of quality of care, all the while we pay MORE than ANY other developed country IN THE WORLD for that care.

Is it any wonder why and how average citizens have been sold this idea that they need to protect this current system? Who is the real oppressor here? Who is trying to keep a system in place that steals your money for substandard service?

The tactics are so similar to that of Joe McCarthy that it boggles the mind why folks are not pointing to this seemingly forgotten dark moment in our history. Smearing anyone who fights to improve our current system by labeling them a Socialist, with Obama being label the Socialist-in-chief are exactly the same tactics used back in the McCarthy era.

Although far-right radicals were the bedrock of support for McCarthyism, they were not alone. A broad “coalition of the aggrieved” found McCarthyism attractive, or at least politically useful. Common themes uniting the coalition were opposition to internationalism, particularly the United Nations; opposition to social welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the New Deal; and opposition to efforts to reduce inequalities in the social structure of the United States.^[37]

One focus of popular McCarthyism concerned the provision of public health services, particularly vaccination, mental health care services and fluoridation, all of which were deemed by some to be communist plots to poison or brainwash the American people. This viewpoint led to major collisions between McCarthyite radicals and supporters of public health programs, most notably in the case of the Alaska Mental Health Bill controversy of 1956.^[38]

Sound familiar?

(citations via Wikipedia)