Insomniac's Dream Sequence

robot-heart-politics:

soupsoup:generic1:lookatthisfuckingteabagger

Whoa. Hold up.

That’s a valid argument. We can’t make fun of thisfuckingteabagger.

If “teabagging” is shorthand for ignorant wingnuttery (and sometimes crypto-racism) then this lady doesn’t qualify. She’s making a case against the expansion of positive rights. And she’s right. Strictly speaking, health care is not a codified right in the United States.

But she’s also wrong, and here’s why:

Imagine you’re the nurse working triage at an emergency room. A man is rushed in with a gunshot wound to the heart. He’s gushing blood, bleeding to death. His appearance is poor and slovenly. He is almost certainly homeless. You ask if he has insurance, or money of any kind. He indicates that he does not. The cardiac surgery will cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Now: Does the man have a right to healthcare?

He will die if he doesn’t receive immediate medical attention. If the man has no right to healthcare, the hospital has no obligation to work for free. The hospital is a business—a product of the free market.

The nurse should let him die. The lady in the picture, if she’s being consistent, should let him die. If we’re holding up signs about abstract principles, then that’s the correct answer. Right?

And the normal reaction to that scenario is, “Where is your fucking humanity? Of course you treat the dying man.”

And in America, because we’re not complete monsters, we do treat the dying man. We do it in hospitals all across the country. You’ll see the nation’s poor clogging up virtually every emergency room for lesser ailments because they have no money. We already have socialized medicine in the United States, we’re just doing it really horribly.

Voting didn’t use to be a right either. But then it was. I wonder if our sign-lady here would’ve been making the same argument in 1920.

At some point we’re gonna have to grow up.

Um, this isn’t correct. Federal law actually states that everyone is guaranteed emergency treatment. If you do not have health insurance, if you have no way to pay your bills, emergency facilities are still required to give you treatment until you have sufficiently recovered. In fact, they aren’t even allowed to ask if you can pay. Every hospital with an emergency treatment facility is required to follow this law, business or not.

So, yes, even in America, health care is considered a right, regardless of your financial situation, regardless of how humane your health care provider is feeling on a given day.

This is tea bagging.

Not any of this sign holding. Parading about.

In case I was not clear, allow me to refer you to the WikiHow article “How to Teabag in Halo 3.”