Pay for Your Own Damn Health Care

A friend of mine was sick recently for over two weeks. When we spoke, I asked him what the doctor said. He said, "I didn't go because I don't have insurance". I lost my cool and asked him, "what do you do when your car breaks down?" He said, "I take it to the shop". I said, "so you allowed your body to get run down and lost two weeks from work instead of spending $100 going to the doctor and getting an antibiotic?" His response, "yes".

Given that scenario and given the debacle of the health care bill that was just shoved down our throat, I ask you to consider this:

• When YOUR car needs new brakes, do you keep driving it until the rotors burn up? Do you go to you local repair shop and pay a $15 co-pay? Or do you pay out of pocket after shopping around in a competitive marketplace?

• How much do you spend every year for your cell phone? Do you make a co-pay or do you shop around for the most competitive service given your needs?

• How much do you spend every year for your cable TV or satellite TV? Do you look to the government to pay for it? Do you make a co-pay and a third-party pays the rest of the bill?

• When your dog or cat gets sick, do you go to your local vet and make a co-pay or do you call around and get a referral to a competent vet and pay out of pocket?

• How much do you spend every year eating out? Maybe you should spend less at restaurants and save some of that money to pay for your health care. Just a thought?

• How much do you spend at Starbucks every year?

• How much do you spend on vacations, travel, entertainment, your boat, your lake house, beach house, your motorcycle, etc?

• How much do you spend on lawn care?

I have two points:

#1 – None of the things I listed above – car, entertainment, pets, cell phones, etc are more important than your health yet, for some reason, this country does not think that we should pay for our own health care. How the hell did that happen?

#2 - WE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO HEALTH CARE! The Constitution does not state it. The Bible does not state it. There is nothing in The Federalist Papers, the Magna Carta or The Articles of Confederation. The only place this entitlement exists is in the minds and doctrines of socialists and communists.

It's a slippery slope folks! What comes after health care? Mortgage assistance (my fault, we already have that)? Prescription drug benefit (already there)? Food Stamps (damn!)? Car care? Entertainment? Pet care? Vacation assistance?

Health care IS NOT a right! Don't be fooled or sucked in to thinking that it is. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to mess with health care. The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Therefore, if any of the fifty states want to offer universal health care, they can do it (i.e. Massachusetts). Let a state go bankrupt but don't bankrupt the whole country. You can move out of Massachusetts if you don't like what they are doing but you can't easily leave the country.

You are not going to get anything for free. We will all eventually suffer through higher rates and rationed care. The reason I can make such a statement is because, without exception, everywhere socialized medicine has been instituted, rationing has ensued and the quality of care has declined. EVERYWHERE!!!! Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, Cuba!!!! That's all the proof I need to know that what was just passed is going to be a disaster.

I am not even going to dive into some of the more obvious issues with the bill:

1. The manner in which it was passed
2. The fact that it was almost 3,000 pages
3. The fact that it established countless new government bureaucracies and unrelated earmarks
4. The fact that it was NOT READ by the people who voted for it INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT
5. The fact that the Speaker of the House told us that we must pass it in order to see what is in it
6. The fact that 60%+ of Americans disapprove of the bill
7. The fact that Pelosi and Reid have an 11% and 8% approval rating respectively
8. The fact that Congress' approval rating is 18% or 20%
9. The fact that the President blatantly lied about putting the debate on C-SPAN
10. The fact that the President blatantly lied about putting the bill online for us plebeians to read before it is voted on
11. The fact that we get to pay for the program for the next 3 years via higher taxes before seeing any of the, so called, benefits.
12. The fact that buried within the bill is a takeover of the student loan industry (what does that have to do with health care?)

And for my liberal readers who want me to articulate an alternative, here you go:

1. Tort Reform
2. Remove the 2,100 mandates currently imposed on health insurance companies which will allow a la carte purchasing of insurance
3. Allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines which will instill competition
4. Create a pre-existing conditions pool to lower the cost for those of us with pre-existing conditions. And YES, health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions will be more expensive. That's why it is called insurance because we are a higher risk to the insurer.
5. Read The Patients' Choice Act (look it up!)

Wake up America!