Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Let's Hear It for Begging!


libertarian, health care, charity, fail

There's no zealot like a new zealot, and renaissanceguy is indeed a zealot. A Libertarian zealot. Honestly, I'll take the freaks over at Rapture Ready over Libertarians. A belief that Jesus is going to descend from the sky on a white horse shortly after Kirk Cameron converts in a public restroom is way saner than the Libertarian answer to poverty and need, which can be summed up thusly:

Beg, beg and beg some more.
Beg until you can beg no more!



Recently a commenter named Personal Failure asked:

What happens when private help isn’t available or isn’t enough? What then? My husband has MS. He needs medication, tests, doctors and treatments, but he was rescissed by his insurance because he failed to disclose a blow to the head as a child. (Does not cause MS.) He can get his MS meds free from the company, but those meds are known to cause liver damage, and he can’t get liver function tests for free, so he can’t take the meds. So there he is on the couch, too dizzy to walk the dog, let along work. Libertarianism works great- until you can’t work.

I have thought long and hard about an answer. Here is part of the answer below. More is coming, but I try to keep each post around 500 words.

I do not want to minimalize the situation that you find yourself in. It stinks, plain and simple. My heart goes out to you and your husband. I hope that he has the remitting kind of MS and that he enters remission soon. I would first like to ask a series of questions and then conclude with a comment about your last sentence.


Note 1: MS comes in 6 varieties, the most common being Relapsing/Remitting. R/R however, does not mean that you go from symptoms to total lack of symptoms. The disease may go into an inactive state, but the damage from the active state may very well remain. The dizzy? It's not going away. That's permanent now.








Have you sought a legal remedy against the insurance company? It sounds like they have violated their contract. Libertarians are against anyone’s doing that.


ZOMQF! That's hi-fuckin-larious. People are recissed every day in this country, and people die because of it. Recission is immoral and unethical, but it's not illegal.







Have you asked your friends and family for help? Perhaps each of your close friends and family members would be willing to pay for one liver test per year.


Basic social understanding fail. On two levels, actually. (1) I'm poor. Generally, if you're poor, all your friends are poor. I have no idea where rich people hang out, but it's not where I do. (2) If you want to find out exactly how many friends you have, get sick and stay sick. You probably have 1 or 2 friends. Oh, and begging? As if MS weren't bad enough, now we've got to beg?






Have you asked a church or other religious body for help? In my hometown there is a network of churches known as the Community Ministries that provides all sorts of resources to people in need. Maybe there is something like it where you live.


I'm an atheist, but even so, my local churches are totally overwhelmed with the need for food and shelter. There is no church medical charity in my area. For those counting, this is beg #2.





Have you held fundraisers or, better yet, asked a close friend or family member to hold fundraisers on your husband’s behalf? That is often done for people with chronic illnesses.
Is your husband a member of a support group? Perhaps they know of a foundation or private charity that could help him out.


And beg #3. Oooh, I have an idea. Let's take my desperately ill husband and parade him around for strangers to point at and feel sorry for. Not that every gas station in town isn't already filled with little donation jars for this person's house fire or that person's leukemia.




Has your husband thought about ways that he might still be able to make money from home, perhaps part-time? If that is not possible, please forgive my even asking the question. Last year I was struck with a debilitating condition that I thought would make it impossible for me to work anymore at my job. I told my wife that I might have to stay home from school and try to write a book or offer private music lessons or private tutoring to struggling students. Fortunately, my condition is under control–at least at the moment.


Oh, you know just how I feel. You almost had to maybe have a conversation about working from home. Hey, asshat, you never even tried to work from home, so you have no idea if that's possible or not, and, Teh Hubby did work from home. Before he got too sick to work.



In the meantime, I have no problem with you and your husband availing yourself of any government programs for which you qualify. You helped pay for them, after all. Although I would like to see most public welfare programs reduced or abolished, you might as well benefit from the ones that are operating now.


Oh, it's so nice of you to let us try to get disability/medicaid in another 3 months. You know, before you try to get rid of it. That's so sweet.



