Why couldn’t they have accomplished this FIVE YEARS ago?!

A bunch of allied evangelical women’s clubs have been lobbying FOR YEARS to get the bill that socialized medicine repealed. Well, they just succeeded. As of next month, everyone that wants some type of insurance will have to find their own.

But once they have their insurance, as long as they pay for it and don’t need more than the lifetime limit of a few million dollars, they won’t cut someone off in what’s supposed to be the last six months of their lives, saying that it’s the last six months that are the most expensive, and won’t be covered.

Ten years ago, Dad retired from the engineering firm he’d spent thirty-five years working for. Nice pension, great lifetime benefits. Nine years ago, congress snuck socialized medicine in on us, despite more than two-thirds of us not wanting it. Six months later, Dad’s benefits were dropped—with the government ramming through new regulations on who was to be covered, for what, and how much, insurance costs skyrocketed for everyone not on the “public option.” And the company—well, to be fair, every company that offered health benefits, not just Dad’s—dropped all health insurance on all but upper management. First to go were retirees.

Seven years ago, a PSA screening came back looking…iffy. It took another year to get an appointment to get his prostate actually checked, and another eight months to get the lump biopsied. By then, it was too late. The cancer had metastasized, and Dad was told that he had another four to six months to live. By one doctor. Without the option of going for a second opinion in the time he had. And, of course, the drugs to possibly extend his life for long enough to go get a second opinion were too expensive. Not cost effective. In fact, since Dad only had another six months to live, he wasn’t cost effective, either, and the “public option” plan demonstrated another option that the government had: to refuse insurance to those who aren’t contributing members of the workforce anymore.

Dad spent the next two years in the hospital. Not six months. Two years. Dying. In agony. Because his prostate cancer wasn’t caught early enough to stop. Because of the rationed medical care that the “public option” forced on him.

Without any insurance, government or otherwise. And, without insurance, the hospital refused to do more than the bare minimum. Which still put us so deeply in debt that we still can’t see daylight.

Before he died, Dad called Jenni and me to speak to him. He spoke to each of us alone for a few minutes, Jenni first. I don’t know what he said to her, but she got a new job the next day, one that paid far better than her job as a kindergarten teacher.

Me, he told exactly how much Mom was in debt. And told me that, should she refuse or be unable to pay for the bills that the government, in its infinite wisdom, forced us to run up (since we obviously didn’t want to put Dad down like a sick pet), that same government would put Mom in prison. For credit fraud. For running up bills that she obviously didn’t intend to pay. The fact that she couldn’t pay the bills didn’t come into consideration any more than someone who can’t pay their taxes gets special treatment—assuming they’re not a member of the president’s cabinet, at least.

He also told me that he knew that, with my degree, and with my moral flexibility, there was a job that paid well enough that I could help keep Mom out of prison. No, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. But think of the pay! And think of Mom! And it was his dying wish!

What the fuck was I supposed to do?

So, thanks to the stupid socialized medicine plan—which had failed everywhere else before it was instituted here—Dad spent two years dying when the cancer could have been caught two years sooner than it was and successfully (and relatively cheaply) driven into remission. Thanks to Dad’s final bills, I am a) a highly-trained, very highly-paid professional assassin, and b) a highly-trained, very highly-paid professional assassin that drives a beige, 1982 Toyota Corolla. One with an odometer that broke at the 350,000 mile mark two years ago.

Stupid fucking hypocritical holier-than-thou bear-trap-twatted failed whores could have had this shit stopped five years ago, if they’d been willing to use the new laws and new markets the way everyone else that wants something done does. Oh, well. At least the fines I pay every year for “insufficient coverage” will go away. Maybe my health insurance plan costs will drop, too.

The more my costs drop, the quicker I can help Mom get Dad’s final bills paid off, and the sooner I get to go look for work in the field I trained for, instead of this one.

Happy Thanksgiving.