Standard Mischief

Yep, is seems to be true, Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey seems to have cut way back on the blogging. Seems that the dreaded “Real Life” syndrome (in this case a new job) has intruded on to the scene.

Although the quantity and quality of posts seemed to be declining, I suppose the comment discussion is what really kept me there. Still, I’d probably would have kept her blog in the “guilty pleasures” category regardless.

The part that ticks me off most is that she never blogged about her Health Savings Account (HSA) with a medical High Deductible Health Insurance plan that she had since post-college and probably right up to her new employment opportunity, if not held currently (I understand that her employers are libertarian leaning). She did, however, have quite a few posts about paying cash for excellent care in third world countries.

‘Tis a shame because I could use the ammo against those who want some kind of state run health care, or who confuse the Health Savings Accounts with the use-it-or-lose-it Medical Savings Accounts everyone is more familiar with.

Thankfully, in a post that had gone wildly off-topic, tgirsch doesn’t want to mandate that you participate, only that you are forced into supporting some sort of public health care boondoggle.

We’re veering off-topic now, but I wouldn’t support a Canadian-style Universal Health Care system where all services must be obtained from government providers. I would instead prefer a system where everyone is welcome to use (and, through taxation, help pay for) those providers and services, but could elect to go to a private practice at their own expense. Doing so would not exempt you from helping to pay for the government-run system, any more than sending your kid to private school (or not having kids at all) exempts you from helping to pay for the school system.

Yup, he want a system analogous to our *cough cough* World Famous Public School System. He might as well compare it to Social Security, where everyone (except one white religious minority) is forced to pay into a system that has had its operating surplus funneled right into the nation’s general fund while only having a pocket full of IOUs to show for it.

Oh and for the threat to privacy angle that appears after you have been taxed to the level that forces you into the public health care system?

Regarding personal records, you do what we do now with IRS records and the like: you prosecute the holy hell out of anybody who abuses access to that information. In any case, as Ted implies, your personal medical records are probably already in far more nefarious hands than those of the government.

I’m sorry, but please remind me who is now in jail for when the FBI overstepped their authority in using the perpetual patriot act? How ’bout the AT&T internet peering? When they pass laws like that mandating privacy, they frequently “forget” to add any penalties for breaking the laws, or if they do they ignore them. This is in stark contrast to the usual helmet or seatbelt laws chock full of fines and points.

Left on another blog, about a year ago by myself, after being ripped to shreds about my inexact, but apparently good enough grasp of the Canadian health care system:

…I can only guess that those who would support any kind of government controlled healthcare either think that medical privacy no longer matters, or that the moment we get socialized medicine in the USA, the horns will blow in the heavens; the United States will instantly turn into one of those enlightened European countries, except that it’s really freaking big, and has slightly less cool architecture; oh, and all the “fundies” will melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Am I missing a third option? Please, do tell.

The response to that, oddly enough, was crickets chirping.

Yea, I’ll have to blog about this a bit more.