Obesity is one of our national problems these days and a real cause of much of the increased burden on doctors and hospitals, and it’s a direct result of the attitude of most Americans, which is, I Am Entitled. Americans seem to think that they have a right to whatever they want, whether they earned it or not. The work ethic in this country has gone the way of the passenger pigeon, shot down by thoughtless people imbued with sloppy, selfish thinking.

So naturally, when Obama started pushing his health care “reform”, (read: Free Giveaway Program For Blacks, aka Reparations) all the poor people of this country, most of whom are either lazy, stupid, or on drugs, got right behind him in the conga line (free, free, cha cha cha). Even many of those who have good incomes and health insurance would much rather stop having to pay the expensive insurance premiums and let the government take over paying the bill.

Well, you can’t blame people for wanting to get out from under an expense, especially one like insurance, which is just money down a tube for the vast majority of us who will never see any benefit from all that money they’ve paid out every year. Health insurance is like any other, it’s betting that we’re going to suffer disasters and if we do, we win and the insurance company loses. Yet it’s a bet we want to lose, so no wonder people want free health care.

Here’s the rub: We aren’t entitled to it. We think we are, because as Americans we think we’re entitled to pretty much everything, if we’re well to do, and entitled to tons of free social services if we’re sick, lame or lazy. As long as we don’t personally have to pay for it, damn right, give it to me.

Good medical care is not a right. It’s a privilege and an expensive one. It used to be much more affordable before we started suing the crap out of doctors and hospitals for medical malpractice, forcing them to buy malpractice insurance that literally eats up over half their annual incomes, instead of protecting the medical profession from such lawsuits.

We treat our doctors as if infallibility were a requirement of the profession, and we forget that it’s called the practice of medicine for a reason. Doctors are people, they occasionally get clumsy, forget to do something or do something too much or are simply inept. When these malpractice suits first started, the AMA should have immediately begun a policy of stripping the incompetent doctors of their licenses to practice medicine, and of lobbying the government to outlaw malpractice suits.

Instead, the AMA has protected our worst doctors and covered for their mistakes, and our government has forced doctors and hospitals to accept indigent patients without payment at emergency wards, resulting in the closure of not just many hospital emergency wards but the hospitals themselves.

This has caused the cost of malpractice insurance to skyrocket, as the suits against inept doctors and sloppy hospitals increased at the same time that the publics belief in their right to infallible medical treatment increased, and the insurance costs are passed on to the patients in the form of dramatically increased rates for everything from a Q-tip to a heart transplant.

In other words, we took a perfectly good and honorable profession and wrecked it, for those who want to persue it as a career, and for ourselves, because we refuse to accept that when we go to a doctor, that doctor may make a mistake or even just not know a certain procedure.

Obama says he wants to “reform” health care but his plan isn’t to reinstate good quality medical care as being a privilege that it is, and to take the insurance burdens off doctors and hospitals and dramatically reduce the cost of medical care. His plan is to make it free for all the poor people and make all the well to do people pay for the poor peoples care.

I have a better idea. Instead of us picking up the tab for what will be mostly blacks and illegal aliens health care, let’s spend that money paying out all the malpractice claims. Let’s take over the malpractice insurance business and set our medical profession free of that extremely onerous burden. It will cost a whole lot less than paying the doctor bills for over 40 million people, the cost of medical care will drop like a rock for all of us along with the cost of health insurance, and far more people will be able to afford both.

This way, the Medicare system can remain in place and its payout rates will still be accepted by doctors and hospitals. Currently, less and less of the medical profession accepts Medicare because the Medicare payment schedule is lagging behind the rising rates of hospitals.

Socialized medicine is a nightmare that’s proven not to work. Rather than fall into that dark pit, our government should do what it’s experienced in, be insurance providers. Social Security, Medicare, Employment Insurance, SSI, all cheap to free insurance programs run by our government. Add free Malpractice Insurance to that, and go no further.

For my thousands of loyal readers who’ve been wondering where I’ve been the past four days, I’ve been entertaining company. They’re gone, and I’m back.

So Black Racists Obama and Gates get together with their victim, Officer Crowley, clink glasses and talk about pretty much nothing. Our foot-in-mouth president proves he’s too much of a craven, prima donna jerk to apologize for saying the police “Acted stupidly” even after admitting that he didn’t know what happened anyway. Gates, who was captured on camera and video tape abusing the police and behaving like a complete asshole, took his cue from Obama and actually tried to elicit an apology from Sgt. Crowley, who was the only person there who deserved an apology.

So absolutely nothing was resolved other than clarifying the poor character of two blacks.

The problem here is, however, partly the fault of the police, generically speaking. For example, 4 cops in Hollywood, Florida are now in seriously hot water. One of them went to pull over a drunk woman, who stopped rather suddenly and the cop injudiciously rear-ended her vehicle. The 3 other cops joined in with him to falsify their report, making it seem that the collision was the womans fault. Fortunately for her, the entire affair was captured on a built-in video camera on one police vehicle, and now the cops are probably going to prison.

Their conspiring to protect each other is clearly heard on the tape.

That police abuse their power is common knowledge. They use excessive force often, sometimes kill people and “throw down” a cheap weapon and claim self-defense, they take bribes, steal drugs and drug money from felons, and frequently behave with great rudeness and arrogance toward the general public.

They also do great good and save a lot of lives and property at the risk of their own lives.

The problem is that the police put themselves up on a pedestal. Not just that but they put themselves above the rest of us, whom they refer to as “civilians”, as if they were some sort of special military force instead of 8 to 5 working stiffs, exactly like all the rest of us. Firemen risk their lives saving lives and property too, and do a lot more of it at greater risk than cops. In fact, most firemen are unpaid volunteers, and you don’t see them lording it over the rest of us or asking to be bowed down to and worshipped.

I’ve known a lot of cops and about 95% of them acted like assholes, calling everyone but them “dirtbags” and worse, simply for not being cops like them. So when Obama said, thoughtlessly, that the cops acted “stupidly”, he was probably harking back to personal experiences at their hands during his younger days.

As president, his remark was stupid and he still owes an apology to Sgt. Crowley and the Cambridge police department. That’s one. The other is that the police of this nation need different hiring criteria and attitude instruction, not regarding race but regarding the way they see themselves in relation to the rest of us. This separatist, “better than thou” bullshit and unacceptable behavior and brutality is the source of all the anger toward police and always has been.

Back when laws were fewer and people could get away with just about anything if they had the right friends, this old-school police attitude could prevail. Now we have video cameras all over the place and we’re chin-deep in laws of all sorts, and none of us can get away with much of anything.

This includes those of us who earn our daily bread wearing badges and guns and lots of shiny black leather thingies to make us look all Official. Wake up to the New Reality: You’re just another civilian in blue starched clothing. Get off your fucking high horse or you may just end up in prison.