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The Threshold of Need.
Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America
Founder of Whole Foods in the WSJ.
I realize that it’s difficult to hear my opinion on this one, and I realize that’s because I have a full-time 6-figure job and have full medical benefits, the majority of which are paid for by my very generous employer. But I also know that I spend a lot of my money as a single income household absorbing the medical costs of the uninsured. I see it on every paycheck, on every tax return, at the end of every year.
This past spring I was very sick. So sick that I had to go to the ER and be admitted to Northwestern Hospital overnight. While I waited in the ER, it filled up with homeless people, non-citizens bringing their children in to have a cough checked, and even a few patients from state funded phychiatric hospitals. I sat there doubled over in pain and realized, I am paying for all these people to be here.
A few weeks later I received bills for the portions of my stay that were not covered by my insurance. I called the hospital to ask for a payment plan on the $5,000+ medical expenses. I was told quite curtly that I did not qualify for payment deferment or assistance as my household income was above their “threshold of need.”
I spent the next 4 months eating ramen and cereal while plunking down $600 of every paycheck I received to pay off those bills, of which I still have $700 left. I write those checks and I think of the Mexican couple who were escorted to the ER with a cop because they were non-citizens and their child was born in the US, a child eligible for public healthcare in this country while they were not (he stood there to make sure they were not treated). I wonder how much their medical bills were. Then I laugh and laugh and sign my check and eat my ramen.
The point here is this: The problem with healthcare in America isn’t who needs it and who gets it and who’s going to be in control. The problem is profiteering. The problem is private and grant funded medical research. The problem is the bloated bottom line of pharmaceutical companies. Strip out the millions of dollars Glaxo-Smith Kline makes on every little pill they hoc to a doctor to hoc to their patients who pay $45 a prescription and funnel it into preventative healthcare for every US citizen, and LET’S SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
Cut out the inflated expenses of the health insurance companies who charged me $72.43 for the 5 IV connector tubes as noted on the 24 page itemized bill of my hospital bill. Say to these companies, “You cannot charge $72.43 for a one-inch piece of plastic. You just can’t do this. It is criminal.”
Medical expenses are the #1 cause of bankruptcy in America today. People are sick and dying and bills are being shoved down their throats. At the same time, people who have no jobs, aren’t trying to get jobs, don’t want to get a job or pay taxes on their income, can take their children to the emergency room of an expensive teaching hospital for a cough. Someone get me my cane, because I need to wave it at the sky.
If you don’t get my point by now and think I’m just some conservative blowhard who should be happy she even has a job, then that’s fine and I respect that. But if you do see what I’m saying, I hope that you’ll stop painting that poster of yours to bob up and down outside the White House that says “Obama rules because we need free checkups!”
We do need free checkups. We need free lots of stuff. But first things first, the business of our health needs to change.
