Health Care Despair

Nope Ethopia isn't the answer either. (see the previous link)

Age is great teacher 'cause you don't have to do much but hang around with open ears for a very long time and life's lessons allow the formulation of opinion on critical issues.

 

For example: I'm just sitting listening to a return missionary (for us Mormons, that means a young person who goes away for 18 months to 2 years and lives among the natives without respite (and that means ever returning home or even calling there very often)).

So I'm debriefing a returned Missionary at dinner at my kitchen table and I asked him about his travels and what he felt was the greatest difference in America and the country he went to, Denmark.

"Well," he drawls quietly, "It's gotta be health care."

"Oh? I ask, Socialized medicine?"

"Yeah," he responds, "Everybody has it. You get sick, you just go to the doctor."

Then he goes on. "My companion had something go wrong with his back. It really hurt so he and I got an appointment and went to the doctor. The doc did an exam, then went to his computer and googled, "Sore back." I was sitting behind the doc and I was so surprised that my companion saw my expression of shock and tried to sit on the edge of his chair and crane his neck to the side so he could see what was going on."

"The doctor stopped, looked at the guy straining, and said suddenly, "I know what's wrong. You have injured your neck by holding it funny." He proceeded to treat the patient by pulling off a strip of masking tape and taping it onto the guys head and sticking the other end to his shoulder. "Do this every evening for two weeks and you should be better," the doctor tells him.

Back to the wisdom thing, I may not have read the 2700 pages of health care reform, but I hope somewhere in it there is a dumb doctor clause for preventing this happening when our medical plan settles in.

I've lived a long time and heard a lot of stuff on both sides of this issue. We are currently choosing to live the life of no medical insurance. It's a wild and edgy thing that keeps the adrenaline in tip top form and yes, having no insurance has made me skip the doctor when maybe I shoulda gone, just for safety and peace of mind.

But my running conclusion on health care (always subject to change with every new story--age has not yet set in far enough to force me to stay of the same opinion with new information,) is that the old American value of supply and demand will eventually kick in and the Free Enterprise System will once more triumph.

And when everybody has health care, nobody will really want it anyway.  

9-23-10