Jul 05 2009

We’re in the Twilight Zone, Part 1

Category: government,healthcare,left,legislation,politics,society — harmonicminer @ 8:27 am

There is a Twilight Zone episode called “Button, Button “ in which an unhappy couple is given an unusual offer. Push a button on a box and someone they don’t know will die, but they will get $200,000.

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis are unhappy. Their car is broken. They live in a cramped one-bedroom apartment. They’re often bickering. One day, their doorbell rings but there’s nobody there. A package addressed to both of them was left by the door. Inside it is a wooden box with a plastic dome on the locked lid. A note on the bottom says a “Mr. Steward” will come that night. He comes on schedule and explains the offer to Mrs. Lewis. If she unlocks the lid and pushes the button under the dome, someone they don’t know will die and she’ll receive $200,000, tax-free. She tells the details to her husband and he’s adamantly against it. He opens up the bottom of the box and finds nothing inside. Cynical, he throws the box into a dumpster but she retrieves it after he’s asleep. They continue to argue about whether to push the button. Finally, Mrs. Lewis presses it. Mr. Steward appears and gives them their $200,000. They’re incredulous and wonder what will happen to the box. Steward explains that it will be reprogrammed and the same offer will be given to another couple, “somebody you won’t know…”

The story is based on a short story by Richard Matheson, with a slightly different ending, but the gist of the story is the same, namely the willingness of people to receive benefits that don’t belong to them, when the only risk — really, certain doom — is to strangers.

It seems to me that this is a perfect model for the desire of many people who want to have nationalized health insurance of some sort.  Particularly if they are people who don’t now have health insurance, and want a national system to give it to them, they are perfect examples of the willingness to damage other people —  all strangers, of course — for selfish gain.

Imagine a rewrite to the story.  You are offered a button which, if you push it, guarantees that a stranger will not receive the health care they’ve always paid for, resulting in their likely death, but the reward for pushing it is that you have a minimal level of health coverage for life.

There seems to be a lot of people who are only too willing to push the button.

Of course, the entire class of people who stand to benefit the most from national healthcare — the Lefty political class that will claim it has done America a great service — will be the group that doesn’t have to live with the arrangement.  Does anyone think that the political class will settle for the DMV standard of medical care to which the rest of us will be doomed?

Button, button, who’s got the button

Jun 15 2009

Killing the golden goose of research and development

Category: government,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 10:26 am

The history of the cancellation of the Apollo space program due to budget considerations is nicely summarized here and here.

The short story:  President Lyndon B. Johnson’s budget for 1969 included $3.878 billion for NASA, “nearly 25 percent lower than the budget for the peak year, fiscal 1965.”   When President Nixon took office, he cut it further.  Neither presidents nor congress were in the mood to maintain NASA’s funding, resulting in cutting the last three planned Apollo missions, which would have cost only $20 million each, given the money already spent on Saturn V boosters and capsules.

No one will ever know what scientific discoveries might have been made on those missions.

No one will ever know how far we might have come by now in space capability had Congress continued to fund NASA at “moon-race levels,” but we would surely have a permanent colony on the moon by now, we would have been to Mars and back, and might have a fledgling presence there, and we’d know a lot more about the science of our solar system than we do now.

It is not well understood by the public that much of the USA’s dominance in technology came from so-called “spinoffs” from the “space race.”  There is little reason to believe that trend would have changed.  It’s likely that our national economy would have received a great boost from the spinoffs that never happened.

Congress, however, was busily moving into higher and higher levels of “great society” funding, including welfare (with its disastrous results on poor families and unwed birth rates) and medicare.

We can’t get back years of lost basic research and lost applied research, as well as discovery of unknowns in our solar system.  We can duplicate what would have been done… but that time is lost permanently.

Call the entire sorry affair penny-wise, and pound foolish.

