Do you like having cops???

Because, that's socialism. Government provided law enforcement.

You know what else are socialist?

• Military 
• Firefighters 
• Medicare 
• Medicaid 
• Social security 
• Healthcare (via emergency room, for people who can't pay) 
• Public libraries 
• Public schools 
• Government college grants, scholarships, and loans 
• Roads (except toll roads) 
• The FDA 
• The EPA 
• Sewage treatment 
• FEMA 
• Parks 
• Zoning laws 
• Airport security 

Thanks for that, Joshua.

So, this health care bill. Has anyone actually read it? Like, cover to cover? How about just looked at some bullet points? Yes? No? Well I'm going to do the latter right now:

Brief highlights of the HR Bill:

The bill will require all citizens obtain "minimal essential coverage" for themselves and dependents.

• We do this for car insurance. We have, up until now, put the insuring of a vehicle above our own health. Yeah, that makes total sense. 

If an individual elects not to do so, they will be required to pay an escalating fine up to $2,085.

• OK, one of the things that people have complained about in regards to the health bill is that they don't want to be paying for the low lives who refuse to work and feel entitled to everything as they suck of the teet that is welfare and so forth. This part of the bill sort of proves that won't be happening, yes? As it stands, I don't know how realistic this is. It certainly can't help the economy in the short term, that's for certain. 

Besides expanding coverage, such a mandate will, in theory, increase the number of healthy, young and otherwise uninsured individuals into the health care market.

• I can't argue with that logic. Eventually it will increase good health. 

Because young people are typically less expensive to cover, insurance companies could recover the profits lost from no longer being able to discriminate based on preexisting conditions.

• Also sounds like pretty basic logic. I don't know the actual stats and numbers this is based on though. As an aside, why were we EVER OK with with insurance companies being able to discriminate based on preexisting conditions? 

The bill also offers subsidies to low-income households to purchase health insurance.

• This has everything to do with my personal convictions about helping those less fortunate than myself, but I wouldn't mind seeing what the qualifications are for this. Do you need to make under $20,000 a year? What? 

Subsidies would be allocated on a sliding scale – individuals with higher incomes qualifying for less help.

• Ohhhhhhh. See? I spoke too soon. Yeah, I support this theory, I really do. I mean, trust me, nothing pissed me off more than when I walked into an apartment complex with my cousin (who makes minimum wage) and they told me that based on MY salary (>30k a year) we didn't qualify to live there because they're apart of affordable housing and we made TOO MUCH money. But, I have no doubt that some single mother without a college education making less money than I has probably benefited from this system in someway and I just do not have a problem with that. 

The bill creates "exchanges" that would allow individuals unable to obtain insurance through their employers a competitive marketplace to purchase affordable health coverage.

• That... that kinda sounds like capitalism. Marketplace? Competitive? Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong. And shouldn't I have that right, anyway? The ability to tell my employers coverage to "screw off" if I can find a better deal elsewhere? 

Taking effect immediately, children will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until age 26, and businesses with less than 100 employees will be eligible for tax credits of up to 50 percent of insurance premiums.

• Well, I'm already allowed to stay on my mother's plan until I'm 25, but the fact that they're making this steady across the board is pretty nice. And tax credits to small businesses sounds groovy. 

Businesses with fewer than 50 employees will not be required to offer health insurance.

• Huh. Interesting. I actually have no concept of whether or not this is good or bad or neither. I assume this will help the small business save money? It might also screw over their employees in a very real way if they can't get insurance through that competitive marketplace. 

However, a firm that does not offer health insurance but employs more than 50 people will most likely be required to offer health insurance to all employees or pay a substantial penalty of $2,500 per worker.

• Ah ha. 

Also, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that "enacting both pieces of legislation—H.R. 3590 and the reconciliation proposal—would produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010–2019 period as result of changes in direct spending and revenues. That figure comprises $124 billion in net reductions deriving from the health care and revenue provisions and $19 billion in net reductions deriving from the education provisions. CBO has not completed an estimate of the potential impact of the legislation on discretionary spending, which would be subject to future appropriation action."



Curious.

You know what isn't curious though?

Associating universal health care with communism... especially since the following countries (non of which are communists or absolute monarchies) have universal health care. Some for long periods of time (such as our neighbors to the north, which have had a universal health care system since the 1960s.) For a list of countries by their system of government, go HERE.

Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

COMMUNISTS. All of you.

Apparently.
According to people on Facebook who have no real concept of what either socialism or communism is.

Seriously, until Sunday, the United States was the only industrialized country that had no universal health care system.

Why doesn't that embarrass us?