State health insurance

LaBelle finds this comment at Mahablog. This Canadian has hit the nail on the head.

There's also the labour issue. I can tell my boss to go fuck himself and not worry about my son losing his health care. And I think this is the real reason the powers that be are so dead set against providing universal health care in the USA, they know they'll lose one of their best leashes on their employees. Can't have workers getting uppity, that's not the American way.

To be sure, this very thing keeps people working at or below poverty level wages where I am (soon to be un-) employed. Gotta have that insurance for their kids. And they put up with the most outrageous, borderline (and sometimes over the line) illegal treatment from their bosses.

I myself was always too "uppity", kids or no kids, but my kids suffered for it - not in terms of health care (although they never had preventive maintenance nor dental/optometrist visits) - to put up with boss abuse very long, but I only ever had one small child at a time, and I never accumulated anything - never owned a home - always lived on the edge as far as finances were concerned. But I certainly understand how people don't want to take those kinds of risks. And my kids were healthy. Some folks have no choice. Years ago, one job I had, the director actually stated that the best choice for an employee was a single mother with children (of which there were several of us in that insurance company office) because she couldn't afford to quit, no matter how she got treated. He was right, but I quit anyway.

Finally, I scraped my way through a bachelor and a master degree, as a single mother - to get a professional position. You'd think that would alleviate some of that attitude. You'd be wrong.

The bigoted die-hard Republicans on an arborists' forum I quit visiting constantly squawk about how they are so much better than their hired labor contemporaries, because they have what it takes (to wit: the smarts and the balls) to be self-employed or small business owners, and menial task laborers should get off their lazy asses and do the work it takes to become similarly self-sufficient. (I always thought they should feel lucky and blessed for their situation, and have some compassion for those not so fortunate. Silly me.) They could never answer my question of how everyone could be self-employed, and how they would then get their labor accomplished, where they'd find the manufactured equipment they need for their work, or where they'd find the manufactured products they sell. Seemed to me their incomes would come to a screeching halt if it weren't for those laborers. And they surely wouldn't have wanted to clean the toilets at their businesses themselves.

But that's just a guess.