Denied: Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act

A classic for the annals of future tautological history (or non-history, as it goes):

Conservative lawmakers in a majority of states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates. The proposals would assert a state-based right for people to pay medical bills from their own pocketbooks [pay for it yourself if you cant afford it] and prohibit penalties against those who refuse to carry health insurance [dont require those who *can* buy health insurance to buy it, while requiring those who cant afford it to not take federal money to subsidize their non-purchase of what they cant buy]. [link]

Does this mean states and individuals will suddenly find medicare and medicaid, both programs that satisfy these proposed criteria, banned? The logical conclusion would be to deny states that pass the legislation access to medicaid and medicare, as they both would require people to pay from their own pockets, and not penalize people who dont pay into medicare and medicaid… ie, payroll taxes.

The dependence on negation-chains in such legislative proto-logic is a tried and true method for avoiding “non-natural seeming” (read: not understood) solutions and forcing dependencies onto psychological narratives. Clearly another perspective that, whether or not it is “in touch” or “out of touch” with “the people”, just highlights the human tendency to ignore basic simple science and math based problem/solution matrixes for a much more organic/psychological solution. Its one of those paradoxes of the unobservant. Somehow, a solution (X) will present itself as a distinct, literal contradiction to the solution (X) in any case where a psychological solution is taking precedence over a mathematically normalized solution. Somehow, it will save individuals money to both require them to pay out-of-pocket for medical expenses, and at the same time, require them to not take federal money to subsidize what they cant afford. End result? Dead people. But like the heroes of yore, isnt it better to die with independence, rather than live to fight another day? That math would work, but only if there are enough people still alive at the end of the day to be able to make that decision. Do the dead have choices?

It seems they can. Reminiscent of the latest “thinking” in terms of marketing Dante’s Inferno to the video gamer demographic:

“If you’re trying to make an action game, it’s thin,” Jonathan Knight, the game’s executive producer, said of the original text. “It’s Dante, who’s kind of passive, and he’s a poet and he’s philosophical. We had to take the bold step of saying, ‘How do we make this guy an action hero?’ ”

The Dante’s Inferno game, which Electronic Arts is releasing for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles on Feb. 9, is its own epic undertaking: an unapologetic attempt to build an entertainment franchise around a 700-year-old literary masterpiece. It comes after a yearlong marketing campaign that will culminate on Feb. 7 with a television commercial during the Super Bowl.[link]

Instead of just doing the actual creative work to make a seemingly “passive” perspective “active”, or an actual “solution” real if not “exciting”, just skip the hard work. Examples of so called ‘hard work’ on converting Dante to an exciting narrrative? Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. (Inferno in Paperback)

Inferno is based upon the hell described in Dante’s Inferno. However, it adds a modern twist to the story. The story is told in the first person by Allen Carpentier (né Carpenter), an agnostic science fiction writer who died in a failed attempt to entertain his fans at a Science fiction convention party. […] At first, as Allen and Benito travel through Hell, Allen tries to scientifically rationalize everything he sees, renaming his surroundings as ‘Infernoland’, a high-tech amusement park some thousand years in the future. It isn’t until he sees a man recover from incineration and his own leg heal from a compound fracture that he starts to actually believe that he is in Hell. [wikipedia]

Lack of imagination, meet your maker.

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