And now, for somewhat different reasons, Congress is considering what will end up as a federal takeover of health care.  While the dynamics will be different, the result will be analogous to what happened to NASA, and space exploration.  There will be a great cutback in basic research, and decades may be lost in what could have been a “genetic therapy race” to revolutionize (and probably significantly cheapen) health care.  The “astronomically huge” medical progress of recent times is not any sort of given.  It depends on particular circumstances of economy and society that encourage investment, basic research, and risk taking.  In other words, the things that government does worst.

When your now-young children are dying of cancer in about 40 years, prematurely, how much will they thank us for having instituted a health care delivery system that killed much basic research that could have saved their lives?

Not much, I think.

Jun 14 2009

Medical Miracles are not a civil right

Category: government,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 9:23 am

Most Americans have lost track, if they ever knew, of the real history of medical care in the last two centuries. Indeed, therapies and drugs now available would seem utterly miraculous to any person of the early 20th century. But this pace of progress is not a given.   Will the new health care initiative being pushed by the Obama administration spell The End of Medical Miracles?

Americans have, at best, a love-hate relationship with the life-sciences industry—the term for the sector of the economy that produces pharmaceuticals, biologics (like vaccines), and medical devices. These days, the mere mention of a pharmaceutical manufacturer seems to elicit gut-level hostility. Journalists, operating from a bias against industry that goes as far back as the work of Upton Sinclair in the early years of the 20th century, treat companies from AstraZeneca to Wyeth as rapacious factories billowing forth nothing but profit. At the same time, Americans are adamant about the need for access to the newest cures and therapies and expect new cures and therapies to emerge for their every ailment—all of which result from work done primarily by these very same companies whose profits make possible the research that allows for such breakthroughs.

So begins an article by Tevi Troy, deputy secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services from 2007 to 2009.  The last two paragraphs of the article:

We forget the power of the single-celled organism. For most of man’s existence on earth, the power of a single-celled animal to snuff out life was an accepted—and tragic—way of the world. Human beings could be wiped out in vast communicable plagues or simple through ingesting food or water. In the last century, the advent of the antibiotic has changed all that. For millennia, the only cure for an infection in humans was hope. Today, antibiotic use is so common that public health officials struggle to get people not to overuse antibiotics and thereby diminish their effectiveness.

Just as there is potential danger from the way in which Americans take the power of the antibiotic for granted, so, too, one of the greatest threats to our health and continued welfare is that Americans in the present day, and particularly their leaders, are taking for granted the power, potency, and progress flowing from life-saving medical innovations. And in so doing, they may unknowingly prevent the kind of advance that could contribute as vitally to the welfare of the 21st century as the discovery of the antibiotic altered the course of human history for the better in the century just concluded.

Tevi Troy’s complete article is must reading for anyone who would understand how we got where we are with pharmaceutical costs and the price of medical innovation. 

At its most basic level, health care is not a civil right, any more than food, clothing, shelter, or for that matter, automobiles, cell phones, internet access, or lattes.  Food and shelter are THE most basic human physical needs.  We have a safety net for the poor, but we do not try to provide caviar and mansions, or even a balanced diet and permanent digs.  What those on public assistance get is pretty basic (or it should be), and is normally a no frills operation (though disturbing numbers of them wear better clothes than I do).   Similarly, it may be reasonable to have a safety net of very basic health care for the poor (though a very large percentage of the “uninsured” are not “poor,” and have simply chosen to spend their money other ways).  That safety net should not include high cost drugs and medical procedures that were not even available to the richest people in the world 50 years ago.  At the same time, the poor of today, being given a very basic standard of health care, would be getting the equivalent of medical miracles to the richest person on earth in the year 1930.

The simplest way to characterize this:  medical miracles are not a civil right.  Many of the most expensive health care developments of the last half-century qualify as “medical miracles.”  Just as it’s unreasonable to provide a public guarantee that everyone will drive the same car, eat the same food, wear similar clothing, have similar vacations, and all the rest, it’s completely unreasonable to try to approach “egalitarian” health care.  Quite simply, it has never worked anywhere.  What makes us think it can work here?

