What happened to us?

As Americans, we are proud of most everything we do. Our History is full of our individualism; of our determination to "make it on our own"; to do the right thing; to take our lumps along with our accolades.

Somewhere, we lost it. Whether it's in business or just everyday lives, we seem to have lost our sense of accountability, our sense of responsibility and, most importantly, our sense of doing right by ourselves.

We have become a nation of victims, of whiners, of "what's in it for me?". We have given up our choice to do what we feel needs to be done to a bureaucratic government that tells us what needs to be done.

Take Health Care (please).

There are many things that are good about the new Health Care Bill; things that should have been done long ago (and everyone knows that). But the one thing NO ONE seems to know, is how this thing is going to be paid for.

Let's take a look at some things.

This will require everyone to have Health Insurance. Not bad on the surface. But that means that someone will have to pay to have it, where before they had the option to use their own money for what they deemed important. Who's paying for it? Those people who can not afford it in the first place. Or maybe those people who are taxed for it who really cannot afford to subsidize themselves, let alone anyone else. Once again, the "middle-class" gets the short end of the stick.
And, let's remember our History. Wasn't Medicaid and Medicare supposed to take care of all this? Weren't these programs for precisely those who could not afford it? Of course we all know what a debacle these programs are, with the fraud and bureaucratic bungles. Who is to say that this will not just be a bigger bureaucracy with even more problems, simply because it would have to be so huge.

Insurance companies cannot drop people who have to use massive amounts for the catastrophic illnesses. Yeah, we needed that.

Insurance companies cannot deny for pre-existing conditions. Ditto.

BUT.....what about prescriptions. Yeah, the DRUG companies. Those guys who lobby for ridiculous prices. "Oh, well we put a lot of research into this and we need to get our money back out." OK, valid argument. But when a pill costs $0.15 to make and you charge the consumer $15.00, that's not recouping.....that's rape. And it's worse when the person who needs that pill is having trouble just trying to have enough to eat. Make it doubly worse by shipping the exact same pill to another country for $0.40 a pill, or less. "Oh, but we didn't have to jump through all the hoops and pay all the fees in these other countries." Well, that's OUR government's fault; not the person who needs the medications.

My biggest concern is, well cost, obviously......as in who's going to pay for all this.
I was talking to a big supporter of the Bill, and, while I agreed that there was a lot of good in the bill, I wondered where the money was going to come from.
His response: "I don't care where it comes from, we need it."
OMG. He has no idea. He makes more than the $88,000/yr that is the limit of being subsidized. I don't. He could be subsidizing ME! He has no idea that, as it stands now, HE will be taxed to pay for this bill. And, let me tell you, he does NOT like money being taken out of his check!!!

I have a friend who has been unemployed for some time. This person has taken the responsibility of getting (cheap) health insurance, even though it is coming out of the unemployment check that barely allows for food and shelter. This friend cannot understand why no one else can do that.....why so many want the Government to "take care of them", instead of just doing it themselves. Well, we know why......they want to buy their big-screen TV's, their cigarettes, their PlayStations; all the "fun" stuff. And why should anyone pay for something if the government will do it for you?

Remember the USSR? Remember Mao-ist China?

And then, we wonder why.