History was made this week with the passage of the major healthcare reform bill in Congress, which was then signed into law by President Obama. It’s final. It’s done. It’s over. There. Can we stop fucking talking about it? Apparently not.
Since the House of Representatives passed the bill Sunday night, my Facebook page has been bombarded with people either praising the bill as a wondrous step forward in progressive ideals, or lambasting it as a complete socialist takeover and a precursor to the ultimate destruction of everything happy. I’m tired of reading all these people’s reactions. I’m a young guy in my early 20s. Most of my Facebook friends chiming in on the issue are also young people in their early 20s or younger. If you happen to be one of those people reading this, please take to heart the following sentence:
NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT ANYTHING.
This isn’t just my opinion, either. I’ve had to deal with it in my stand-up (which really sucks because the stuff I wrote about in this blog entry is the stuff I REALLY want to talk about onstage and be taken seriously about it). People just don’t care what young people think because young people don’t know hardly anything. In fact, if you’re under 25, your opinion in general simply doesn’t matter. Gee, healthcare reform passed? Let’s go to the Facebook feed to find out what 19-year-old TJ in Nashville thinks: “Dude, healthcare reform is bullshit—socialist takeover BADURPADURPADURP!”
First of all, any political opinion that begins with the word, “dude,” is shorthand for, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.” Secondly, again, no one cares what you think. That’s why you never see young people on the news. Wolf Blitzer is never going to say, “And now for some insight from our youth correspondent, please welcome to The Situation Room: Snooki!” C’mon. Besides, who could honestly know more about healthcare reform than a bunch of teenagers who haven’t even started drinking yet? Shut up. Especially if you’re one of those teenage girls who is complaining that the healthcare bill is causing a 10% tax hike for indoor tanning salons. Think about it: by the time you have full-blown skin cancer, you’ll have the health insurance to cover for it, so pay the extra $5 a session, you plastic carrots.
Now, that said, I’m gonna completely undermine everything I just wrote by offering my own opinion. Hey, it’s my blog—I’ll break my own rules if I want. If you don’t like it, go start your own blog.
I’m glad the healthcare reform bill passed. I personally wish they still kept in the public option, but that’s beside the point—I’m glad it passed for one major reason: to help keep the private insurance companies from screwing us even more than they already are. Because that’s all they do at this point. They’re not interested in helping people. They just want to make as much profit as possible, and they will go to whatever means necessary to NOT do what they are actually there to do. Case in point: pre-existing conditions.
If you have a pre-existing condition, the insurance companies can deny you coverage. Which is amazing to me. These are the people who need it most, and thankfully the new healthcare bill will put an end to this (at least in children). This problem had been getting completely out of control. Insurance companies were denying people for having pre-existing conditions, which isn’t fair to begin with, but what made it worse was that the insurance companies then started stretching their definitions of pre-existing conditions to the point of absurdity. Pregnant women could be denied coverage because they were pregnant. People could be denied coverage because they were intending to adopt. (For the record, I’m not making either of those examples up. Look it up, it’s out there.)
It’s amazing to me. The insurance industry is the only industry I can think of that would actively think of ridiculous excuses to NOT do what they’re supposed to do. It’s like if your house was on fire, and you called the fire department, and the guy on the other line said, “I dunno if we can come out there. Did you own a cat?”
“Yes,” you say.
“Sorry, that falls under our list of pre-existing conditions.”
“What?! How does owning a cat prevent you guys from putting out my fire?!”
“Well, cats are highly flammable. We can’t help you. Sorry.”
Regardless, that problem should hopefully start to become less severe in the coming years. At the same time, other problems seem to be getting worse as the days go by. Since the bill passed, many on the crazy fringe section of the folks opposed to healthcare are going BERSERK. Death threats, acts of vandalism, rhetoric that gets more and more violent by the sentence—it’s become pandemonium. I keep seeing more and more talk about revolution and the use of brute force including that of firearms. There are even a few random psychos on the internet talking about assassinating President Obama—it is INSANE.
All of this stuff actually got me thinking about the gun laws in this country. I’m not a fan of guns in the first place and I definitely think, given the way some people on the right are acting, it’s time to consider taking measures for increased gun control. Of course, pro-gun people sometimes defend their stance by saying things like, “Guns don’t kill people. People do.”
I know. Especially if those people HAVE FUCKING GUNS.
In the end, though, I don’t know why everyone even goes out of their way to react to the issue. From the uninformed teenagers to the wackaloons, they’re all wasting their time. I wasted my time writing this, and you wasted your time reading it. I’m sick of people talking about healthcare reform. I’m sick of people talking about mostly anything regarding politics. Our current political system is bullshit anyway. It’s ruled by two parties who are wholly unintelligent, while trying to solve unbelievably complex problems. It’s like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift playing chess:
It doesn’t matter whose side you’re on, or whose moves you think are better for America, because in the end: they’re both fucking retarded.
Until next time,
–Riley
Getting Foxed in the Ass: A Blog-O-Rama by Riley Fox 