Health Insurance...

Here's a hot topic that I can hardly believe has taken so long for me to bore you to death about... ...I guess I am still working on it in my head.

I have my ideas about what should happen, but that would be hard (read: impossible) to stomach - that is, the complete, unmerciful abolition of all health insurance, private and public. Rid the world of this legal extortion ("You take care of da family an' da family takes care-a yoos!") along with tort reform (including caps on punitive awards and recompense to successful defendants for all court costs...) and I think you have the makings of a more sustainable system.

Like I said, a nasty little problem in the short term while everyone has to make hard choices and some lose all to medical debt... ...abolition of insurance is just not a political possibility.

However, if you need any evidence that litigation is driving up health care costs, then look up John Edwards', the former Senator's bio sometime; and then add up some of the medical litigation that he alone is responsible for... ...then consider how many other sharks are in the water, mimicking his lawsuits, repeatedly scalping doctors for HUGE awards. Then you start to see why practicing medicine is expensive. I for one would do not want to swim in medical water for that reason alone. Just the mal-practice insurance premiums are enough to scare me into a cave.

Am I CRAZY?!! Maybe so, but we here in America still have the legal "out" of (gasp) bankruptcy if worse comes to worse. Now, I don't advocate running to the nearest bankruptcy layer the first time you can't pay off your credit card, but there is a time and place to shed the collections agancies and get life back on track. I would personally make it a purpose in life to pay those bills back over time as well - that's a Biblical theme.

However, the original purpose of health insurance was not to mitigate risk. It was to provide hospitals with income (see the links below). Then, with a few more little circumstances along the way, it became a fringe benefit, then it became the norm for risk management, then the norm for cheap health care, and now it is the norm for assuring your own financial poverty forever. Premiums in many cases (ours at one time) approaches or exceeds the mortgage payment (I hear another rant coming?).

So, how did we get health insurance (legal extortion)? I heard a story recently aired on Public Radio and thought to look it up today...

You may want to hear it yourself: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=10-22-2009

Or, since they had no "embed" option, here is the transcript...
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=114045132

It is the facinating story of how we have gotten the best health care in the world, if at the highest cost in the world?

As I see it, health insurance somehow went from steady income to hospitals, to fringe benefit, to personal risk management, then to cheap medical care, and finally to almost none of the above. Now it is more of assured poor house residency. At least before health insurance the poor house wasn't guaranteed!

Now it may become EVEN MORE costly as we sacrifice every ounce of our freedom of choice to health related regulation... ...and you thought it was all just about economics? I wish.

With health care regulation, comes the inevitable, logical regulation in which you are rewarded with penalties for your bad habits like smoking, drinking, avoiding your annual doctor's exam, neglecting your 3 or more annual flu shots, driving an SUV... ...Oh wait, the SUV part goes in the Cap and Trade bill... Silly me.

But I do wonder how stiff the penalty will be for smoking and eating a greasy breakfast sandwhich while driving a dirty, gas-guzzling, smoke-spewing SUV to your job at the carbon producing smog factory... ...at least you were wearing your seat belt, eh?

There is no end to the possibilities... ...think of all the fun those lwyers are gonna have writin' bills about this-and-that bad-for-you-or-the-environment thing... What do you call that? Checks and Balances? Noooooo.... A BLANK CHECK!

Bottom line - lawyers are getting all 'da loot.

So, I guess I did end up boring you with my opinion of all of this so far... ...Silly me.

Now, go check out that story about health insurance - it might help you wake up again. Or not.