For those who ARE interested in even more medical miracles, fair warning is given.  The reason that about 90% of the medical miracles of the last half-century have been developed in the USA is because we have had largely private health care (admittedly with lots of government interference, most of which has not helped).  If the USA goes the way of most European nations, or Canada, or Australia, we can kiss that entrepreneurial energy goodbye, as the article referenced above makes very clear.

The very sad thing: even if the modern “miracle” standard becomes the common standard for everyone, if progress in medicine is largely stifled, or simply greatly slowed, it is likely that a great many more people will die in the future of things that COULD have been prevented, if we’d continued at today’s pace of research and innovation. 

And they won’t even know that the cause of their suffering or death could have been preventable.

Apr 18 2009

Touchstone for anti-gun, universal healthcare true believers

Category: guns,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 8:27 am

With the recent spate of shootings,  false allegations about how the Mexican drug wars are being fought primarily with guns directly obtained in the USA from gun shops, and the Left’s ambition to institute universal health care of some kind, it seemed good to repost this from last September.

____________________________________

A lot of folks believe themselves to be very righteous because they care so much about the children (even though they’re pro-choice on abortion). They want you to believe that they care more about human life than you do. So they’re really big on universal health care, and they’re anti-gun. In the first instance, they want you to be forced by government taxation to pay for it. In the second instance, they want to remove your right to self-defense (only meaningful if you have the tools to do so, correct?).

Is it clear yet that they don’t care about you? I hope so. If you don’t grasp that, reread the first paragraph. Their concern is for other folks, not for you. Not even for your children, because, you see, your children are yours, and the universal health care/anti-gun true believers don’t really care about them, just the children of those other people, more or less in the abstract. Otherwise they would not try to take away from you the tools you need to defend them, and the money you need to take care of them.

A few facts to set the table:

1) Auto accidents are the single biggest cause of death in children (and, for that matter, adults up to age 30 or so). At least 40% of those are alcohol related.

2) Since 2004, the next biggest cause of death is poisoning, according to the CDC.

For at least the 40 years prior to 2004, the two leading causes of injury death were MVT deaths and firearms. Beginning in 2004, poisoning deaths outnumbered firearm deaths and have increased at a greater pace than firearm deaths since then. Unintentional drug poisonings are the largest component of poisoning deaths; they are primarily related to drug overdose and their rates of increase have outpaced those of all poisonings. Physicians who prescribe narcotics (e.g., opioids such as methadone or oxycodone) should be aware of the risks associated with the drugs that are contributing to these deaths. Whether the drugs are not prescribed correctly, are not taken according to the physician‘s directions, or are diverted from a patient to someone else cannot be ascertained, but all possibilities must be considered (3)

3) Of the firearms deaths, despite anti-gun accident-fear propaganda, the biggest causes are suicide and homicide. Of the homicides, most are below age 30 or so. Estimates of the number of gang related murders run from 10-50%, depending on who is asked, and the methodology of classification. There are far fewer firearms “accidents” than the anti-gun industry wants us to believe, and some of those “accidents” may be murders that cannot be proved. (“Yes, officer, I accidentally shot him while cleaning my gun.” Nearly unbelievable to anyone who knows anything about firearms.) Men are more likely to be murdered by strangers, unless it is gang related. Women are somewhat more likely than men to be murdered by someone they know.

What does all of this mean? Among other things: the causes of death up to early middle age are overwhelmingly not precisely “medical” or “health” related, but are related to accidents, poisonings, suicides and murders. If one was deeply concerned about the health status of children and young adults, the single biggest place to start is those causes of death, NOT whether or not they have “health insurance”. And in the case of poisonings with prescribed medications (the second largest cause of death of younger people after auto accidents), it could reasonably be argued that those deceased would have been better off with LESS medical attention….. Note that drug-overdose with illegal drugs seems to be much less a cause of death than overdose with prescribed drugs.

