Maybe I'm just crazy, but it seems like there's a side of this health care reform issue that needs attention. We're trapped in our jobs. Not just because of the economy and 10% unemployment. If those conditions were perfect, we'd still be trapped because if we leave the job, we lose our health insurance. And maybe unemployment is at 0% and the economy is booming, but there's still gonna be a window of time where you're uninsured and suddenly your appendix bursts and -- oops -- you're bankrupt. You lose your house. You're fucked.

Maybe that's just paranoia, but I think it's rampant in our culture and our mindset. Maybe this is all just coming up because I'm re-reading Douglas Coupland's Generation X and his characters are so cool in how they've walked away from the bullshit consumerism of our culture -- the obsession with stuff -- so they're all so hip and working "McJobs" as bartenders and shopgirls, and they're so cute and clever and then it occurs to me, Douglas Coupland is Canadian. The story takes place in a desert town in the American southwest and the main character is from Oregon, but still...

Sure, it's easy to be hip and anti-corporate when you get free health care as your birthright.

But what about us? How many of us are stuck in jobs, afraid to take risks or start new businesses, because we'd be fucked if something happened to us while we were out on our own?

And is that what we want our culture to be? Don't Republicans want to be their own boss and start a business? I read Atlas Shrugged four or five times. The heros are innovators who start their own businesses and design new engines or create new metals and then make a profit and hire more people and expand and retire while the thing you've created lives on...

Isn't that the American Dream? But how do you do that without health insurance? You have to buy whatever's out there and then you have to pay to insure your employees, and in most cases you drown in lost revenue and paperwork, your profit is gone followed quickly by your employees and you have to close your doors. Too Small to Succeed.

We need universal health care to give people the freedom to take chances.

But that's not what our country wants for us. America wants us to be corporate slaves. I am a corporate slave. As of the first of the year, my Massuhs don't carry Health Alliance anymore, so now I'm on Blue Cross Blue Shield, and BCBS doesn't think my psychiatrist is giving me the right dosage of medication for the treatment of tinnitus-related anxiety.

Of course BCBS should know best, because I just registered a UserID on their website yesterday and I've only been seeing my doctor for the past five years.

We're fighting it, but if we lose, then I just have to live with a little more anxiety than usual, and hope it doesn't affect my steadfast determination to KEEP MY JOB because if Massuh lets me go, I won't be able to afford the other medications that are keeping me alive.

Slave. You can call me that.

If you haven't already, please go sign the petition to establish health care as a civil right.