You Say Choice, I Hear Big Fucking Hassle

I caught some of Bill Frist’s walkbacks on healthcare reform on MSNBC this morning, just enough to catch the usual claptrap about “consumer choice”, yada yada.

This is a popular catchphrase in the healthcare debate but let me say right now: when it comes to healthcare, I don’t want “choice.”

Or, to be more precise, I don’t want a “choice among insurance plans.” That is absolutely the last thing I want to deal with right now. You think I have the time or energy to research a whole nations’ worth of insurance plans to find the one right for me? Who wants to deal with that?

And you know what comes with the “free market”? Advertising.

Look, I’ve got enough hassles in my day to day life right now. I can assure you, the very last thing I want is to be inundated with more spam e-mail, magazine advertising, spam-Tweets, direct mail pieces, billboards, telemarketing phone calls, TV ads, etc. etc. about this or that insurance plan.

I do not want that. Indeed, I want you people to leave me the fuck alone.

When some Republican says “choice” what I hear is right-wing speak for free markets and de-regulation and free market fairies. Woo hoo. But every other time we’ve been offered that what we get is a huge fucking hassle. And that’s not what I want.

I do not want a free market solution. All I want--all I want--let me repeat, loud and clear, ALL I WANT--is to be able to choose my own doctor and not be reamed through the checkbook in the process.

Can we do that? Just those two little things?

Ya think?