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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (15089)	9/1/2004 6:35:49 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Since this year's business is way off we've had to get by on less of everything. I'm a bit confused. In another series of posts on this thread you talked about how your wife thought the health insurance was too expensive (and dishonestly priced) and that therefore you acceded to her demands for an addition onto your home in lieu of health insurance. Here's the post in case you forgot: Message 20427430 An excerpt: "out of the thousands and thousands we paid for insurance, we took almost no services..... Now when the wife looks me in the eye and says Mr. Orcastraiter, 'I'm not sending these thieves another cent...build me the addition we've wanted for the last 10 years.' Mr. Orca hops to it." You elaborated on the point here: Message 20432103 Excerpt: "Our addition seemed to be the best way to invest our money. We have added sweat equity to our investment in our home. And this investment will likely be liquidated someday to pay for medical needs...so in a way our addition is an investment in our healthcare. You think we should have invested it in stocks?" That would actually be getting by on "more" housing, not less, wouldn't it? Based on a personal choice of "investment", not because you were "shut out". I got the impression from those posts that, like all households, the Orca Family faces resource constraints and choices among competing wants and needs. I sympathize with that, for we have that issue at Chez Dog as well. I want to spend the money on food and health insurance, Mrs. Dog wants to spend it on clothes and education, and we compromise, or work harder or change our business strategy to try to increase income. We eat kibble from Sam's Club instead of the caviar we prefer. We even thought about an addition to the doghouse since our four puppies are leaving the place a bit crowded these days. We may yet build that addition before the end of the year, or perhaps next year. But our own personal choice was not to cancel health insurance (which costs as much as a significant portion of the addition) and make the house bigger. As Americans, we already have more space than the average person in the rest of the world. It was hard for us to conclude, rationally, that we were "shut out" of health insurance just because the price went up. Rather, we concluded that health insurance deserved a high priority, and certain other things a lower priority. We would probably also choose, given more severe resource constraints, to dip into savings in a lean year for the business to keep our kids' and our health care coverage in place, at least against the need for catastrophic care like hospitalization. It's a free country, and you can make that choice differently. But to say that the lack of health insurance happened to you due to outside forces (we were "shut out of health insurance") seems inaccurate to me. Why not acknowledge that the lack of health insurance was due to an investment or resource allocation choice by you to increase your standard of living in terms of personal space at the risk of not getting the same level of health care?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (15089)	9/1/2004 6:57:46 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

Yeah. IOW, the world owes you a living. Say, why is it you think your neighbors should be robbed to pay for your health costs rather than that addition to the house you CHOSE instead? Why shouldn't the taxpayers get stuck with the cost of that instead? Go ahead. Justify why the rest of us should pay for your addition. And once again Mr. Dog nailed you.