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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
There is nothing hypothetical about her needing surgery.
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Here is a guy who publicly appealed (demanded ?) for a political solution to exactly the same challenge you and your wife are facing....please watch it, it is brief but compelling:
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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/0...n-health-care/
If this man’s genuine passion and anguish doesn’t move you, you’re not human. Steve Skvara, a disabled, retired steel worker from Indiana tells the story of how he lost his family’s health insurance after the company he worked for, for 34 years closed two years after they forced him to retire. Skvara received a standing ovation, and rightfully so. He represents millions of hard working Americans who have lost their jobs and benefits and face the humiliation of not being able to provide for themselves or their families. .....
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I appeal to you to consider that you and your family did not come into the socio-politcal-economic "status quo" in the US, when it began...you came into it in the middle...and there is much inequality and injustice that you seem to discount "out of principle". It is not as clear cut as you seem to make it all, in order to arrive at your conclusion that government is "taking" what "rightfully belongs" to someone else....
Does the money that Bush's uncle William obtained via Iraq war profits....sourced from "our tax dollars", for example....really all "belong" to him? How about the profits that a housing developer, "makes"...after he puts a deposit on a tract of land, pays a local real estate lawyer who plays golf with his ole college room mate...the head of the local zoning board....to represent him in a rezoning application that would permit a high density housing development that allows the developer to build and sell double the number of units on the speculative tract that he has the deposit on to buy....slapping up the units, selling them at inflated prices "juiced" by the subprime lending scheme sanctioned by the Fed and congress....and then, moving on to his next project, leaving a community to cope with the crowded roads and expense of infrastructure improvements...schools...libraries...sewage and water collection, distribution, and treatment, police and fire protection, etc., etc., while the developer parlays his profits into two new projects..... Is it really HIS profits, DK....all of it???
Can you put a price on what the folks making present profits on the land sales of these former owners, owe the descendants of the former owners?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_v._Georgia
.......The case
In June 1830, a delegation of Cherokee led by Chief John Ross selected William Wirt, attorney general in the Monroe and Adams administrations, on the urging of Senators Daniel Webster and Theodore Frelinghuysen to defend Cherokee rights before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Cherokee nation asked for an injunction, claiming that Georgia's state legislation had created laws which, "go directly to annihilate the Cherokees as a political society". Wirt argued that "the Cherokee Nation [was] a foreign nation in the sense of our constitution and law..." and was not subject to Georgia's jurisdiction. Wirt asked the Supreme Court to null and void all Georgia laws extended over Cherokee lands on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution, United States-Cherokee treaties, and United States intercourse laws.
The injunction was denied, on the grounds that the Cherokee people, not being a state, and claiming to be independent of the United States, were a "denominated domestic dependent nation", over which the Supreme Court had no original jurisdiction. Although the Court determined that it did not have original jurisdiction in this case, the Court held open the possibility that it yet might rule in favor of the Cherokee.
However the 1832 Supreme Court decision Worcester v. Georgia later ruled that Georgia could not impose its laws upon Cherokee tribal lands.........
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Within a decade after the above events, thousands were rounded up by the US military and driven in a forced march during winter....known as the "Trail of Tears"...off their lands which the Supreme Court had ruled were theirs....to reservations in Oklahoma, a march that killed many of the yourngest, oldest and infirm....
What should the compensation be for that lawbreaking and inhmanity? What is the worth of your former US military service? Shouldn't it assure you, and your wife, equal access to healthcare....the access our society affords to those in prison or to those receiving medicaid benefits?
Can you not consider that, although it is not possible to right all wrongs, a society can at least experience and tolerate the leveraging of the numbers of it's majority to mandate the provision of a minimum and sustaining level of support....of quality of life, by levying a progressive and inheritance tax on the wealthiest...the most privileged....well connected, as compensation and in fairness, for examples like I described above? If the result is that those less fortunate, less "connected", less healthy, are treated at least as well as prisoners, or as those impoverished enough to qualify for medicaid...without experiencing the indignity of seeking church or other private charity, that the society occupied by all, is over a higher, more civilized, fairer one....for all to live and to try to make a success in....?
....a society and political/economic system....more like they all enjoy, in France, than like the one you and your family )and me and mine...are struggling to survive in? Read my posted article about the thousands of millionaires in Palo Alto.....their concerns, attitudes, needs, spending interest snd priorities...don't they seem trivial compared to the challenges you face?
Their circumstances and their wealth and wastefulness are only "none of your business", if you think that way...they didn't accumulate "their money", in a vacuum.....some were lucky....some were recipients of dilutive stock options that negativel affected the investments made by the administrator of your pension fund..... well...hopefully you get the idea.