How To Pay For Healthcare - The Wrong Question
I suppose that in a perfect world everyone would have access to healthcare. Well, then I guess the United States is as close to perfect as anywhere because everyone here has access to healthcare. Just like anyone can buy a car, buy a home, or buy clothes and food, anyone can buy healthcare. Healthcare is a service and money is the medium we use to exchange our time for goods and services.
Linking the concept of Universal Healthcare to the word free is a lie. We have universal healthcare. What we don't have is free healthcare. Nor do we have free cars, free houses, or free clothes and food. There was a time, not that long ago, when it was understood that hard work and good choices led to more options in lifestyle. Long before I graduated from high school my parents were telling me that I'd need to get a good education so I could get a good job with good benifits. And lest you think that I was raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, think again. Economically we were lower middle class and neither of my parents went to college. My father worked very hard and understood that hard work and good choices could take you places. Hard work and good choices led to higher paying jobs with access to health insurance. It was one of the benefits of hard work and one of the things that motivated you to stay on track. My brothers didn't listen to his advice, didn't work hard, made poor choices, and have paid the price. But to their credit, they don't expect anything for free.
As a result of hard work and good choices, and years of delayed gratification and personal sacrifice, I now have a good job and work in a nice place surrounded by other hardworking people. No, I'm not rich and my family finances are tight. It doesn't look like I'll ever retire. My cars aren't new and my house needs work. And it galls me to this day that I can't take the vacations I see other people take. As a result I sometimes think my life sucks. Especially since I'm rarely around people who's lives do suck. But I had that chance recently and it opened my eyes.
We had some work done on our house this summer. No, I didn't have a windfall, I borrowed money that I now must pay back. The owner of the contracting company who did the work was a pretty sharp guy. He was reasonably punctual (for a contractor) and accurate (for a contractor) and seemed to have his affairs in order (for a contractor). His hired help was another matter entirely. Their finances were in complete disarray. None of them had cars - well, one of them actually had a vehicle reposessed on the job. None of them had health insurance. They were walking disasters. On the surface it seemed kind of sad. But as days turned into months (no it isn't quite done even now!) their stories began to come out. To a man they had made horrible choices pissed away their public education, and taken every short cut conceivable. Some had been in jail. Others had multiple children outside of wedlock. Some had past drug problems. Others simply failed to show up for work and couldn't be reached. (Naturally of course they all had cell phones.) The owner tried to find better help but good workers seem to be quite a rarity these days.
As I took all this in it began to dawn on me that a) I really had a wonderful life and b) these people were entirely responsible for their own misery. From this I came to c) why should I pay for their free healthcare?
The question Obama is asking, and the question our nation is debating, should not be, "How are we going to pay for free healthcare?" The question should be, "Why should we pay for free healthcare?" Why should my hard work, good choices, years of personal sacrifice and delayed gratification, countless long nights studying when others were out playing, saying no to sex when it sounded good, staying healthy by refraining from bad behavior, be used to pay for people who will screw anything with two legs, come to work drunk - or high, fail to pay their bills (because they pay their texting bill first), and called anyone with a decent GPA a geek? And the president is out there preaching that it is partly my fault, and at the very least my problem, that they don't have healthcare? Is it just me or is something very wrong here?
The short of it is, these people don't deserve free health care. Sure, they may be nice. And these guys I worked with were very nice and even polite. But it was to their advantage to be so when they were on the job. You'd see a far different story Saturday night when they bust some dude over the head with a bottle because they're both to drunk to notice that the guy that just called their girlfriend a "Ho," had already left the bar! Why, how, and when did that kind of behavior become worthy of my time and effort?
I actually lied at the beginning of this piece. I said there were no free cars, free houses, or free clothes and food. In fact, there are. Free housing is called the projects. Free cars is called the public transportation. Free clothes and food are called welfare. And it was government mandates that made mortgage credit available to people who had no business buying a house and led directly to worst recession since the depression. I wonder how long it'll be until "cash for clunkers" morphs into the auto-loan meltdown, because $4,500 isn't a lot of money when you have a $500/month car payment for 72 months.
Yeah, free healthcare. That sounds just great. Only don't ask me to pay for it because I sure ain't gonna be using it.
-Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com