To the biggest cause of death, auto accidents: the leading cause of death of people under age thirty is traumatic brain injury in a vehicle accident. And outside of fatality, the leading cause of disability and enormous medical expense for young people is the same. Who among us does not know, or know of, a young person with such an injury? It is exceedingly common, sadly. Just in my circle of friends and family, I know of perhaps a half dozen such injuries in young people in just the last couple of years. I personally knew of only two people who were murdered in the last 35 years, one who was the child of a friend (murdered by her new husband), and one who was the brother of a former student (murdered by a jealous rival in a love triangle). People who live in gang-ridden neighborhoods will have a different experience, of course. Over those same years, I have known, or known of, more young people than I can remember who have died or been very seriously injured (often permanently) in auto accidents.

Again, a reminder: 40% of those vehicle deaths are alcohol related.

Regarding medical insurance coverage, according to the CDC, in the year 2007:

…the percentage of persons who were uninsured at the time of the interview was highest among those aged 18-24 years (27.5%) and lowest among those under 18 years (8.9%) (Figure 4). Starting at age 18, younger adults were more likely than older adults to lack health insurance coverage. [emphasis mine]

That 27.5% is about TWICE the national average for uninsured status (around 14.5%), which includes all ages, races and sexes. Why is the rate of uninsured status lowest for children under age 18? Simple enough: they tend to be covered on their parent’s insurance until they are 18. The implication of this is straightforward: about 8.9% of adults with children do not have health insurance themselves, and so do not have it for their children.

Even before age as a consideration, the CDC had this to say about race/ethnicity:

Based on data from the 2007 NHIS, Hispanic persons were considerably more likely than non-Hispanic white persons, non-Hispanic black persons, and non-Hispanic Asian persons to be uninsured at the time of interview, to have been uninsured for at least part of the past 12 months, and to have been uninsured for more than a year (Table 7). Approximately one-third of Hispanic persons were uninsured at the time of interview [emphasis mine] or had been uninsured for at least part of the past year, and about one-fourth of Hispanic persons had been without health insurance coverage for more than a year.

And now, as promised, I present the touchstone to determine whether a true believer in univeral health care actually “cares about the children”, or is simply pursuing a political agenda for which such poses are convenient.

One touchstone is very simple: more children die of head injuries in auto accidents than any other way, certainly HUGELY more than die for lack of health insurance, or by firearm. If a person is not willing to demand and campaign for a law requiring everyone under the age of, say, 18 to wear a protective helmet when riding in a car (cost, maybe $50 per person), they have no moral standing to demand and campaign for universal health insurance (cost, maybe $3000-4000 per person per year). It is clear that the helmets would save FAR more lives and reduce FAR more suffering than any amount of health insurance.

What is more evidence of your compassion and concern for human beings?

1) your willingness to take a cheap step to reduce the NEED for medical care, and the liklihood of severy injury or death? Or,

2) your willingness to spend a very large amount of money to try to fix problems after they have occurred?

I think the answer is obvious.

Another touchstone: since 40% of fatal auto accidents are alcohol related, we should adopt very radical anti-drunk-driving laws, sufficiently toothy that almost no one will take the risk. Curiously, people who are FOR universal health care (again, requiring tax payer money) are often heard to recommend that we should be more like Europe in our health care policy. I wonder if they would resist our adoption of the drunk driving laws of, say, Germany? Or, we could make it really simple. Drive drunk (defined as a minimum percentage, and/or obvious impairment), and you lose your license for five years. Do it again, and you can never again have a license, and driving without a license in this circumstance is punishable by serious prison time. There would surely be less drunk driving, and MANY lives saved.

Either of these approaches, the helmets, or zero-tolerance drunk driving laws, would save far more lives than covering the uninsured, and also avoid many greivous non-fatal injuries. Together, they would dramatically reduce death and injury in the USA, for HUGELY less money than universal health care.

To be blunt: if you’re for the universal health care, and not for both of these policies, you’re a fraud, pretending you care for people’s health, when what you really care about is some kind of political agenda.

It won’t do to say that society wouldn’t put up with requiring helmets in cars, or with more radical drunk driving statutes. People said that about seat belts, and motorcycle helmets, but the laws exist in most states. And people DO modify their behavior when legal penalties are severe and certain. I don’t remember the last time I saw a cigarette lit in a restaurant in California.

