Face to face with America's right wing health care paranoiacs

Soooo... there my fiancee and I are, having a Saturday morning breakfast at a local diner, and no sooner do I shake some Tabasco on my omelette then I overhear one of those conversations that must be challenged. I prefer not to have unchallenged fascism with my breakfast.

A 40-ish couple is standing about 8 feet from us at the counter, talking to the senior citizen next to us in worried theater tones about health care. Actually it's almost all her talking, and really what she's trying to do is scare the living crap out of the old man, and by extension anyone within earshot, with agit-prop of the lowest order.

After mentioning a few times that she "works in health insurance," so, like, she would know this sort of thing, and, I suppose in her feeble mind, this is a trustworthy profession, she starts telling the old guy - and I swear this is damn near verbatim - that "there are a lot of countries in Europe where they ask if you want to die when you turn 80."

Immediately I know who I'm dealing with, the gibbering fucknuts who comprise the only barrier between our beloved Christian nation and Chairman Abdul Hussein Obama's evil masterplan of soshoolized medhisunn. But with the help of Sean Hannity and Jesus - in that order - they will valiantly defeat any attempt for working people to see a proctologist while the tumor can be removed in time.

The old man responds "They kill you at 80?"

Heck, why not notch it up a bit? In for a dime, in for a dollar.

Health insurance bitch responds, "Yes, they kill you at 80. They ask you how you want to die."

At this point hubby helpfully adds, "They do some math [this concept alone must blow their minds like a Pink Floyd laser show at the planetarium], and figure it's cheaper to kill you than help you."

Health insurance twat adds, "Yeah, they just kill you. They ask you how you want to die. I'm not sure which countries, I forget... yeah... a lot of countries in Europe, I forget which ones, they kill you at 80." Right wingers generally forget the specifics of their facts, which is in almost all cases because they aren't facts and therefore have no details.

This is all I can stands, and I can't stands no more. My tea hasn't even kicked in yet, this is way too early in the day to start fighting Hitler's learning disabled great-niece.

In a few seconds I'm contemplating throwing some rational stats at her about how the US is the industrialized world's health care shit puddle, or if I should just be Angry Guy and tell her to shut her brownshirt face while people are trying to eat. I contemplate briefly asking her to name one of the countries she suspects might have a Soylent Green program in place, or if she's ever been to Europe, or if she knows anyone who's ever been to Europe, or in fact if she is in any way familiar with Europe outside of their international hit "The Final Countdown."

I decide that at this hour, to maximize the ridicule of her idea for anyone within earshot, the way to go is hyperbole and sarcasm.

I look over, smile, make eye contact and announce "Fifty! I heard about this too, in Europe they kill you when you reach 50. It's cheaper."

I'm not yet sure where I'm going with this, and it's going to depend on her reaction, which I assume will be that I must be lowballing the death age, and then the absurdist haggling may begin, hopefully leading to some unscrambling of her pea brain's cognitive dissonance.

She smiles back and steps a few steps toward me, immediately recognizing an ally. "Yeah, I thought I heard that, I wasn't sure if the number was 80 or 50." Y'know, in nice even increments of 30 years... very easy to confuse.

I am dumbfounded. Now, still chewing eggs, staring three feet into the dead-behind-the-eyes fish-stare of the terminally ignorant, I repeat, smiling, "Yep, in Europe they KILL you at age FIFTY, right?"

"Yes, that's it, they save money by killing you at fifty. And they're gonna start-"

Me, "Uh, you aren't in any way familiar with the concept of irony..?"

Her, "Yea-, uhhh..."

"You actually believed me when I said they kill people in Europe at 50? You think I'm serious?"

I don't hear exactly what she says next, because at this point I can't pretend not to be pissed off any longer. My fiancee says something about how she would naturally be spreading lies as a health insurance provider, hubby is gibbering some Rush Limbaugh crap, and I pretty much yell "You are the dumbest person I have ever met!" which draws even more attention to our area.

In fairness, she is likely not the dumbest person I have ever met, because babies don't know shit yet. Babies aside, she's down there.

Hubby starts clutching her and saying something about how "it's not very nice" to say that and that I'm "not a very nice person." It was like being verbally assaulted by Ned Flanders. I also love how scaring an old man shitless about the government helping him see a doctor is presumably the nice thing to do, and stopping that makes me a villain. But these are right wingers, and therefore bullies when allowed to rant/wusses when confronted, and they start walking away and she says "[I] better do [my] research", which just makes me laugh. This woman couldn't research the location of the nearest library at the reference desk of her nearest library.

