Eccentric Flower:200908/Pushing Back Pushing Forward

An excellent post from Abi Sutherland over at Making Light which you should read in its entirety. Abi has seen American health care first hand, and she has seen it in England, and she has seen it in the Netherlands, and as far as I'm concerned she's absolutely right.

Italics mine.

And if anyone trots out the "Oh, but you'll have to wait forever for health care" line, I shall take a Nerf bat to their heads. In case you hadn't noted, very few people are getting immediate treatment here too (of course part of that is that emergency rooms are currently going broke and insane trying to handle people who go to ERs even for routine care because they can't afford a doctor). I generally can manage to get to see my primary care doctor with two to three weeks' lead time. I am one of the lucky ones - my doctor works at an operation which is primarily for university employees and is therefore not hugely oversubscribed.

What I'm saying is, while socialized medicine has notable faults, no one has yet managed to state any hard evidence that we would be in any way worse off under such a system, and the evidence is mounting that in many ways we would be much better for it. However, I do not realistically expect health care reform that matters in this country, not until we riot against the insurance companies and raze Hartford.*

* This is intended as deliberately excessive rhetoric.

You can tell who's been in this situation before: Just ask each reader if they find this strip funny or painful. I find it painful.

Which reminds me that I will be spending a fair chunk of the next six days intermittently thrusting myself into rooms full of loud, poorly socialized, and occasionally poorly-bathed humans. (If you are one of the people I want to see there, those statements do not apply to you, of course.)

It is important for me to do battle with the collective known as SF fandom once every few years; it strengthens the blood. However, fan behavior is such that I don't usually attend panels unless someone with a will of iron is moderating them, so if you are looking for me there (and I can't imagine you would be), the panels are not the place to look. I attend the masquerade reliably because I like the pretty costumes, but apart from that I mostly wander around, or go find good food (I could spend the rest of my life dining in Montreal and not work through my list), explore the town, or hang out in the hotel pool. I would normally say to look for the extremely tall gentleman wearing a skirt, but I'm old and tired and probably will not bring dress-up clothes on this trip, especially since most of the people who would appreciate them will not be there.

And for you folks who will not be there: I'll try to post a new photo today, but other than that, it's entirely possible there will be nothing here for a week. Or, perhaps I'll get ambitious and find I have something to post here from the con. Dunno. Just saying - if it is silent for a week, it doesn't mean I'm dead.