Megan McArdle in the Atlantic takes on the Health Care issue, explaining just why a government-run plan is simply the rationing of resources, and does not improve anyone's quality of life. The article itself, to me anyways, is dry and a rehash of everything I already knew, but what makes this remarkable is the Comments section, where one poster actually had the unmitigated audacity to actually type this:
"...Oh, and I forgot to say, they billed my insurance 40,000 for 4 days in the hospital, and my insurance company made me pay 4,000 dollars of it. That is 1000 dollars a day for my hospital stay, even though I HAD INSURANCE!!!! (I am a grad student living on 1400 a month.)
Nobodies' assets are safe under our current system. It just costs whatever they think they can confiscate from you..."
And therein is the problem! This deluded woman's insurance company shelled out $36,000 to save her life, and restore her to health, but that $4,000 (a mere 10% of the total cost!) that she is asked to pay is an undue burden, approaching an unfair confiscation of her assets!
Look, I've had my own problems with the insurance companies in the past, but this is a very petty complaint, indeed,
But it is indicative of the mentality of many who scream 'Health Care Crisis' summed up very nicely. The poor naif is a 'grad student' (like this is supposed to impress me? She's basically a dictator in training, if you ask me, and the sense of entitlement just fairly oozes out of that revelation. I hope she's a grad student in something useful, like engineering, or chain-saw juggling, and not one of those Gender Studies faux-PhD's), living on a fixed income (probably a stipend paid for by the taxpayers who support her university). She's probably receiving financial aid, too. Her whole lifestyle may have been subsidized by the taxpayer during her academic career, so why shouldn't it also cover that last 4k?
This same mentality is prevalent in all other wards of the state -- welfare recipients, Social Security recipients and Public Unions: they have a lifestyle subsidized by the state in one way or another, and probably receive much more in compensation from society than they ever really contributed to it (this is especially true of the so-called Greatest Generation of Social Security recipients, and the Welfare-as-family-tradition section of the so-called poor). So why shouldn't government go whole hog and save them that last 10% of the bill?
The 'debate' is not about Health Care. It's not about access, cost or quality. It's about people who don't perform useful work getting something for free , and having it established as a 'right'.
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