Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Privelege verses Right

Since the GOP and Tea Party love to play with words and history, I thought we should do a little thinking.
Corporations are now people whereas most people think you need to be HUMAN and alive to be a people. Obviously the GOP disagrees.
How did we get here? Well, the government has been playing loose with language for a long time even thought these guys are lawyers for the most part and should know better.
Let's take insurance. Bottom line is that insurance is insurance. The GOP added the required insurance coverage to "Obamacare" and now are suffering from amnesia and trying to have the entire bill thrown out on that technicality. The government cannot require you to carry insurance. AH, but they have been doing that for years.
Personal Injury Protection or PIP is health insurance. If you elect, you can drop PIP if you have adequate health insurance to cover any injuries you might sustain in an accident. I did it for years. Bet you didn't know that. It was only in the last few years that Florida made it totally mandatory after 20 or more years of it being elective. So, exactly how can the government of Florida justify forcing us have a accident health insurance policy and file a law suit against "Obamacare" based on it forcing us to have insurance????
But, let's move on. Florida is a HUGE state. It is comprised of residential areas isolated from commercial areas which are accessible only by major highways. Driving is taking your life in your hands down here. Now, one person has suggested to avoid car insurance...since I didn't have to buy a car...I should ride a bicycle. Every day someone on a bicycle is killed down here and that is now exaggeration. Two young girls were killed crossing the street two days ago. A firefighter was killed riding his bike in mainly residential area. Several of my friends have been hit multiple times but fortunately survived. BUT, the bottom line is you simply can't from here to there on a bike and we have the worst public transportation that is being but by our GOP Tea Party Governor as we speak. There are no buses to get you most places. Not only that but there are restrictions on how much you can carry on a bus so you might need 3 or 4 trips to the grocery on a bus just to make up for one trip in a car if you could find a bus running there.
The next question is how do you get to work when most business are isolated in "industrial parks", off main 6 or 8 lane highways with no bike lanes or sidewalks and most everyone lives at least 10 miles from their work?
Now I am going to ask you if owning a car is a necessity or a privilege? And don't say take a taxi because no one can afford one of those. They will actually charge you by the person down here. Two people = twice the fare and by the bag! Every time the government wants to take your rights away, they call them a privelege. Remember that people.
We have been swallowing this brown sticky smelly stuff for most of our lives because no one stops to think. We accept everything in soundbites or tweets without ever stopping to think what the REAL alternative is.
The bottom line is that every uninsured person costs YOU and ME MONEY the moment they get sick and they COST US A LOT OF MONEY because our tax dollars wind up paying the full retail cost for their care not the lower negotiated price the insurance company pays.
NOW FOR A DOSE OF REALITY. The only people with car insurance down here are the good drivers. Everyone I know who gets hit, gets hit by an uninsured driver and yet, the state is supposed to confiscate your tag if you don't have insurance. The problem is, their great uncle three times removed who has 16 cars has the insurance and doesn't know they are driving the car without a license even though they paid him so much a week to drive the car. Guess what, there is no law to punish old great uncle over there so once again, You and I pay through the nose for something we probably don't need because it is going to be useless to us.
If you have a new car that is financed, your insurance is useless unless you managed to pay through the nose for a "gap policy". That is a policy that covers the amount your car depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot verses the amount of the loan you just took out. So if you total your car on the way out of the lot, you are still going to wind up paying the full amount of the loan or about 5 grand or more over what the insurance policy you just bought will cover. Did anyone ever bother to tell you that??? Heck no. I found out when a friend totaled her new car. She had Gap insurance but they made her jump through hoops to collect on it.
I trust the government about as far as my ancestors the Blackfoot trust it.....

No comments: