this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
719 points (95.0% liked)
Greentext
7467 readers
952 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Dog whistling bullshit. "Obongo", "waahh socialised medicine is the reason i'm trapped in a poverty spiral" get faaarked
One of my first jobs in 1984 would not give me more than 24 hours a week because they would be required to pay healthcare. This was a thing long before the ACA
The ACA is not socialized medicine. It is health insurance reform and only partial at that.
Also, I don't agree that "Obongo" is a dog whistle. It is so openly racist no one is going to miss it.
Yep, at that point I just said "Suffer MAGA, you voted for this."
It's 4Chan, "Obongo" is one of the more polite names they could say.
Obamacare is corporate medicine, designed to give more money to the health insurance industry. Anyone in support of socialized medicine should not be a fan of it just because it's marginally better than before.
Democrats tried to offer a single payer option. However, EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted against it, and as a result, it was possible for two Democrats, Dick Durbin and Joe Lieberman, to vote against it and force the removal of Single Payer and the Public Option from the bill.
And as a result, we get the BOTH SIDES SAME bullshit. Republicans stand firm and vote 100% against a bill, making it possible for 1 or 2 Democrats to derail it, and as a result, people get mad at Democrats as a whole and ensure Republicans keep getting enough seats to keep this strategy alive.
What's amazing is how well this works for Republicans. So many idiots in the world.
You forgot to mention the Dems got slaughtered in the following midterms. And folks wonder why the party is the way it is
Obamacare isn't perfect and made some things more expensive for some people. Yes it helped others and overall I think it's beneficial, but covering your ears and pretending that anon is blaming socialized medicine entirely is just inaccurate.
Criticism, when factual, is good.
He called it "obongocare." He isn't operating in good faith.
Sure, that's plausible, but that's also just 4chan lingo.
Schedules one hour under benefits have been a feature for a lot longer than Obamacare.
yes, which would make this specific criticism of Obamacare nonfactual, but anon is still not blaming socialized medicine like the person I replied to thinks
Anyone using the word Obongo to refer to Obama does not make that distinction. Anything left of YOYO plans is socialized healthcare to them.
idk, that's a strawman. Obongo is often just used as a funny word because it's 4chan
That's not exactly a criticism and more of a dog whistle, as the person you replied to said.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Obongo
Congratulations on not hearing the whistle, but this is not the "other side" discourse you were looking for.
Sounds like he has plenty of free time, and a car, so get a second job. That's what MAGA wants him to do.
I know what obongo means, don't know what "other side" discourse you think I'm looking for, but you seem to have made up your mind about what kind of strawman I am, so have fun I guess.
I assumed you were acting like this was a fair and factual criticism of Obamacare, since you responded to someone calling it bullshit by defending fair and factual criticism.
Since you also said you thought Obamacare was a net positive, I assumed you were arguing that we should be open to listening to criticism of things we approve of, or listening to the "other side of the conversation", and just misunderstood what you were defending.
I really don't see this as a negative strawman, but I'm quite curious to know what you thought I was arguing against.
All strawmen are negative, if a person (or their argument) needs to be caricatured to be attacked, it shouldn't be attacked. If it can be attacked and you're just caricaturing for fun, then you're diluting the argument and shouldn't.
To be fair, the requirement to provide health insurance and other benefits for full-time workers is definitely one of the leading causes of the reduction in full-time jobs. If lawmakers were really putting the peoples' interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Look I'll be honest with you. As someone outside the US the idea that your workplace is responsible for your private insurance / healthcare is bug fuck insane and open to exploitation on a mind boggling scale.
Not just open to exploitation; openly exploited. Disruption to coverage and questions about what could be covered differently are significant factors that cause people to choose not to take a job elsewhere.
The trick is that health insurance can be bought directly, but it's just so insanely expensive to do it that way so nobody does. Companies get a huge discount to buy bulk enterprise packages, and then their employees pay for a lot of it themselves. The portion that the company pays for is just an expense of labor, the same as salary, and offering better than the company across the street is an incentive to get better hires.
The ACA basically was just "hey, you know that discount that companies are getting? Now do it for the state and we'll offer it to everybody. And insurance companies will like it because people are given incentive to buy this because we're gonna fine people for not being insured." Pretty shitty deal, but at least people had the freedom to jobhop or become unemployed and keep their doctors.
It's cheaper and easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion in this shithole country.
Classic US capitalism: Take a product, triple the price, and then offer a generous 50% discount if you sign up on unfavourable terms.
But yeah, I guess I am preaching to the choir here.
Look at it like this: in America, a sizeable portion of people think that your direct economic utility is a good measure of if you deserve to live. They'll justify it by saying things like "they don't think it's governments place" to provide social services, and that it's better handled through charity.
If you don't have a workplace you need to go for real American style socialized medicine: GoFundMe.
(The history behind it is that before anyone was really doing socialized healthcare workplaces in the US started offering health insurance as a way to increase compensation during the WW2 wage freezes. Eventually it was so pervasive that it was a recognized form of compensation, and then it was the easiest way to dictate that everyone had insurance, since a lot of people listened to the fear mongering that was going on. "Nothing changes you just can't get kicked off for developing cancer". It also lined up with the beliefs of those who think that people who aren't working don't deserve support)
If lawmakers were really putting the peoples' interests first, they'd pass socialized medicine
Then shitty jobs would only give people up to 10 hours per week so they'd have to work 4 jobs to get close to 40 hours, and of course that quarter benefits wouldn't cover jack shit. Quarter benefits and people working 4 jobs would also make it a 75% chance that any employee you hire and schedule at ~10 hours per week doesn't accept the benefits thereby saving the business money
Better solution would be single payer healthcare, i.e. Medicare for all, plus expanding social security to pay more than a starvation amount would also be ideal. I've also previously outlined the thoughts of expanding SNAP/Foodstamps to all, housing assistance vouchers to all and Social Security to all to effectively reach UBI based entirely off of existing programs that tens of millions of Americans are already on right now. Work becomes how you fund hobbies and a better lifestyle and economic downturns don't hurt normal people as much
It's just an expression of the republican fantasy that a strong welfare state causes people to be lazy
When in reality they make it so you have to choose.
Ah yes, "I don't care who pays for my benefits or how much they suffer, they're probably racist dickheads anyways".
Very compassionate indeed.
Where to even start with your fallacies here. So many places.
How about “you’re racist”? That’ll negate anything and everything I could possibly say in my defense.
eh, you keep going to that well then you're kinda hanging yourself.
I’m sorry I said a bad word 😢