Health Who Cares?

The U.S. will probably never get comprehensive health care reform, primarily because so many people don’t know what’s good for them.

Millions and millions of Americans believe that a perfectly healthy lifestyle involves hours and hours a day of driving around in cars, eating food from drive-up windows, and taking anti-depressants to cope with the pain of being fat and dyspeptic.

Not to sound all Tom Cruise here, but the surest way to reduce health care costs in this country is for people to get off their asses, move around a little bit, and stop going to doctors so much.

But in the meantime, it sure would be cheaper, more equitable, and more efficient if the costs of care were borne by everyone, all together, and nobody got left out; but if people can’t even see what’s in their best interest, how will they ever support it?

All you have to do is call something “socialized,” and it becomes anathema. “Socialized medicine,” ooh, scary. Take something perfectly benign, that everyone likes, put socialized in front of it, and suddenly, yikes: “socialized back rubs,” aagh! “Socialized chocolate sundaes,” run! “Socialized unicorns,” (actually kind of creepy.)

I’m lucky; as a state of Washington employee, I have a pretty good health care plan, but it’s not cheap, and the co-pays for anything out of the ordinary can be daunting. Consequently, my best health care solution: don’t get sick!

And then all the lies, misinformation, and hysteria about so-called “death panels.” I actually don’t think they’d be such a bad idea, as long as the first applicants for them were Rush Limbaugh, Kenny G., and Sarah Palin.

Kidding! I’m kidding!

Obviously, nobody should have a panel of physicians deciding for them whether they should receive medical care; we should leave it like the way it is now, where some nameless, faceless, mid-level manager, in a huge heartless, multinational insurance company cubicle somewhere makes the call.

Isn’t that’s what’s best for all?