By the way: the same argument applies to being for gun control because you think it will save lives. Either, or both, of these other policies will save MORE lives than removing all guns from society (as if that were possible), and without infringing on the Second Amendment and the basic right of self-defense. Again, you’re a fraud if you’re for gun control, and against helmets in cars and far more stringent drunk driving laws than we have now.

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Dec 18 2008

How much do YOU trust the government to handle life and death decisions for YOU?

Category: government,healthcare,left,military — harmonicminer @ 10:00 am

Our military wins whenever it isn’t forced to quit by our civilian government. But it isn’t precisely “efficient”, and has the same amount of politics, stupidity, and shortsightedness as the rest of the world. When lives are on the line, that can be deadly.

WASHINGTON, Military leaders knew the dangers posed by roadside bombs before the start of the Iraq war but did little to develop vehicles that were known to better protect forces from what proved to be the conflict’s deadliest weapon, a report by the Pentagon inspector general says.

The Pentagon “was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003,” says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.

The report is to be made public today.

Continue reading “How much do YOU trust the government to handle life and death decisions for YOU?”

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Nov 09 2008

Very, very cold comfort

Category: economy,election 2008,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 10:05 am

George Will offers cold comfort at the end of his piece assessing the election in historical context.

………….
Although John McCain’s loss was not as numerically stunning as the 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater, who won 16 fewer states and 122 fewer electoral votes than McCain seems to have won as of this writing, Tuesday’s trouncing was more dispiriting for conservatives. Goldwater’s loss was constructive; it invigorated his party by reorienting it ideologically. McCain’s loss was sterile, containing no seeds of intellectual rebirth.
…………..

As this is being written, Republicans seem to have lost a total of 55 House and 11 Senate seats in the last two elections. These are the worst Republican results in consecutive elections since the Depression-era elections of 1930 and 1932 (153 and 22), which presaged exile from the presidency until 1953. If, as seems likely at this writing, in January congressional Republicans have 177 representatives and 44 senators, they will be weaker than at any time since after the 1976 elections, when they were outnumbered in the House 292-143 and the Senate 61-38.

…………….

Still, the Republican Party retains a remarkably strong pulse, considering that McCain’s often chaotic campaign earned 46 percent of the popular vote while tacking into terrible winds. Conservatives can take some solace from the fact that four years after Goldwater won just 38.5 percent of the popular vote, a Republican president was elected.

The conservative ascendancy that was achieved in 1980 reflected a broad consensus favoring government more robust abroad and less ambitious at home — roughly the reverse of Tuesday’s consensus. But conservatives should note what their current condition demonstrates: Opinion is shiftable sand. It can be shifted, as Goldwater understood, by ideas, and by the other party overreaching, which the heavily Democratic Congress elected in 1964 promptly did. [emphasis mine]

The problem, from the perspective of conservatives, is this: 1932 marked the beginning of Democratic ascendancy leading to the Social Security system, 1964’s elections led to Medicare and Great Society, and 1976’s led to the fall of Iran to Islamic extremists, the Carterization of our military, etc.

Of COURSE the Left will over-reach again. It can’t help itself. Obama has shown no ability or interest in resisting the Left-most tilting of the most radically Left Democrats in his party, and those who put him in office will be expecting payback, and they will get it.  The press will not love him unconditionally forever, as they have during the campaign, and will for a few months more, at least.

The Right will be back.  But as I’ve written before, the damage the Democrats can do in even a single term of “unified government” is very large, and two terms gives them time to lock in a course that is virtually impossible to change.  Remember those Star Trek episodes where somebody has locked the navigation controls of the Enterprise to go to a certain destination, and it is simply impossible to undo the change?  It’s just a bit like that.  Sure, we can take the ship back.  But we’ll still be heading for the Delta Quadrant.

