In between jobs, I had the "pleasure" to work a lovely establishment called Bob Evans. If you are not familiar with the restaurant, it was an eatery that labeled itself as "country home-cooking." You know the type. Over-sized entrees include country fried steak, biscuits and sausage gravy, chicken pot pie, and the like. Combine that with a tacky store in the front selling jars of gravy, cheap picture frames with apples on them, and discontinued Beenie Babies from 10 years ago, and you are immediate transported to a cheap knock-off of Little House on the Prairie as soon as you step foot in the door. The purpose of this blog is not to knock Bob Evans (their chicken pot pie and biscuit dinners are deadly but delicious), but to make a ridiculous, far-out analogy.
While working on "The Farm" (my pet name for Bob Evans), I would be astonished when patrons would order the stir-fry dinner. Why? Because do you honestly believe a restaurant that serves a massive bowl of mashed potatoes with chicken noodles soup on top to hundreds of customers a night would make a good stir-fry? Of course not.
This leads me to my analogy (well kinda an analogy). As I would not trust Bob Evans to make an Asian stir-fry, why would anyone trust the American Family Association to analyze health reform? You are just setting yourself up for an embarrassing failure.
I have monitored the AFAs opposition to HCR for a while, but this reason to be against "MussoliniCare" is the desperate of the desperate. Now, there are many legitimate reasons why groups would be still against the newly enacted health reform law. The costs, increased government regulation on private industry, and changes to the Medicare Advantage program. But, as the Huffington Post reported, although a majority of Americans are still against the HCR bill, a majority are willing to give it a chance.
So what has the AFA concocted to convince readers HCR is going to cause the destruction of America? Health reform penalizes marriage and encourages "fornication" and an "immoral lifestyle."
How? Because youths under 26 who are married are not permitted to be on their parents insurance plans while those who are not married are allowed. According to Brian Fischer (the genius who said Hitler used gays in his armies because we are so savage and would kill people without remorse. Click here for that masterpiece), "If you'd prefer to just shack up, however, and engage in fornication, well, that's just dandy. Mom and Dad can continue to pick up the tab for you with our full blessing and subsidize your health care and your immoral lifestyle."
It goes on. The blog by Fischer quotes someone named Wendy Lynn who starts out by saying "Yup, that's right. If you were fired up about the gay marriage issue, you should be mad as heck at this." No clue why gay marriage was brought into to this, but hey, if you have no argument, just blame the gays. She then asks (wink wink) whether HCR will cause couples to not to get married (heaven forbid).
Essentially, the AFA has run out of ideas to criticize HCR, and has made a "claim" that one provision in the bill will lead to unmarried couples. Oh yeah, and through the gays under the bus too.
First, it is true that married couples who are under 26 cannot be placed on their parents' health insurance plans. However, that changes in 2014 when ANYONE under 26 can use their parents' plan. That, conveniently, was not mentioned in the AFA piece.
So yes, we have 4 years of a fornication and immoral lifestyle bonanza ahead of us!
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This is not a new thing, so it makes even less sense that they would get all worked up about it now - you can't simultaneously be married and be a dependent of someone else. My car insurance, an entirely different thing, either went when I was 23 or I got married - whichever came first. It has been like that since I was put on my parents' insurance policy at 16. Now I have my own.
ReplyDeleteI would argue it SHOULD be like that; you can't be a child and an adult at the same time. And you have to be an adult to be married (though maybe some of these folks would like to go back to the days when 13-year-old girls regularly died in childbirth thanks to their 30+-year-old husbands).
Of course, single-payer would take care of this particular problem, but I guess since I want people to be healthy I am just a terrible, terrible human being.