Health Care for Some!

More exciting news today in the world of health care: as health care costs continue to rise, more people are predictably going without. Twenty-eight percent of Americans, according to a new study. I’m not a statistician, but that seems like a lot of people. I have a feeling that if it were the richest 28% or the prettiest 28%, maybe we’d be talking a little more earnestly about national health care. Every time the subject is broached, though, horror stories abound of Canadians flocking to America to get treatments they’d otherwise have to wait months or years to get (for free) in Canada. Well, I’m sure this happens to some people; and I don’t know how many Canadians are crossing the border in need of medical treatment, but I’m going to assume it’s a lot less than 46 million. Forty-six million seems like a lot of people. That’s like Texas, New York and Oregon all without health insurance, give or take South Dakota. In America we may have lower life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates and higher per-capita health care costs than most industrialized nations, and tens of millions of uninsured people, but at least we’re not Communists! The Reds are on the march, but we’re going to win this thing!

Why do we assume that, if we had a national health care program, we would have the same problems that Canada supposedly faces? Why would we not be able to do health care better than Canada? Don’t we do pretty much everything else better than Canada? Our dollar is stronger, our bacon is better, and we’ve even taken most of their hockey teams.

But who needs national health care when you can instead use a Byzantine amalgam of interwoven private companies and government programs to lower health care costs? And this system is doing a great job. You know, sometimes. Sure, our health care policies might be causing some people to skip treatments, go without care, and sometimes die, but that’s what you get for being poor. Serves them right.