1932 led to Social Security, which some may still think is a good idea, but which ultimately has been poisonous to our society, because it encouraged dependency, poor planning, people retiring while they were still productive, and it has provided a bottomless well of money for Congress to waste on OTHER things for years (WHAT “social security trust fund”…  you’re kidding, right?), but for which the bill is about to come due in a HUGE way, as the boomers retire, and younger people find out about the Faustian bargain that was made by their grand-parents and great-grand-parents.

1964 led to the Great Society, the effect of which was to create a permanently dependent urban underclass, largely black, incentivized to be non-productive and to think itself unable to thrive on its own without government help, leading to a 70% black unmarried birthrate and a huge majority of fatherless homes; and Medicare, which has been one of the biggest levers driving healthcare prices higher and higher (along with the notion that medical “insurance” should pay for routine minor medical care…  about like paying for car insurance that covers tuneups and oil changes, guaranteed to hugely boost the price of both).

Some will point out that 1964 also led to the Civil Rights legislation, and that’s true.  But it’s also true that strikingly higher percentages of Republicans than Democrats voted for it, so this cannot be chalked up to a victory of Democrat government.  And, in any case, the Civil Rights Act preceded the Democratic landslide (both presidential and congress) 1964 elections that led to the 1965 establishment of Medicare and the Great Society programs.

1976 led to a president who made no attempt to help Iran avoid an Islamic extremist government, and who made America a laughing stock around the world for his ineptness in dealing with the hostage crisis in the American embassy in Tehran.  And while Carter deserved some credit for the Egypt/Israel accords, even that was mostly Sadat’s initiative (not a response to Carter’s policies), in contrast to Reagan’s policies actually having a large effect on the crumbling of the Soviet Union.

So sure, the Republicans can get power back at some point:  the question is how much damage will have been done by the Left, and how many newly intractable and irreversible realities will be in place due to Democrat-created entitlements that the public comes to see as its due?

We seem destined to go down the road that Europe has already proved is a dead end.

There are a couple of other factors, however, that may mean the Republicans will not “be back” for quite some time.  Nothing recognizably like the Republican party as it has been can even hope to gain the ascendancy again if the Democrat reign succeeds in the following:

1)  ending secret balloting for unionization, by pushing through union card check (allowing union goons to appear at your front door and to “invite” you to sign…  very persuasively, of course) and bringing back the old terror tactics of labor wars not seen since the 1930s, when labor and employers each hired thugs to strongarm employees into submission.  It may not be clear to younger readers, but while union members can vote for whomever they choose in congressional and presidential elections, the unions themselves use union dues to back uniformly Democrat candidates.

2)  legalizing large numbers of formerly non-voting (we wish) illegal aliens, and making them beholden to Democrats by essentially buying their votes with entitlements.

3)  trade protectionist legislation (if the USA is re-unionized, it will be difficult for even a Republican congress and presidency to reverse this without unacceptable repercussions).

4)  creating yet another entitlement, health care, so that more people will be dependent on government.

5)  the “fairness doctrine” to silence dissenting voices from the Democrat majority, heard mostly on talk radio (strictly speaking, this would be reversible by Republicans, eventually, but it’s listed here as something that would militate against their ever having the chance).

6)  ACORN style registrations (without successful legal challenges, possibly tossed out by Left-leaning judges appointed by Democrats) of more and more voters who stand to receive from the government, but don’t pay much in the way of taxes, and have not traditionally voted in such large numbers.

Mr. Will’s comments are very, very cold comfort.

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Oct 03 2008

Change Through Orchestrated Crisis

Category: Congress,economy,election 2008,environment,healthcare,left,liberty,media,Obama,politics,socialism,university — harmonicminer @ 8:54 am

In a remarkable article in the American Thinker, James Simpson connects the dots between the various parts of the Left that have contributed to our current financial “crisis”.

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress – with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Continue reading “Change Through Orchestrated Crisis”

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Sep 22 2008

Touchstone for anti-gun, universal healthcare true believers

Category: guns,healthcare,legislation — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

A lot of folks believe themselves to be very righteous because they care so much about the children (even though they’re pro-choice on abortion).  They want you to believe that they care more about human life than you do.  So they’re really big on universal health care, and they’re anti-gun.  In the first instance, they want you to be forced by government taxation to pay for it.  In the second instance, they want to remove your right to self-defense (only meaningful if you have the tools to do so, correct?).

