A while ago, a friend sent me a link to this site.
The subject of the email, which contained no other text, was simply "Please sign this to protect our healthcare!"
 
Frankly, that was the last straw. I'm constantly receiving mass emails from people who are understandably panicked and scared over misinformation being spread about by even more panicky and scared people who are also receiving misinformation through outlets that, frankly, should not be trusted. Hey, guys, who has the most to lose through healthcare reform? Insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and their ilk. You've been brainwashed into fighting against your own interests! You've been convinced to blame each other and yourselves rather than the greedy sacks in power who, much as you might were you in the same position, only want to maintain their power and wealth, not help YOU.
 
Anyway, I wrote this email back to everyone on the mailing list:

Hey, everyone. I don''t know who you are, but pass THIS along instead.
Take it from someone who hasn''t had steady health insurance for years: I'm sick of this panicky stupid propaganda bullshit. I had an abnormal PAP smear a few years back It was the kind of test result that, 50% of the time, means you have cancer. I tried to get on private insurance. Several companies refused to cover me because, and I quote, "it means you have cancer." They also wouldn't cover me because I had previously been diagnosed with depression. When I finally did find a much-too-expensive plan to cover me, I went to the doctor for an annual PAP and a prescription for birth control. The company refused to cover the new *annual* test because, and I quote again, "it's a preexisting condition." What, having a damn vagina is a preexisting condition? Oh, and the $25 birth control prescription wasn't covered, even with the $20 copay. In the end, we canceled the insurance because they never covered a single thing. My elbow is broken right now, but my attitude is, hey, it'll just have to get better on its own, 'cause I'm uninsured and can't afford the doctor visit. I also have severe anxiety issues, but can''t get help, because the second I do, it''ll go on my medical record and insurance companies will reject me for it.
I got pregnant a year and a half ago. I got on Medicaid. Guess what happened? They covered EVERYTHING. I didn't even have a copay. It was like magic. I went to the doctor when I felt funny, they took care of me, and I didn''t pay anything. I wasn''t afraid to get checked out for anything. My baby is covered for the first year of his life, and when he suddenly got a fever, I drove him straight to the doctor with no questions asked (and no copay). Like I said... MAGIC.
Truthfully, I think you've got to be just absolutely stupid to think this scare-tactic garbage is okay. Are you afraid of the whole "they wait in lines for rationed health care in Canada!" party line? Let me tell you something. AT LEAST THERE'S A LINE. And furthermore, there''s a LONGER one here in the US, ESPECIALLY if you don't have good insurance. And even if you have insurance, there are lines for everything. What do you think organ donation is about? Hospitals decide every day who lives and who dies. Who gets the liver, the 40-year-old mother of two, or the 50-year-old alcoholic? Who needs the MRI more? Who needs the CAT scan? It's rationed out on a daily basis. And do your homework and find out how often health insurance companies screw over even people in good health. Never heard the one about an ambulance trip that wasn't covered because it wasn't preapproved? Don't be foolish. Private companies with money to make care a lot less about your health than the government, who doesn't dare refuse to cover your preventive care. I have a friend who worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield (Regence) and saw first hand how often they screw their "customers". He himself had to wait until he couldn't ignore the lump in his neck anymore, went to the hospital and found out he had Hodgkin's Lymphoma. And ironically, the insurance company he worked for wouldn't even cover that. They called it (you guessed it!) a "preexisting condition."
You send your kids to a public school. You use public safety in the form of police and firemen. You drive on public roads. You make use of taxpayer-funded SOCIALIST systems on a regular basis. You benefit from socialism every single day. Even your doctor, the one who has to charge you WAY too much because the health insurance companies are screwing him too (and who has to charge extra to compensate for all the uninsured people who had to wait until their cancer caused them to bleed from the anus before finally going to the emergency room and then couldn't pay the hospital), went to public school. Chances are he even made use of the socialist systems in place to send people to college, like government-subsidized loans and the PELL grant.
Why in the hot holy hell would you suddenly draw the line at making our country HEALTHY????