Unhealthy Health Care--Part II

I had been blogging for less than a month when I wrote Unhealthy Healthcare—Part I, addressing the Kerry/Edwards campaign's promise of low cost universal healthcare. It was sort of a “Hillarycare”, phase two.

The posting is a little long winded, but please click on the link and go read it in its entirety if you have the time. What I have to say will probably make you angry regardless of whether you are a liberal or a conservative, so feel free to let me have it in the comments.

The other day I heard a news story saying that there are not really nearly 45,000,000 uninsured Americans—a US Census Bureau statistic that politicians and “advocates” love to quote and the media loves to print in the headlines. It’s hard to actually measure numbers like this, but the real number is said to be closer to 27,000,000. One of the problems with the Census Bureau numbers is that they count you as uninsured for the entire year if you change jobs and have a two week lapse of coverage. What BS.

I have a little more to say today about government provided “universal healthcare.”

How the heck did Americans get the idea that everyone is supposed to have health insurance? Health care—yes. Health insurance, no. It was human nature (greed and stupidity), pandered to by the POLITICIANS like Lyndon Johnson, that got us in this mess with Medicare and Medicaid in the first place

When I was born back in the dark ages, my father’s meager health insurance policy didn’t cover childbirth. He went by the hospital admin office and paid them cash, in full, before my mother and I went home from the hospital. He owned my sorry butt, lock stock, barrel, future size thirteen feet, smart mouth, and all.

Our insurance back then didn’t cover basic check-ups, inoculations, or prescriptions either. If you got the sniffles, you went to the doctor, stopped by the pharmacy, wrote a check or paid cash at both locations, and went home and went to bed. It was just that simple. Insurance was fairly cheep because it only paid when something bad happed and you had to go to the hospital. That kind of insurance is available today for a relatively low cost, but most people want more from their insurance policy.

Today people complain about the cost of insurance, but they think that they should be allowed to run to the emergency room twice a month, smoke, drink heavily, have unprotected sex with total strangers, and squirt out two or three unplanned, illegitimate babies while only having to pay a $10 co-payment.

Can you believe that? Do you think like that yourself?

How can that actually be a financially viable business model for the insurance companies?

It isn't--and there is no health care fairy godmother flying around out there with a big chunk of cash with your name on it.

Health insurance cost money—money that someone is going to have to pay. If the insured individual doesn’t pay any or all of the cost, the insurer and healthcare provider isn’t going to give the services away, they are going to charge someone else for it. They want to charge ME for YOUR insurance and healthcare.

In the case of government provided insurance, this means that the burden of the cost will be shifted from at least the bottom 50% of the working population to the top 50%. If the Democrats have their way, it will probably be more like the bottom 60% or 70% will basically get a free ride and the top 30% to 40% will eat all of the costs.

This is basic class envy and warfare in its purist form.

And another thing that you should know about health insurance—the government wants you to think that its your employer’s or the government’s responsibility to supply it, thus they have historically made it difficult and/or expensive for individuals to acquire. Why should large businesses be allowed to write off the total cost of employee health plans, but until recently an individual or small business owner has to pay the cost of health insurance with after tax dollars?

I say that the federal government has made an intentional, concerted effort over the past forty years to see to it that people are not insured privately, so they can use the ensuing hysteria to justify enlarging existing programs like Medicare/Medicaid and pressure Congress and the public to institute new universal plans.

I’m not buying it. When you have your own private health insurance policy, you have ultimate job flexibility and the security of not being uninsured when you are unemployed.

I feel sorry for poor people and “working families” and perhaps I understand being forced to make a nominal contribution toward supporting their healthcare. After all, we’ve lived with Medicare and Medicaid for 40 years and it’s become a basic fact of life for most of us.

The people that really gripe my butt are the true middle to upper class families that are up to their ass in debt paying a mortgage on an oversize house, notes on three new cars, a bass boat, and two weeks of overseas vacations each year.

These people have everything but some reasonable cash savings and health and life insurance. They are healthy, so they think "what the heck-we'll gamble." Then they wait until they loose their job or their head falls off or their colon rots out and then they are on the news pleading for contributions from the public to pay for their medical bills and demanding that the government get in the health insurance business because no insurance company will write an insurance policy after you've been diagnosed as having terminal lung and liver cancer.

What total, ignorant, selfish, self serving bull crap.

And the government and the "advocates" go along with it because it supports their own agenda..."people are uninsured and dying and we gotta do something...quick, pass a law..."

I personally have spent three quarters of my life with health insurance coverage. Half of that time was spent with me paying for it out of my own pocket because I was self employed.

I am not insured at the moment, but I intend to buy insurance shortly and it isn’t going to be cheep. It will have fairly high deductibles. It will have co-pays, but it will have a $10,000,000 lifetime cap because I’m looking at the long term and I’m not trying to rely on the government to take care of me in my old age.

All you bleeding heart liberals can mail a check with my name on it to St. Simons to help me pay the costs….I’m waiting…

But I won’t hold my breath….