Across the Flow

As you are listening or trying to shut out the political rhetoric you must lift you chin and focus on the screen or the radio speaker (since you can hear it better when you look at it) the next time a candidate dramatically cries out “47 million Americans are without health insurance and we have to do something!  Universal health care!” “But sir,” a reporter was heard this week asking B. Hussein Obama, “how will you pay for this?”  to which he replied as he escaped offstage, “we’ll find it somewhere.”  Your payroll stub is where he’ll find it. (see UK, Canada, France, Sweden, etc, etc.)

You hear the number thrown about concerning how many Americans are being ignored, abused, threatened with imminent death without access to life saving health care.

Here’s the approximate breakdown:

10 M are illegal aliens. 

11 M are elligible for Medicaid which provides total health care but they haven’t signed up.

17 M remain.  4.25 mil of those decline coverage for which they qualify from an employer group plan.  Another portion would rather cross their fingers and buy techno-toys, cars, houses and 401k’s, earning $50,000 or more, than pay for premiums.  Many are young and bulletproof and don’t need maintenance drugs but fail to consider catastrophy.

Some of the balance are poor children already qualified for SChip, but as yet are not signed up.

The rest? Those whose unemployment outlasted their HIPAA benefit of 18 months if indeed they could afford the full premium on unemployment compensation.  That was me.

Another portion of the balance is my hairdresser.  She had a heart attack in her 40’s and her BMI puts her in an obesity category.  Sorry, she’s plump, but “obese”? No.  Owning her business, making a profit or not, a Sole Propriety or not, paying employees or not, not enough employees, puts her out of reach of the group programs available and keeps her premiums sky high due to her history.

It’s not about the children.  It’s not about raising the official age of “child” to 25 and his poverty level to $80,000 which congress attempted but was shot down.  But a middle aged woman handing out resumes everywhere and a business owner barely paying the light bill don’t generate as much sympathy.  Cute, already covered under S-chip 12 year olds enrolled in two separate private schools at $40,000 annually, each, placed in front of cameras and prompted by script writers do.

By the way, no one is denied care in an emergency and there are facilities for people who have no way of paying the bill.  One of those facilities is about 30 miles west of me.  They charge what you can pay according to your current income.  Had my hairdresser or I really needed them, they were there. BTW, it’s a private organization that functions very well, thank you, without the sloppy control of the same giant outfit that runs the post office.  The Illegals figured the ER solution out before they slinked across the border to drop an anchor. 

Since I’ve railed against The Bashers Without Solution for about 7 years now, I am actually attempting to offer an idea that would help in a free market solution.

1. Remove regulations from insurance companies allowing individuals and groups to buy policies tailored to their needs.  e.g. I don’t need a pregnancy benefit anymore but insurance companies are forced to include it in company group policies just in case.

2. After removing that regulation, the free market system will eliminate the policies so rich the policy holder perceives health care to be “cheap” while he’s paying $50 every month extra on the premium for an office visit copay of $20 he might use twice during flu season.

3.  Allow doctors to advertise their rates.  Nothing like competition for a reality check.

Here’s something else that’s being tossed out but ignored by the mainstream.  Canadians have a longer life expectancy than Americans.  Yeah, until the American homicide factor is thrown out of the equation.  If the UK’s plan is so great, why are 20% of people diagnosed with colon cancer waiting so long between the primary visit and the specialist the cancer’s too far gone and they die? Why is a Canadian woman in labor in a helicopter looking for an empty bed?  Why did the UK tell pregnant women they weren’t getting expensive C sections until they went the midwife route first?

So the next time you hear 47 million, do your subtraction.  Oh, I can just hear the new drama.  Tilt the head slightly back, look pitiful, place the back of one hand against the forehead and drone in your best sing-song voice:

“If even one small child is without health care, we the people, need to do something.”  Right.  But that’s affordable.  Hey, maybe even the remaining single digit million are affordable.  Consider:

• Illegal is illegal is illegal.  Get them healthy for the trip home. 
• Insure only those who truly have fallen through the cracks and only until they qualify for the existing programs and employer sponsored plans currently running.
• Don’t tax me, bro’.