can anyone explain to me why they are mandating that people buy HEALTH insurance?

I hear different answers and have not settled on one myself.  I hear the Democrat's saying that the Insurance Companies are so powerful, that this is the best that they can do in the face of such overwhelming wealth, and then I hear the Republican's saying that they do not want mandated insurance because ... well, it is wrong.  Since I know the slash and burn policy that they have on this issue, trying every tactic in the book to derail and delay anything which might effect the drug and health industries profits, I know that they do not actually think it is a bad idea to give this BOON over to the insurance companies.  So, I guess the Elephants are more than likely full of shit.



It breaks my heart that Democrat's are going to be the ones who pass a bill with this in it, but if the rest of the bill would not exist at all without this provision, what hope do the Dem's have?  Doing something, or nothing?  Something is what anyone would choose.  So, I understand this.

Problem is, we need another election, and a larger leftest block, to actually pass the kind of health care package that most non-partisans agree upon.  If this is the case, and the best we can get is what we got, well than that is a problem of the system itself, not any individual politician.  Unless this system becomes so Democrat that sweeping reforms can be passed, we are simply doomed to stay in this netherworld where honest to God health care reform remains just out of our reach, because that is more profitable to the vested interests involved, who give a lot of money to politicians.

Like I said at the beginning of this pile of words, I honestly do not know.  I get more disgusted with politics because I am more focused on it than ever before.  My buddy Chris, one of the funniest writers I know, and a person of true depth in most respects, stays out of politics, creates his little garden, and thanks God for the time he gets to spend surfing.  One of the smartest roommates I have had, and I had some smart ones, was a classical guitarist who turned me on to the Nation, though he pretty much had quit reading any newspapers or watching tv news years before.  He finally even gave up the Nation, after declaring that it seemed like all of his years he was reading the same news day after day and all of it was depressing.

I used to avoid any writing that had current, cultural trends.  I wanted my work to be like Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, utterly timeless.   I had been advised at the time that all the great writer's considered this matter, and I was a fairly earnest student and I bought it hook line and sinker.  I used my political opinions in advanced classes in school, exposing my far-left bent where it was nurtured, rather than ridiculed or misunderstood or both, of course.  Everywhere else, they seemed fairly worthless.  The country was run by the right wing and god knows who in the shadows?  What would that ever have to do with me?  My dreams were of art, not politics.  I wanted, like all artists want, to please people with my work, in the same way my mother once was when I took her my first drawings as a toddler.  From something that simple all else seems to come to pass.

I have been well insured, un-insured, and insured by a government program, medicaid.  I can tell you for sure that the first was best, the second sucked, and the latter is just fine.  I can also tell you that if the government tried to get me to buy health insurance at different points in my life, I would have said Fuck You, I need that money to pay my bills and make some fun out of this life.  I did the same thing with car insurance.  I got rid of my car over this, actually.  I am too old not to know that shit like car accidents are going to happen, and I do not want any trouble with the law.  I always felt better, too, when I was fully insured... but there were times.
And I am a fairly  responsible human being in most respects.  Other people run from the cops over not having insurance, or cripple someone drunk and have no insurance, etc... the horror stories are too obvious for anyone except me to even repeat.

Looking at the world is like seeing a fractal constantly showing another pattern the closer you look. I suppose we will all have to wait and see.  At least they are addressing this issue, which Bush did not even have on his
radar.


I love this picture.  Something about having the red elves attic over it looked Christmas like for a blog opening. The day after I put this up, I happened across that she had just been interviewed and said that monogamy was not essential to a relationship, raising the collective hopes of males the planet over who never even would have bothered trying to compete with a millionaire movie star stud-winkle like Brad Pitt.