It is not fair to discuss whether or not Libertarianism would work in light of or current situation. The United States of America is not currently operating under anything like a Libertarian-type government. I believe that both you and your husband would be better able to withstand the current crisis if Libertarian principles were enacted.


Orly? You haven't given me one example of a Libertarian principle that would help in this situation, probably because their aren't any, you whingey spleenweasel.

7 comments:

  1. Here's what it boils down to.

    What you call begging, I call asking for help from the only people who actually have the moral responsibility to help you--your friends and family and the members of your own community and the charities in your area.

    What you call "government benefits," I call forcing people to pay for other people's needs under threat of imprisonment. If you want money from wealthy people (and I'm not saying that you personally do), then ask for it. Call it begging, if you will, but it's better than stealing.

    We certainly have a different view of morality.

    -----

    Before you accuse me again of wanting people to die, I want you to know that I helped to support my sister when she was dying of cancer. My wife and I have given hundreds of dollars to friends in need. One time I bought a new transmission for a father who needed to get it fixed in order to get to work to support his family. Another time my wife and I joined another couple in buying a furnace for a young widow so that she and her son would be warm during the approaching winter.

    I am a very generous person. What I am not willing to do, however, is comfiscate money from other people.

    ReplyDelete
  2. PF, first off not everyone who calls themselves Libertarian are like that, there are moderate Libertarians out there, like myself.

    Personally I am all for Public Health Care. Look at the numbers. The countries with public health care options have longer life spans and spend per capita less money on health. They are healthier and spend less. If you can't see that then you are blind to your ideologies.

    To me it is all about looking at reality. Right now we have system that is fucked. It needs to change. The systems that seem to work best are Public Health Care systems. So why try to jury-rig a failing system?

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  3. To add, not all Libertarians are Ayn Rand fans either, and won't throw around words like "stealing" like they have no meaning anymore.

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  4. Sorry for three posts in a row but,

    RG, what you call stealing, let's just look at the numbers:

    http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_spe_per_per-health-spending-per-person

    So in 1998, the US spent 4,271 American dollars per person on health care.

    Canada spent 1,939
    France spent 2,288
    Japan spent 2,243
    UK spent 1,675

    So you want to talk about stealing, then you can look at insurance companies, because it is apparent that countries that have national plans spend much less per person.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree there are extremist in every party and Libertarians have our share. I truly believe that in a properly run free market economy (A) Health care would be much more affordable and (B) People would be much less poor and therefore able to pay for it.

    The problem with the more extreme elements of Libertarianism(and don't even get me started on the Repugnicans) is that they don't see that the economy is hollistic. If you just chop out one part that you don't like such as medical benefits for the poor. It won't resolve the problems that made medical benefits necessary it will just screw the poor.

    The US despite the propaganda has not been a market economy in close to a century, the fascist corporate welfare structure combined with a bread and circusses, TV and benefits, meathod of social engineering has made this country a mockery of both freedom and enterprise. Fixing this is not a simplistic matter of saying "Well lets cut out help for poor people and shut down the public schools" that would be disaster.

    Fixing it will require a measured process starting by creating competition among the producers. Removing price supports and bailouts for the extremely wealthy. Then working to increase freedom, bargaining authority and ultimately wealth for the working people. Once you have created an economy where everyone has a reasonable income and prices are truly based on what the market can support, then no one will need benefits and assistance beyond what they could get from their friends and family. That is when you start working to remove those programs. Not when doing so will make people suffer and die.

    ReplyDelete
  6. A good post on "Forever In Hell".And I would like to say that I'm living my dream of owning my own business and working from home earning equally or more than the regular jobs by using http://debtfreeliving.ownanewbusiness.com.

    Thanks,
    Wilson
    Own a new business

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am so glad that you and some of your commenters have shown me good examples of the tolerance that you preach. It's so refreshing!

    I love the claim that I exploit people. I wish that I were powerful and rich enough to exploit people--not that I would want to do so. I just wish that I were that rich and that powerful.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are for you guys, not for me. Say what you will. Don't feel compelled to stay on topic, I enjoy it when comments enter Tangentville or veer off into Non Sequitur Town. Just keep it polite, okay?

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