A side note

[blamebrampton]

Dear Americans,
Outside of your strange, strange country, most of the developed world has this marvellous thing which we like to call health care for all. I'm reading an interesting mpreg (that will teach me not to read the warnings!*) story from hd_hols and the poverty-stricken pregnant one is in despair as his health insurance will not cover it. On the off-chance it was written by someone on my flist, the good for society news is that in the UK, this is not the problem you might think it is! And I have my fingers crossed that in the US, it won't be for much longer, either.

(And if anyone is planning to respond telling me that socialised healthcare is evil, I will LAUGH AT YOU, and then I will QUOTE REAMS OF STATISTICS until you FLEE.)

XXX
BB

* And yes, my dislike of mpreg is not supported by the excellent writing that occurs within that genre and the imaginative plots that many superior writers bring to bear on the concept. But I still don't like it!

Comments

[annafugazzi.livejournal.com]

And you know what, reading over my reply to your comment, I come off sounding terribly bitchy, which was not how I was feeling or how I meant to sound at all. If you're getting a bitchy vibe, pls for to try to retone it in your mind as less of a "stfu u nasty nasty American!" and more of a friendly "we differ considerably on this, o Nice Person Who Has Written Something Thoughtful That I Disagree With."

[joanwilder.livejournal.com]

Haaaaa, no, I didn't think you were bitchy at all. :) I think it's a misunderstood subject; what gets my grinder going is when non-Americans call out our system without knowing the basics, particularly if their opinion is anecdotal--as you've pointed out, that's a dangerous jumping off point.

I think that, as in other areas, if we could only take the best of both systems and find a way to merge them, that would be optimal. In the U.S., though, anything that even has a whiff of the word 'socialized' attached to it is going to get quashed. I know many U.K./French folks shake their heads at this, but many Americans, particularly Republicans, believe that this issue, like many others, is none of the federal government's business. We're a republic, after all, not a democracy.