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.
Americans seem to think that they have a right to whatever they want, whether they earned it or not
A large part of the cause for the above is the public-school system.
Universal free health care sounds marvellous but like all socialist ideas it will turns out to be an expensive nightmare that destroys incentive. Need? bollox to need, the only proper measure when receiving benefits from society should be the effort one has put into society relative to one’s ability.
You will end up picking up huge welfare bills for migrants who have contributed nothing to the US and useless people who are only made more useless by never being tested or having anything required of them