CSotD: You must remember this
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I think the 7 million sign-ups for the ACA takes some of the edge off this Kirk Walters cartoon, which appeared so soon after the deadline that it was probably drawn before. Still, the overall "Young Invincibles" debate goes on.
Besides, the projection of 7 million signups was made with the YI factor in mind. A fair number of young people would rather pay the penalty, which is only about $95 for the first year of the program but doesn't escalate tremendously thereafter.
Nothing new about that. Let me offer a vignette from the past:
The wife and I were driving by a construction site when we lived in Denver, which means we were 24 or under ourselves, when we saw a worker slip and fall from the roof of the house they were framing. We stopped and got out, and saw that he was lying flat on his back in the excavation around the foundation, twitching and moaning.
We offered to go find a phone and call an ambulance, but the other guys on the site — all of them about our age — told us not to. The job was small, the company had no liability coverage, the guy in the ditch had no insurance.
Fortunately for him and his fly-by-night employer, he'd landed on flat, empty ground. I suppose if there had been a cinder block or a saw horse down there, the ambulance issue would have either been obvious or moot.
The pro-insurance-lobby advocates are right, too, that he would have received "free" treatment if he'd needed it, paid for by everyone else through tax dollars and higher premiums.
Still, they'd have gone after him for whatever he had, as well as his employer. They'd have wrung them out like a pair of old socks.
Lacking coverage was something of a choice in the early 70s, though not one open to everyone. However, we were more likely to have full-time jobs once we had jobs at all, and benefits to go with them. I remember thinking, as we drove away, that it sucked for him to be working for that kind of boss, and I don't think that, even in those lean, just-starting-out days, we went very long without being able to get some kind of coverage.
Now employers are less likely to offer benefits, but, under the ACA, parents can keep their kids on their plans up to age 26.
Not only would the ex and I each be a little wealthier today if we hadn't had to pay COBRA rates to keep Son #2 covered for the year between graduation and his first set of benefits, but I've gotta say Darwin kicks in by the end of that period.
If, by the time you are 27, you still don't get it, well, I can't help ya, pal.
Still, I'll bet it wouldn't take HHS much sleuthing to find young people with stories to tell in pro-coverage commercials, of accidents or unexpected illnesses that made them feel a lot less invincible in retrospect.
But, on a grander scale
Rudy Park notes a generational thing that I hadn't really considered, but is kind of obvious.
There's a list that goes around every September about what this year's college freshmen don't know, which originated in order to remind college professors to update their cultural references but provides some nice future shock for all the old folks, particularly those who didn't yet realize they were old.
This year's list includes the fact that, in their world, there has never been a Soviet Union and that there has always only been one Germany.
Not having been born when something happens doesn't mean you can't find out about it by paying attention.
But "finding out" about something isn't the same as "experiencing" it.
In part, that's because of bad history.
I don't suppose it matters, in the Grand Scheme of Things, that the public memory has the Cleaver family wrong. The Andersons and the Nelsons lived in a plastic middleclass world, yes, but the Cleavers, who are universally derided for a Wonder Bread existence, were well-aware that they lived a more privileged life than other people and took pains to make sure Wally and Beaver did not take their advantages for granted. They even directly addressed poverty, alcoholism and kids whose parents didn't give a damn about them.
But, okay, a lot of TV sitcoms back then depicted life in an unrealistic way. Unlike today's sitcoms.
However, when the public memory "remembers" Vietnam vets being taunted and spit on, that matters. Did it ever happen? Sure, probably. Was it a major trend? Absolutely not. I knew more vets who felt unwelcome down at the American Legion because of their long hair than ones who were rejected by the general public for having served.
(I also know Vietnam vets who have gone out of their way to make sure that vets from Iraq and Afghanistan are welcomed at American Legion and DAV posts despite generational — and gender — differences.)
But, mythology aside, there's also the fact that you can't experience something by hearing about it or reading about it or being told about it.
Even if the first time you saw the first Star Wars film was in a theater instead of on your home television, you didn't have the 1977 experience unless the first time you saw it you had never, ever experienced anything in a movie like that cruiser coming in overhead.
And if all you know about the Cold War is that (tee hee, how silly!) we hid under our desks in school, well, yeah, we had those drills. At my school, we didn't duck under our desks. We went out in the hall and ducked down next to a wall. Even Audrey, whose family had come out under the barbed wire during the Hungarian Revolution, when she was young enough that they told her the flares were just fireworks.
I guess you had to be there.
And I guess as we move forward in this interchange with Russia, we need to remember that a very large number of adults were not there the last time around, and that telling them about it is a bit futile.
And if that didn't depress you enough:
Someone posted an array of black comedians on Facebook. Here's what it looked like when it arrived on my feed, complete with a helpful suggestion, courtesy of Facebook's expertly-tuned facial recognition software.
Cory's response was that it puts a new spin on the term "Facebook profile."
It sho nuff does.
(He also suggests that Facebook probably thinks he looks like a rich guy. Why, yes, I'm sure that's the explanation.)
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