Not trying to be judgmental but... (Tea Party Debate reaction)

[RCD]

If I understand it correctly (and maybe I am just grossly generalizing), but if I were to follow the logic of hard-core tea partiers for future America then we it that poor mothers shouldn't be allowed to abort their unwanted baby. 

The baby should then be born and be on its own and denied any healthcare that the poor parent could not afford. 

Should the baby survive, then it should be denied public education or at best the child should go to an underfunded school (as Rick Perry has done).  Everyone knows public school is a wasteful burden upon taxpayers.

At school, they should not learn many sciences and some history (as they may be controversial, again look at the new Texas textbooks).

Now, the child is dumb and unhealthy.  Their parent, under the guidance of Michelle Bachmann should work for less than minimum wage (hence the child cannot afford good nutrious food).  The sickly, uneducated child should then also go work for less than minimum wage, unless they commit a crime or use drugs.

At that point they should be sent to a very well funded prison where they should serve a long manditory minimum sentence for their crime, or otherwise be executed if the crime were bad enough.

WE HAVE MADE A DECLARATION IN THIS COUNTRY THAT GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS...:" WE WILL, AS A NATION, TAKE CARE OF THE YOUNG, THE INFIRM AND THE ELDERLY...aLL OTHERS ARE ON THEIR OWN". tHIS IS GOOD AND PROPER. iF YOU ARE A YOUNG PERSON, AND CHOSE NOT TO GET HEALTH INSURANCE (BUT CAN AFFORD TO)-then no, the government should not pay for you. YOU chose not to get it...you must pay for your own care. Now, before the world goes into a twirl... understand that hospitals are forced to take you in and stabilize your condition. So you will not be forced to endure. However, you will have to cover your own health care cost-for failure to select coverage. Remember we have medicare for the old and medicaid for the poor... every one else need to provide there own coverage. This is not mean....its fair.

[KuroiKetsunoHana]

it's 'fair' to expect people who work their asses off but don't have access to reasonably-priced healthcare to spend the rest ov their lives paying off a hospital bill should they happen to catch the wrong thing at the wrong time?  medicaid doesn't cover everyöne who needs it, especially with prices on everything continually getting higher and higher.

[chipwich]

WE HAVE MADE A DECLARATION IN THIS COUNTRY THAT GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS...:" WE WILL, AS A NATION, TAKE CARE OF THE YOUNG, THE INFIRM AND THE ELDERLY...aLL OTHERS ARE ON THEIR OWN". tHIS IS GOOD AND PROPER. iF YOU ARE A YOUNG PERSON, AND CHOSE NOT TO GET HEALTH INSURANCE (BUT CAN AFFORD TO)-then no, the government should not pay for you. YOU chose not to get it...you must pay for your own care. Now, before the world goes into a twirl... understand that hospitals are forced to take you in and stabilize your condition. So you will not be forced to endure. However, you will have to cover your own health care cost-for failure to select coverage. Remember we have medicare for the old and medicaid for the poor... every one else need to provide there own coverage. This is not mean....its fair.

We already have a solution to address your fairness question.  The healthcare bill forces EVERYONE to purchase health insurance from a private carrier so that they are covered.  Just like car insurance,  no one really wants to buy insurance they don't think they will use.  You pretty much have to ask society as a whole to step up and ask everyone to take on full, individual responsibility for their healthcare.  Uninsured people raise healthcare costs for all people. 

Please remember, given the laizze-faire system we had before, many millions of people were priced out of affordable heathcare coverage, or they were otherwise denied coverage by most health-insurers.  Also, at minimum wage, there is no way much of the working poor could actually afford health insurance.  You are assuming millions of people are choosing not to have healthcare as opposed to the fact that they simply cannot afford coverage.

As a society, we also have the responsibility to insure that our children are well educated, so they can be productive in the future and thus afford some of that fancy, life-saving health coverage.

[Dog Walker]

This is from AlterNet, but is an interesting take on the possibility that Urban design has created the Tea Party:

What Awful Reality TV and Suburban Living Have to Do With the Tea Party's Lack of Empathy
The Tea Parties are partly a product of the suburbs, where social isolation leaves communication about social mores to reality TV. Is it any wonder the movement lacks empathy?
September 20, 2011  | 




If there’s any one defining feature of the Tea Party, it’s a lack of empathy for their fellow Americans. Republican candidates know this about their base: more than their supposed love of Jesus or the Founding Fathers, more than any coherent principled conservativism, more even than the strong streak of bigotry running through the Tea Party is this gleeful “screw you” attitude. Therefore, the Republican primary has become a contest to see who can heap the most abuse on Americans Tea Partiers don’t identify with.

You have Herman Cain preening about making Muslims second-class citizens; Michele Bachmann attacking doctors and public health officials who would prevent cervical cancer in young women; Rick Perry crowing about his heavy execution rate (which includes a willingness to execute people who should have been acquitted or had mistrials); and Ron Paul drawing heavy applause from a debate audience for his belief that government should just let the uninsured die. Far from being concerned about misfortune befalling others, the Tea Party routinely supports the expansion of suffering.   

To help explain this phenomena, we might remember another signifying characteristic of the Tea Party: despite the enthusiasm for country music, Tea Partiers proliferate in suburban and exurban districts. The most right-wing districts in the country are also some of its most suburban. Michele Bachmann serves the 6th District of Minnesota, which is composed of the suburban area surrounding the north of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Steve King, known for his competing hatreds of immigrants and sexually active women, serves the 5th District of Iowa, built from the suburban sprawl between Omaha and Des Moines. Anti-health-care fanatic Joe Walsh represents Illinois’s 8th District, composed of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Joe Barton, known for apologizing to BP for the White House post-oil spill investigation, serves the 6th District in Texas, which encompasses the suburban sprawl south of the Dallas/Ft. Worth areas. 

There’s likely a connection between the lack of empathy and the suburban nature of the conservative base. Research shows people tend to be more bigoted toward gays and those of different races when they have no personal connection with those people. Suburbs are known for breeding social homogeneity that does shelter people from humanizing those who are a little different than them. Beyond that, suburbs make it harder to develop a well-connected social life altogether.  Without that, it’s difficult to keep your empathy muscles, aka your ability to look at others and feel a common humanity with them. If you don’t use empathy, you lose it. 

In the past half century or so, Americans have flocked to suburbs, attracted to the promise of large houses, quiet, and privacy levels that simply can’t be achieved in small towns and dense big cities. But the price of all those conveniences was the loss of a sense of community, as people left interconnected urban enclaves or small towns to the impersonal streets of the suburbs.   

While there’s a great deal of diversity of suburbs--some are iconoclastic and some are quite walkable--the average American suburb has been notable for decades for an isolating geography and culture. Your average suburban/exurban home is set away from its neighbors with no porch or sidewalks, and suburbanites enter and exit their homes in cars that are parked in garages, minimizing their exposure to anyone who might be walking by. Of course, walking is unlikely to begin with; unlike in small towns and dense big cities, there’s very little within walking distance, killing much reason for anyone but the occasional jogger to be out on the streets on foot.