I assume by "do some research" she means suck up the mad ravings of Glenn Beck without question.

The pair walk up to the diner's manager before stompng out and tell on me. He comes up and is smiling, says that some people can't take a joke, that she asked that I be removed, and when I fill him in on the Europe thing - the family who runs the diner are Greek - he laughs it off. I agree not to scare away any more customers. When paying the bill he jokingly asks the kid at the counter to watch out for me because I'm a troublemaker. At least I ruined their meal plans.

Here's a troubling thought: this woman is working in health insurance, and might be deciding whether or not you get a needed operation. Now, would you feel better with the government paying for your health care regardless of what you need, or would you rather roll the dice with the intellectual bastard children of Ayn Rand and Elmer Fudd?

Incidentally, let's have a little fun with the stats.

Life Expectantcy at Birth, from the the World Factbook of those commie bastards at the CIA:

Rank	country	( years)	Date of Information

1	Macau	84.36	2009 est.

2	Andorra	82.51	2009 est.

3	Japan	82.12	2009 est.

4	Singapore	81.98	2009 est.

5	San Marino	81.97	2009 est.

6	Hong Kong	81.86	2009 est.

7	Australia	81.63	2009 est.

8	Canada	81.23	2009 est.

9	France	80.98	2009 est.

10	Sweden	80.86	2009 est.

11	Switzerland	80.85	2009 est.

12	Guernsey	80.77	2009 est.

13	Israel	80.73	2009 est.

14	Iceland	80.67	2009 est.

15	Anguilla	80.65	2009 est.

16	Cayman Islands	80.44	2009 est.

17	Bermuda	80.43	2009 est.

18	New Zealand	80.36	2009 est.

19	Italy	80.20	2009 est.

20	Gibraltar	80.19	2009 est.

21	Monaco	80.09	2009 est.

22	Liechtenstein	80.06	2009 est.

23	Spain	80.05	2009 est.

24	Norway	79.95	2009 est.

25	Jersey	79.75	2009 est.

26	Greece	79.66	2009 est.

27	Austria	79.50	2009 est.

28	Faroe Islands	79.44	2009 est.

29	Malta	79.44	2009 est.

30	Netherlands	79.40	2009 est.

31	Luxembourg	79.33	2009 est.

32	Germany	79.26	2009 est.

33	Belgium	79.22	2009 est.

34	Saint Pierre and Miquelon	79.07	2009 est.

35	Virgin Islands	79.05	2009 est.

36	United Kingdom	79.01	2009 est.

37	Finland	78.97	2009 est.

38	Jordan	78.87	2009 est.

39	Isle of Man	78.82	2009 est.

40	Korea, South	78.72	2009 est.

41	European Union	78.67	2009 est.

42	Puerto Rico	78.53	2009 est.

43	Bosnia and Herzegovina	78.50	2009 est.

44	Saint Helena	78.44	2009 est.

45	Cyprus	78.33	2009 est.

46	Denmark	78.30	2009 est.

47	Ireland	78.24	2009 est.

48	Portugal	78.21	2009 est.

49	Wallis and Futuna	78.20	2009 est.

50	United States	78.11	2009 est.

The good news is that you won't necessarily be reaching 80 to be killed by the government. Hooray! Three guesses which two of those places hasn't made health care a right (which, incidentally, Obama's plan doesn't do either, which is what someone would expect from a guy who took $20 million from the health industry in a presidential campaign.)

Thus I encountered one of the lunatic Town Hall shouting people described in this excellent piece by David Michael Green who find Obama not far enought to the right, and are so whacked out on 30 years of steady neo-fascist propaganda that they call his expensive bid to save capitalist health insurance from itself soshoolized medhisunn.

Update: it appears that one of these wingnuts is now claiming to have been beaten up by a bunch of union members at a St. Louis health care Town Hall event, so severely that he needs a wheelchair and can't talk (?!). Interestingly video taken from mid-range suggests that he pushed one of the union members to the ground, and would have beaten him if not scared away by other union folks. After the incident the union member had a dislocated shoulder, and the right winger was walking around and yelling. These people are not only engaging in brownshirt tactics, they are accusing the people they attack of doing the same. Very scary... very 1933, very Reichstag fire.