I recently decided to cut internet ties with people who were making their opinions known in a particular medium. Some of these people were family.
Everyone's entitled to opinions, and they ought to feel comfortable airing them. But - I don't have to listen/read them. I was confronted about cutting someone off yesterday and I did not respond in the way I would have liked. I would have liked to have said:
When you say ignorant things about "People having all the kids they want on *my* tax dollar," it hurts me.
I work my ass off, but despite how hard I work, the simple facts are that I am only eligible for part time work at my place of employ. In the present state of jobs and the economy, I should think it obvious why I would stick it out; I also love my job fiercely. Love, however, doesn't make me eligible for health insurance through my employer. So that has to be handled privately, and at a cost.
To discuss the other adult in the household - he did what everyone calls "serve our country" and gets thanked by lots of people every November 11. He used to get thanked all the time, because of the haircut. But being sent to war twice does not make him eligible for good, low-cost health insurance, for some reason, despite everyone's lovely, abstract "gratitude".
We are in the position of trying desperately to get a child on some sort of state sponsored health insurance. We want to be able to get the preventative care for her that she needs in order to keep her from suffering from anything we didn't catch later on. There is also the practical fact that a health emergency on her part would absolutely, literally, no joke about it, bankrupt us. I feel I'm tempting the devil by even mentioning it, but it's a huge burden to carry around. When I write, "trying desperately," I do mean that we are fighting to get her some coverage, because a fight is what it requires.
Also, back to that private coverage I've got - the insurance understood quite well that I am ostensibly of reproductive age and capability, also plus, I'm biologically a woman. However, the cost of maternity coverage is ridiculously high, and considered to be an "add-on," even for a person of my condition. Therefore, if I were to conceive, the theoretical offspring would need to be covered somehow - what with the necessity of prenatal care for healthy babies and mothers - and that would probably involve someone's precious *tax dollars*.
This should make all the facts clear. This should be helpful in understanding why, in my position, I feel personally attacked when people who are "better off" than my little family is, rail about their fucking tax dollars. Because dollars are so much more valuable than education, health care, and children, right? Because the ability to go buy a new phone or laptop because it has been released in a new color is much more important than the health of the poor child sitting next to yours at the coloring table, right?
Sure. Keep thinking that, and say it all day long. But I don't want to listen.
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