elfs | Hoisted from Comments: What Equality of Opportunity? (Reply)

But what kind of society do we live in when it's apparently considered okay to check with someone if they're really sure they want to shell out a grand for medicine? What kind of society do we live in where we have to shell out a grand for medicine, period?

There's a common meme in right-wing circles that says "We only want equality of opportunity. What the left wants is equality of outcome, regardless of ability."

In cases like ours, though, there is no equality of opportunity. With treatment, Omaha is more mentally and physically capable than many of her peers; she carries a media company, a district-wide political party, and a family on her back day in and day out. But there is no equality of opportunity here.

Indeed, we're in the position David Frum once espoused: financially so precarious that we must not even consider, as Frum put it, "jumping across the big top," acting in that celebratory, individualist, self-assertive mode so fashionable with Fox News-watching retirees with their American-diet induced diabetes and their Medicare-purchased wheelchairs.

But starting a business requires capital-- capital we don't have and can't accrue, because so much more goes into our family than that of the average American just for staying alive. The average, healthy American family spends about 9% of their monthly budget on things they put into their mouths; my family pays 34%. So there's no "equality of opportunity" here. I don't think we as a country ought to pretend otherwise.