I just got off the phone with my dad. We were talking about a paper I'm writing on the Internet and politics. The upshot is that I need to do a better job talking about the before and after impact of the Internet. But then the discussion turned to how the Internet has affected the politics around health care reform.
Dad subscribes to various pro-life listservs. Someone on his listserv did a keyword search of those massive documents to find exactly how this legislation affected the provision of abortions. In the past, it might have taken much, much longer to locate that information. That individual used that listserv to broadcast that information to other pro-life activists, including my dad. Dad then went to the Bergen Record website and keyed in a letter to the editor, which is an act of political participation.
Meanwhile I missed Obama's talk last night (watched that dance show instead), so I'm going to watch his press conference on YouTube later this afternoon. I'm following the commentary from liberal (and some conservative) pundits on Twitter and the blogs. I'm following their links to various articles and commentary in mainstream papers. I may write a blog post on the topic.
As a result of all this new information, my dad and I will go our congressman's website, locate his e-mail address, and send him e-mails, which will probably cancel each other out.
Apt. 11d 
I’m in the middle of a heated convo on Facebook about whether Obama’s health care plan is socialist and whether it violates the 4th amendment (!). WTF, people. You bitch about Obama observing that the police had no right to be in Skip Gates’ house arresting him for yelling at police, and you don’t think that’s a 4th A issue, but heaven f*ing forbid we actually provide health care to everyone in the country, and *that* is a violation of the 4th A?
I seriously do not understand these people. I keep posting facts to explain why they are wrong, and they ignore those and say other things that are just as wrong. And they don’t seem to care. This is what political discourse has come to.
I miss the days when I used to argue about reproductive rights on Prodigy (back in 1992!). At least people made statements based on principles. At least everyone pretty much agreed on what was fact and what was a matter of interpretation. We could extend our shared understanding to different situations and different policies and disagree vehemently without my thinking to myself “What the hell planet are *you* on that you can say such a bizarre thing?”
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Wendy, do we need to send you the cartoon about someone being wrong on the internet?
http://xkcd.com/386/
I used to participate in usenet groups back in the olden days (wow, nearly 20years ago now), so I’ve gotten a lot of time to get used to the idea that there are a lot people I disagree with out there on the internets.
Has anyone else read the “experiment” on internet/newspaper news being done over at Slate?
http://www.slate.com/id/2223262/entry/2223263
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bj, thanks for reminding me. 🙂 I need to cool the hell down, huh. I’ve been having a bad day and I’m releasing stress by posting comments and ranting wherever I can. 🙂
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“I seriously do not understand these people.”
Meanwhile, I don’t understand anybody who is on fire for total autonomy over their reproductive organs, but also wants single payer, federally administered health care.
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I don’t see the contradiction, Amy. Probably because I still can’t see how a federally administered health care program violates privacy.
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Wendy wrote: Probably because I still can’t see how a federally administered health care program violates privacy.
I won’t speak for Amy P, but for me the common issue isn’t privacy, but who has decision-making power over my health. Is it me (possibly with the cooperation of my medical care provider and some non-medical person at my health insurance provider), or the government?
I think government involvement in social structure and personal life choices should be a last resort, not a first resort.
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“I don’t see the contradiction, Amy. Probably because I still can’t see how a federally administered health care program violates privacy.”
I actually like the idea of digitized medical records, but we need to procede very cautiously.
It’s not hard to imagine that under some future politically uncongenial administration that you might come to the notice of the powers that be, just as Joe the Plumber did and that unpleasantness (illegal viewing and leaking of files) might follow, just as it did in JtP’s case. There have long been allegations of politically motivated tax audits, so disclosing medical information or messing with the health care arrangements of political enemies would be just one further step. Think about all the politicians that you like least and imagine them with access to your and your family’s health information.
That said, privacy wasn’t really what I was thinking about. I meant that it is highly implausible to think that you can have medical autonomy over your body when you are not directly paying the bills.
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“I meant that it is highly implausible to think that you can have medical autonomy over your body when you are not directly paying the bills. ”
Can you give an example of this from both sides (i.e., what could the state do that insurance companies can’t do?)? Because I just don’t see it.
Of course, there is always an underlying fear of state power interfering with individual autonomy. I have a healthy fear of it, and 8 years of Bush did nothing to dispel it.
That said, I think what seems to work best in the US is when the government actively regulates private markets. If we take the regulations away, businesses go crazy (see subprime mortgage crisis, AIG, Wall Street, etc). If we have state control over businesses, that’s not very good either. I think the problem is that markets are not inherently self-regulating mainly because of corruption and stupidity and greed. When the state intervenes to ensure a certain level of fairness and opportunity, then we have a system that functions most effectively.
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I said “single payer, federally administered health care,” not government-regulated health care. Those are two different critters.
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