People Should Not Die............Period
"Except maybe old people, people with disabilities and the politically inconvenient."
There's this massive campaign underway on Facebook today where you get this post that says, "No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick." (If you agree, please post this as your status.)"
The problem is that statement is based on a false assumption - at least here in the USA. I don't know anyone who's died because they couldn't afford health care. Many choose to for reasons of pride or because they just don't want to drag it out or whatever, but if you need help, there is some place to get it here in America.
You know what, for 30 years now, I've worked for charities and nonprofits. I'm broke most of the time. (They don't call 'em nonprofits for nothin'). Ironically, if I were a bit poorer, I'd have better health care than I do. I've had all sorts of periods where we didn't have insurance. When we started a home-based day care center to be with our kids after school, we were without health insurance for several months. During that time, my wife developed a tumor. I scraped together enough to get her to an OB/GYN. It's a lot easier when you just pay for things, you don't need layers of approvals that also have to be paid for. Anyway, we told the doc we couldn't afford the surgery and didn't know what we were going to do. The doc said, don't worry, I do several of these cases every year as my way of giving back a little. He did the surgery for free and the hospital also got us some help to write off the bill because we were in trouble. Nice people.
If you let them, medical people do that sort of thing. Most got into the medical racket because they wanted to help people. Remember how the old country docs used to work for chickens and bushels of apples and such. They've always done that kind of thing. But, if the government runs the system, the docs and hospitals won't be allowed to take chickens in payment anymore (or even give away services for that matter). Instead you and your tumor just sit and wait till some bureaucrat who doesn't give a rat's kneecap about your health decides it's your turn.
One government program does that by a simple regulation that never was passed by congress. Some bureaucrat decided it ought to be that way because he or she figured that was the legislative intent. The rule goes like this. If you take government reimbursement for a service, you can never charge anyone else less than what you charge the government. In other words, if you give one person services for free, you would then have to give the government those same services for free.
This rule effectively bans doctors from doing pro bono work and actually makes health care more expensive as a result. Not only that, but it makes it so that if a doctor did do something nice for a patient like not charge for something, and someone ratted him out, he could lose his practice.
Welcome to the twisted world of health care by bureaucracy!
So, forgive me if I don't "pass it along" even though I do believe people ought not die because they can't afford health care. I think what these guys are trying to do to the health care system is a big worthless fraud that's going to hurt more people than it's going to ever help. I think more people will die under government run health care than will ever die with what we've got now. In fact, if the government would get out of the way, we'd already have the problems solved. That's what we Americans do (and I don't count bureaucrats as Americans - I think they must import them all from Uzbekistan or Libya or somewhere like that.)
Besides, do we really need more bureaucrats telling us what to do?
Do we?
Besides there's only one leader we can follow who can guarantee that no one will die. And if you'll look at the system He set up, there weren't any bureaucrats, taxes, supreme leaders or even politicians. A few local judges they paid with sheep and chickens and some guys to run the church services were all they needed. When they needed a general, He called one up. When the war was over, everyone went home and banged the sword back into a plowshare. Every 7 years all the poor people had their debts cleared.
Personally, I think we ought to bring that system back.
Tom
