He also makes a distinction between people with pre-existing conditions "through no fault of their own" (whom he says society "should" care for) and those who have them because they didn't take care of their bodies. Those kinds of moral distinctions have no place in health care and can cause tremendous amounts of harm.

How Calvinistic of him... where God determines your lot in life and you should be grateful for it and accept it....You're poor and sick because God says so.

There's some weird congenital condition that seems to afflict republican congresspeople: having no hearts whatsoever and very little brains.

But that's a condition that could be changed if they wanted to change.

If you can't use health insurance to punish people, what's the point of having insurance at all?

Not only should insurance companies not be allowed to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, they should be removed from the process altogether. Medicare (minus parts a, b, c, d, etc. which are simply the insurance companies coming around with their hands out for more money) for all!

@5 I curse the puritans every morning.

Conservatives spend almost all their lives with their tongues up billionaires' asses, so it's probably not surprising that when they do speak, nothing but shit comes out.

If Billy hadn't been having all that premarital and insestual sex (he was way up in his mom's pussy) then god wouldn't have punished him with heart failure. It's obviously his own fault and he deserves to be denied insurance.

Religious Republicans (redundant, I know) want it both ways: on the one hand they insist that ALL life is sacred and the innocent unborn must never be allowed to be aborted under any circumstances. But, as soon as that "innocent" passes out of the birth canal it becomes a wretched sinner who must immediately be baptized in the Holy Spirit and live according to the precepts of Christianity (preferably a fundamentalist, Protestant denomination), or else it can be denied the basic human dignity of access to affordable health care, because it has made "unhealthy lifestyle choices", which apparently start by neglecting to immediately believe in the correct version of aforementioned religious dogma, in which case it deserves to die and presumably suffer eternal torment in the pits of Hell for its transgressions.

@2, exactly! So if someone comes in to their Dr with lung cancer and they're a smoker then we should just let them die. If they just got lung cancer without smoking then we help them. Then of course people will just lie to their Dr. How is this supposed to be helpful?

Mommy Party, Daddy Party. Mommy just wants to take care of everyone, but she doesn't understand that there are limits. Daddy gets to judge and hand out the punishments, because he makes all the money.

@2, @11 yes and no. Health care should be accessible to all, but it is very expensive to offer it to everyone. There's simply not enough money for everyone to have health care on the level of Billy Kimmel for every issue that arises until medicine is no longer able to keep them alive.

We should prioritize basic care for all over resource-intensive care for those with pre-existing conditions that are expensive to treat. And those who are at "no fault" should have access to resources over those who've knowingly chosen to engage in risky behavior in non-work settings.

Sorry, drunk motorcyclists. You'll have to buy your own feeding tube.

The Republican obsession with who deserves what and never having to pay a dime for anything that fails to make that arbitrary cut is a kind of madness. Forget about the lack of empathy and obvious immorality; It requires a complete break from the reality of how systems--and society at large--functions. It's amazing conservatives get away with going around calling people "snowflakes" when they are clearly the ones who believe, to a socially psychotic degree, in their own specialness. The fluidity of the English language has rarely been more apparent.

@4 no heart and small brains sounds like a pre-existing condition to me.

@13,

That's all true, but it also goes deeper than that. Governance and business in this country have become fundamentally flawed. Most Americans do want universal healthcare, but we never get it because the government in charge of representing our interests, do not represent our interests. They've been bought. They represent the interests of their big name donors. Probably why people in this country are so outraged and don't feel government does anything for them... because it doesn't.

Lack of First World healthcare for all is just a symptom of our entire broken system.

@14 Wrong. There *is* enough money for everyone to have health care virtually on Kimmel's level -- at least within the USA. Every other OECD 20 country provides as much healthcare to every citizen as they can use for as long as it will keep them alive (not ineffective stuff and some waits for not important stuff). USA already spends more *per person* than any other country.

Of course, we can't afford it the way we pay for it now -- 30% overhead to insurance companies, drug companies charge what they like. The actual "price" of the labor (docs, nurses), physical plant (hospitals), and products (devices, knowledge - education, drugs) is low enough we could cover all with similar quality and no more total expense.

Drugs and medical devices cost a tiny fraction to manufacture of their retail price. It's not like an iPhone with 30% markup, it's 1000% markup or more. Most of the research to find new drugs and treatments is done by university professors and grad students who don't make $100 million dollar pharma CEO salaries.

@14,

And those who are at "no fault" should have access to resources over those who've knowingly chosen to engage in risky behavior in non-work settings.

I hope you're being sarcastic there. Who gets to decide what's "risky behavior?"

What a mess. These folk think bringing religion into every discussion is aok, and that god sits right above the USA. So it's all His plan.

I just want the same health care that as those examples of good living, the U.S. Congress.

Who decides who "didn't take care of themselves?"

@14 thinks it may be people on motorcycles. Is that with or without helmets?
Smoking? Drinking? Obesity (and how fat is too fat)? Too much sun (skin cancer)?

Yes, there are people who don't take care of their bodies. Sometimes it's a stressful life. Sometimes it's lack of food options (food deserts). Sometimes it's laziness and not giving a shit.

But that's insurance. Everyone puts in and it all evens out mostly because someday, someone we all know and care about, will need major care.

if we weren't such scaredy cats who need to have the biggest military on the planet by a factor of 10, then yes, we could afford healthcare.

but we've chosen our priorities: the Military Industrial Complex.

note that the biggest rah rahs for the GOP/MIC are vets, who get gubmint healthcare and whinge about it non-stop. meanwhile pols bend over backwards to jack them off, thanking them incessantly for "protecting our freedom". from what, i've never understood. The Pashtun? Iraqis? Panamanians? Grenadans?