Social Networks and the spread of false information

Marie, I'm not suggesting someone "die" instead of obtaining treatment. I am saying that I worked and used daycare the whole time my kids were growing up, and I don't know why you think I should pay my insurance bills plus yours, when you chose to stay home. Your reasons for staying home are irrelevant to me.

Based on your post, I'm inferring that you're still not working at a place that offers benefits, but rather, you're trying to make a living from writing. If that's the case, then, well, same thing. I'm not responsible for your choices.

To hell with anyone who made such a comment, Marie. Your story is a perfect example of the need for universal health care. It also says a lot about the outrageous cost of visiting a hospital for five hours and the price of prescription drugs.
You made the right decision about caring for your sons rather than working. The idea that the care of children should be handed off to a day care center or babysitter so the mother can earn money to buy more stuff is another atrocity resulting from World War II.
The idea that anyone should have to humiliate themself in order to stay alive is beyond belief, yet that's the way it is. Unfortunately many Americans feel that's the way it should be because they think it couldn't happen to them. How wrong they are.
A couple of minor events and you could be in the same situation, LC. If you really believe all the things you write, and it appears that you do, then you are a sad excuse for a human being. Are you also in favor of shutting down VA care because you didn't start the wars?

Dick Stodghill wrote:

The idea that the care of children should be handed off to a day care center or babysitter so the mother can earn money to buy more stuff is another atrocity resulting from World War II.

Buy more stuff? You mean like health insurance?

Exactly, LC. No mother should be in the position of choosing between properly caring for her children or buying health insurance.

LC,

I'm glad you post here. When I read some of your responses, those like the one you just made to Marie, I feel glad about the choices I made when I was under similar circumstances to Marie's. I understand her position, because I've been there. I grew up pretty comfortably, and if I had not been through the divorce, and raising my children as a single parent, knowing the struggle to make ends meet each month, I might still be saying the kinds of things you are saying here on this thread and others.

I'm thinking now of Poe's short story, "The Masque of the Red Death," where the prince and his courtiers chose to hide themselves away from the plague while the rest of the people grew sick and died. It didn't work. In the end, they all died, too.

We are all interrelated. This was a thing that poet James Russell Lowell understood, when he wrote "Stanzas on Freedom." The sentiment is still true today, I think, when it comes to the current health-care situation.

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/7182/

Ann

Alj ...I'm on my way to work, but when I have more time to play on message boards (instead of paying taxes for people's charity care), I'll respond to your pompous post.

It's good to be British.

Erm, could we get back on topic? Thanks.

I wish people were covered on an equal basis. Maybe my mother and father would have survived their situations. My mother was a navy wife and the navy denied to see her because my father's policy had run out. Mother died in '96.

I come from a family that barely could afford my benefits and policy. I have been on the verge of death many times and if it wasn't for a "charitable" doctor I would have died.

It is too bad we cannot do this in this country without looking like communists.

As for company leaks etc etc, maybe they should tell there employees to keep raps on things. Especially when it comes to the music industry, I could, not that I have, download songs not even released yet.

True, but we do eventually get back on topic. We have had several pages of off-topic posts. If you want to discuss health care, start a new thread. Thank you.

Dear Marie,

You said it very well.

About 12 years ago, I felt as if my heart was being poked with a needle every once in a while. I went to the clinic for the poor people and they had the equipment for an ekg. The ekg showed some odd blips and the clinic made an appointment for me with a cardiologist. A couple of days later, the cardiologist called to get my insurance information. When I stated that I did not have insurance, I had hoped I could pay them myself, she said these tests are expensive. The least expensive one being 3500.00 and there would be a lot more tests than that one needed. They suggested I go to the county clinic that referred me there in the first place.

It was not until last year, when medicare was available to me that I finally got the tests that were needed to decide I had leaking heart valves.

My situation was not unique. Many people go on with their lives without medical treatment that they need.

You are right about Ann, too. She has never been pompous a minute of her life!

Love,
Betty

Shelagh,

I think this is on topic. Social networks have been spreading false information on may things, including health care.

People are dying here because of our health care system, and not from poor medical care itself but how it is paid for. Those of us who care about others are numerous, but others are shouting false information and we're being drowned out.

And it is a writing issue, since that is all many of us can do to change this situation.

Ann, I love the lyrics and your comments.

Marie, in your personal story were some universal facts that many experience, including the hospitals writing off treatment. The system is broken for all, even those with insurance.

Dick, yes almost everyone out there is going to get sick someday.

Carol

Yes, Carol, I agree about the health care issue. However, the thread is about the spread of information by emails through social networks. Posting false information on forums/social networks is a problem, I agree. Sending that information out to mislead people is a step further. This thread was about the spread of false/misleading information. It very quickly became a political discussion about health care.

I started the thread and can't really join in because we have both a national health system and private insurance (those who pay twice, once in taxes and then again in insurance payments).

The government would probably be glad to see parts of the NHS privatised but the electorate would not vote for it and it would suicide for whichever party made that choice.

I don't know where the new thread is. My lovely stepmother, the kindest soul I know, babysat for her niece for all her life with no social security paid on her behalf and for a pittance in wages. When my dad died at 59, that was her only income from her spousal portion of his social security. She qualified for a rent subsidy apartment that had one bedroom and a sitting room, but looked outside on a ground floor. I would visit her and she would offer me tea and she looked well, just a little thin. I would take her out for lunch, and she had a hearty appetite. One day, waiting to take her to lunch, I went to the fridge for a drink. All that was in the fridge was a pitcher of water and cans of generic slim fast.

As it turned out, to buy the medicin she needed, she figured out she could survive on two or three cans of that drink and water. Yes, I guess she made the choice with no education to babysit and didn't put aside something from nothing for social security. She still had a right to the dignity of a meal. The high cost of medicin prevented that.

Okay, go start the right thread. I'm out.

Dear Dk,
I am so sorry about your stepmom. There are a lot of kind hearts like hers floating on this earth. In that way they hyjack the status quo. It is important that people can step away from the rules and be human when it does not make them richer, or smarter. It does make them a little unique.

I agree with Shelagh about the vast amount of bull that is slung around the internet at facts. The trouble is that a person who looks up hydroponic niches, will find that most of the people are doing what the sellers of hydroponic systems are pushing as the way to get rich. It is a facade and a flim flam to sell more hydroponic stackers.

Selling tomatoes that every big farmer is growing is not the way. It is a blatant lie, and strawberries is the next lie.

It comes down to sifting it out, the truth, the lies and having a little smarts that are not just a reflex reaction.

I feel slammed and damned by the hyberbole.

God bless your lovely stepmother, DK. I mean that. I do not know what or where I would be without Barbara Anderson, foster mom.

Love,
Betty