Health Care

There was a Bellingham rally for the single-payer option, today, and as the chanting throng of people wended their way under my window, I could hear the occasional heckler shout from a passing car.

The cat sat in the window and growled at the commotion.

And I haven't been able to stop thinking about the discussion on Jay Lake's LJ post where he posted a short list of questions, polling his readers about their positions on illegal immigrants and American health care.

I gave my own answers on LiveJournal instead on in Jay's comment thread, because there's plenty of sound and fury there, already -- and if ever we needed a meme, folks, a meme about things that really matter is worth the time to at least think about deeply, even if you don't want to say anything out loud for whatever reason. These are questions everyone in this country needs to look at head-on, though.

And there comes a time that you have to decide what's right and what's wrong, and oddly enough? I've never actually found, in 42 years of living so far, that there's any meaningful and intrinsic relationship between a price tag and doing the right thing.

Finally, that oft-repeated right-wing meme about illegal immigrants sucking off of everyone else? How come the people repeating that never mention the estimated 7 BILLION dollars paid into Social Security by undocumented workers? Or the estimated 1.5 BILLION dollars paid in Medicare taxes?