A Database of Graphs!

Before the Affordable Care Act I could literally not get insurance. I have a chronic disease, ulcerative colitis, which causes me a lot of pain, about $300 in prescription drug bills per month, and will probably give me cancer.

The treatment for the cancer that I hope won’t kill me is a surgery that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and it will be followed by a lifetime of medical bills to help me live without a colon.

Do you want to know why I didn’t have health insurance? Because I was diagnosed in college…and when I graduated I had to get off the University’s plan and when I applied for new coverage I was denied. I was denied by every insurance company that operates in the state of Montana. Apparently this was my fault?

So now we have the Affordable Care Act. I pay full price for health insurance, and if I get in a car accident (which might happen) or get cancer (which probably will) I can avoid bankruptcy. I can continue running my business that employs 30 people and not dissolve all of the assets of the thing I have built in order to pay for the luxury of not dying.

And what is the price to you? To the average citizen? Oh, y’know, nothing. No increase in your taxes, and you’re more likely to see your insurance bill go down than you were before the ACA was passed. Fucking Horrible. I’m so sorry that the sustainability of our nation’s economy and the freedom of average citizens to not live in constant fear take precedence over your bullshit ideology.

Roads? Handouts.

Schools? Handouts.

Civil service? Handouts.

Government? Handouts.

Police? Handouts.

Fire brigade? Handouts.

Legal system that enshrines not only human rights, but property rights, as well as civil and criminal law (whether or not you agree with the particulars)? Handouts.

That’s how absurd it sounds. Can’t afford to pay the police to investigate your husband’s murder? Guess he shouldn’t have died then. House on fire and all the money’s going up in smoke? Well, we wouldn’t want an infinitesimal part of your monthly taxes to go on putting those flames out. Judges on the bench? Those guy’s salary shouldn’t come out of MY taxes.

There are a couple of reasons I knew this pie chart was messed up, but the first one was how the green bit looks like WAY more than 58%. I figure it looks that way because the creator of the graph was trying to emphasize it. 

Here, for example, is another graph of the same data (but a little less outdated)

It looks less scary, but still crazy lopsided.

But the other important thing about this graph is that it has a title. The other one, we just assume that it’s “All money being spent by the US” which it is not. A huge portion of US spending is not “discretionary” meaning we are required to spend it by law. The big bits of this are our social services like medicare (health care for old people), medicaid (healthcare for poor people), unemployment benefits, and social security (money for old people).

When you add that stuff in it looks far less insane:

I’m not saying that I agree with how the US spends its money. There is a lot of conventional wisdom that says we should have the most massive military in the world because it ensures global peace and prosperity that I do not agree with. But mis-direction and deception is not the way to get buy-in from people.