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I was going through my records for examples to use in another post. (Unfortunately, I have a bunch of my friends and acquaintances who needed help with getting/paying for healthcare at some point of time - cancer, delivered unconscious in off-network hospital after a car accident, another case of cancer, a kid with special needs - the list goes on and on...)
And I came at the great example.
A single mother, working a regular office job. Nothing fancy - a tiny apartment in LA, a couple of pets, drives a cheap Toyota, a poster child for lower middle class. Her daughter - who studies in college at the moment - get diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, aggressive but still curable. The daughter has no insurance (that's early 2000-ish, pre-ACA times and she's too old to be on her mom's insurance - like 19 or 20).
It literally means financial ruin for them - despite crowdfunding a big chunk of hospital bills - she is royally screwed. Screwed as in "lose the job, lose the apartment, screw up the credit score, move to the countryside, bribe a super to take over a rent-controlled lease etc etc".
Several years later she's rebuilding her life. We are discussing ACA (which is not a law yet). And she is furiously defending the existing system - "under ACA some will suffer and get the worse care, that's unacceptable", she says (plus some bullshit about Michelle Obama spending 2 billion on her vacation and the rest of Tea Party propaganda).
Now I realize - people with that kind of position cannot be convinced by rational arguments. If they are ready to screw themselves in order to protect the status quo - how can you convince them not to screw other people? No numbers, no statistics can change that - or so it seems to me. (Though I'd like to be proven wrong.)
And I came at the great example.
A single mother, working a regular office job. Nothing fancy - a tiny apartment in LA, a couple of pets, drives a cheap Toyota, a poster child for lower middle class. Her daughter - who studies in college at the moment - get diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, aggressive but still curable. The daughter has no insurance (that's early 2000-ish, pre-ACA times and she's too old to be on her mom's insurance - like 19 or 20).
It literally means financial ruin for them - despite crowdfunding a big chunk of hospital bills - she is royally screwed. Screwed as in "lose the job, lose the apartment, screw up the credit score, move to the countryside, bribe a super to take over a rent-controlled lease etc etc".
Several years later she's rebuilding her life. We are discussing ACA (which is not a law yet). And she is furiously defending the existing system - "under ACA some will suffer and get the worse care, that's unacceptable", she says (plus some bullshit about Michelle Obama spending 2 billion on her vacation and the rest of Tea Party propaganda).
Now I realize - people with that kind of position cannot be convinced by rational arguments. If they are ready to screw themselves in order to protect the status quo - how can you convince them not to screw other people? No numbers, no statistics can change that - or so it seems to me. (Though I'd like to be proven wrong.)