Is it clear yet that they don’t care about you?  I hope so.  If you don’t grasp that, reread the first paragraph.  Their concern is for other folks, not for you.  Not even for your children, because, you see, your children are yours, and the universal health care/anti-gun true believers don’t really care about them, just the children of those other people.  Otherwise they would not try to take away from you the tools you need to defend them, and the money you need to take care of them.

Continue reading “Touchstone for anti-gun, universal healthcare true believers”

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Sep 18 2008

I Still Don’t Get It

Category: healthcare — amuzikman @ 8:00 am

I have health insurance – great health insurance! Probably one of the best group insurance policies that can be found. It was difficult to get and it’s difficult to retain. I have to re-qualify every 6 months to remain eligible and I make sure I do because it is worth it to me.

It was not easy to qualify for this plan. I had to learn new skills. I had to work for years improving those skills. I had to network and build relationships in order to meet the “right” people – people who would hire me for the kind of work that would get me qualified for this particular health plan. I had to make tough choices. I had to make occupational and vocational sacrifices. I had to work long, hard hours but it was worth it because I was raising a family and needed insurance for my kids. I did what I had to do.

But never even once did I think it was the job of my government to provide me with health insurance. (I am no legal scholar but I do know there is absolutely NO mention whatsoever of a right to health insurance in the U.S. Constitution). Quality health care was something I desired and I needed. It was also excellent incentive for me to work hard and do what I had to do to get it. I didn’t wait for anybody to give it to me, I went out and earned it.

Where was it we decided “universal health care” was a right? And who decided it was the job of our government to provide health care? Other than the U.S. military, can you name something our government is good at running? (BTW – this is probably NOT a good time to answer, “Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac”). Have you ever gone to a DMV office? Now imagine you are going there to schedule a heart bypass surgery instead of a driver’s test!

Do I want folks to be sick? No. Do I want to be sick? No. But I took care of ensuring I’ll get care if I do get sick. So why can’t others take care of ensuring the same for themselves? Many can. A few can’t. Let’s all get together and help those who really need help. But instead of waiting around for someone to give you something because you decided it was your “right”, why don’t you get up off your chair and go figure out how to get what you need by earning it? I did. And I’m not particularly smart or lucky or well-connected. I just worked hard to attain a goal. Or do we not expect anyone to do that sort of thing anymore?

I just don’t get it….

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Sep 04 2008

Universal lifestyle coverage

Category: election 2008,healthcare,humor,politics,Uncategorized — sardonicwhiner @ 8:52 am

Bluntly, the huge majority of people who “can’t afford health insurance” of any kind at any level have simply made other choices.  They need to:

1)    turn off all the devices that don’t need to be on (save money on electricity),
2)    drive less,
3)    eat at home, simply, no fast food, don’t buy expensive prepared meals from the freezer section, buy basic foods and prepare meals to a menu,
4)    turn in their cell phones back to the phone company and cancel the plan  (paying the turn off fee if they must…  they’ll still save money),
5)    cancel satellite or cable tv plan (you can live without tv if your antenna doesn’t work…  really),
6)    cancel internet service (use the library for “research” and email, listen to the radio for news),
7)    run the air conditioning in your home or apartment much less, or don’t use it at all, like the rest of humanity for all of human history,
8)    give the expensive car back to the loan company, or better yet, don’t buy it to start with…  drive a simple, reliable, middle aged car, and as little as possible,

9)    knock off the “dollar here”, “dollar there” expenditures on soda, coffee, etc.

10)    refuse to buy gadgets, trinkets, techno toys, designer clothes and shoes, etc.
11)    review all the ways they spend money, and impose some budget discipline, not spending on anything that isn’t really essential.

12)   maybe consider getting a job, if they don’t have one, and are able.

This sort of thing used to be taught in economics courses in high school, both “regular” economics and “home” economics.

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