Car Insurance vs. Health Insurance

I’m painfully tired of this argument, so I thought I would explain it here, really slowly, in case you’re still confused.

The argument that I keep hearing from the bootstrappers, in voices dripping with such scorn that it seems like they actually believe it’s logical, is that the comparison between car and health insurance is invalid because you aren’t required to have car insurance if you don’t have a car–but, if the current biil passes, you will be required to have health care or face a fine.

Here’s the reason the comparison is valid: every driver is required to have coverage. If you don’t own a car, but you borrow one, the owner’s insurance better cover any accidents you have. If not, you’ll be in trouble. So yes, you do have to have coverage even if you don’t own a car–just like a minor is required to have health insurance, but her guardians are required to pay for it. This is so that if another driver damages my car, I’m not out the money.

“But what about those people who never drive,” you ask, sure that you’ve finally bested the liberal who’s watching in sympathy as you writhe in misguided glee. You’re absolutely right. People who never drive or ride in automobiles, do not need a single bit of car insurance. So if you can provide absolute, 100% positive, cannot fail proof that you will never get a disease, injury, or ailment that will require treatment or spread to others, I’m pretty confident you can get out of having health insurance.

Do you get it now? Probably not, because you were distracted by Rush’s big head (oooh, shiny!) halfway through. But I feel better.

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Just so you know, I’m not fond of the current bill. While I think people should have health care, I don’t believe this bill does enough to provide it to the ones who need it, and is too hard on the people for whom it neglects to provide. But that doesn’t make the car/health comparison any more valid.

If you agree, feel free to comment. If you disagree, feel free to comment. I love discussion. But follow my rules, or I’ll block you. It’s my blog, and it’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.

(Still) Finding Myself

This is pretty much stream-of-consciousness. Please don’t expect much.

It’s become somewhat of a joke, the idea of taking time off to find oneself, an excuse not to go to school or get a job. I wasn’t able to take any time off to do it, but I think the idea is sound. But I don’t think the process ends. I think a person should be constantly striving to know himself or herself better, so he or she can be the best person possible, and that process lasts until death.

I grew up in the Church of Christ, and although my parents never discouraged me from thinking for myself, I never did. It was a lot easier to go with the flow. I went to a CoC school and church, and my friends were CoC and my family was CoC and we all agreed on the important things and life was good.

But life wasn’t good.

I’ve suffered from depression for as long as I can remember. I realized that for someone who was supposed to be alive in Christ, I was awfully miserable. I was also becoming more and more uncomfortable with my passive role in my faith. I never intended to leave the faith, or even Christianity. My goal was to become so sure of my own faith that I could successfully defend it. What happened is that I realized I didn’t know myself at all; I only knew that what I thought was Christ either wasn’t Christ, or that Christ wasn’t enough to overcome what was wrong with me. (I later had a couple of major manic episodes and realized that lithium is what it takes to overcome what’s wrong with me. )

I’ve also been an extremely sensitive, sympathetic person for as long as I can remember. I found it harder and harder to accept that the God we called “loving” and “just” could reject people who had never heard of him, or who hadn’t correctly followed a book written in dynamic languages and compiled and translated by fallible humans. And why would he make some people so inclined toward behavior that made either him or them unhappy?

Only very recently have I begun to see glimmers of things I might like about myself. Only recently have I begun not to constantly (and I do mean constantly) worry about what every single other person was thinking and just be myself. This didn’t happen until I decided that people weren’t sinful or bad or wrong because they were Muslim or gay or atheist or single parents or…lots of other things.

Not all Christians are blind followers. Not all are hypocrites. Not all are judgmental. But I was, and now I’m not. And I didn’t like myself, and now I’m starting to. I like that I’ve gone from being a hypocritical, judgmental, blind follower to being someone who is accepting and open-minded and tries to practice what she preaches. And I plan to keep bettering myself. And I find it highly illogical that the real God–whoever or whatever it is–would have a problem with that.