LETTER: What to do when you lose your health insurance

There is no better time than right now that our legislators look at providing universal health care coverage for all of its citizens. We must be the only country in the world that does not provide this very important benefit to its citizens. We could eliminate the need for reviewing our personal policies to see if we would be covered if the need arises to visit a physician/hospital outside our coverage area. We are after all a leader in today's world and we should be leading in health care coverage for all as well. Most people will say - how can we afford that and I say, how can we not afford this benefit for all people. We are paying for those folks presently on Medicaid and Medicare - why not pay a little more and offer this coverage to all? There are many reasons for the lack of action regarding this matter and one would be the highly paid lobbyists who are paid by health care professionals (doctors, hospital, pharmaceutical companies, etc.) who wine and dine our legislators to the point that they have no alternative but to vote against a national health care plan because: 1) They will lose their sugar daddies to help finance their campaigns; 2) The health care professionals will be employed by our government, and gone will be the six-figure salaries (or more) for physicians and they will have to be satisfied with what the government feels their salaries should be; and 3) Scare tactics that health care will be severely limited to only the very rich (because they would be able to "pay under the table" for their care. "We'll have to wait to get an MRI until next week." "I want it available to me immediately." My response to all of these excuses is that if it is so bad in European countries, then why don't we hear about massive deaths, etc. because the health care available in those countries is so severely limited? Most of those folks seem to be quite happy with their coverages. Perhaps it is time we take a lesson from those folks and provide health care coverage to all - young and old, rich and poor. Then we wouldn't have to worry about the loss of a job, etc.

Before we start giving up every right and responsibility that we enjoy to the government, we need to ask at least 3 questions. 1)Where has the government demonstrated the ability to provide a better service at a lower cost to the most people with the least inefficiency in comparison to private sector providers? I believe the only examples would be military and transportation infrastructure and those would be very difficult logistically to do in the private sector. 2)Universal healthcare would have to include price controls on many levels, if oppurtunity for profit and growth are limited how motivated is anybody going to be to invest in new research for treatments, cures etc.? And who gets to decide when enough is enough or "it's just not worth treating this person"? 3)If you make anything too easy to obtain how do you control abuse of the system if there are no repercussions(financial or otherwise) to the abuser? A metaphor for an example-if I put a diaper on my toddler, he doesn't think twice about wetting himself, even though he knows where he should go and when. Not an efficient way to deal with the problem as somebody else is burdened to a larger extent than need be. If I, however, put him in regular underwear, he mysteriously goes to the bathroom by himself without prompting. Not a burden on anybody else and the long term benefits to him are obvious. Because there are ugly consequences of not taking care of the issue himself, he is motivated. I'm all for helping in the case of extenuating circumstances but not to indulge lazy or careless behavior.
What I'm saying is health care "safety net"-not a bad idea, but universal coverage as it's defined under the current occupant of the white house leaves little incentive to provide for your own. The further you are from writing the actual check, the less you're going to be concerned with the price and the less influence you will have on the quality. Alot of the financial trouble we have today is because people were more concerned with what they percieved to "need"(big suv, fancy house, 60 inch tv etc.) than what it was actually costing them(second mortgage, maxxed-out credit cards, upside down in their house, owing more on the car than what it's worth).
Perhaps requiring insurance companies to figure in a "bridge payment"-a reduced premium for a limited period of time-if a worker is laid off. A creative company could probably gain a fair amount of business of by offering this. Alot of people in this town would probably take that policy in a heartbeat right now. There are more solutions to problems than just "government intervention".

But I rant... And charlie-who says I have to have "Helmut" on my bike/motorcycle as a smart life choice? First off, it's very difficult to find anybody named Helmut these days and secondly, it's not going to be easy to convince him to ride on the same machine with me! And I think I'm safer riding by myself, with a helmet, thank you very much.

Still optimistic, but I don't feel good about it....

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Just trying to have a little fun where I can find it these days..i aint no kind of grammar expert and these newfangled compooters just seem to make it worser..

Smiling out loud today...

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