Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Would life be easier if things made better sense?

Don't you wish life could be just a little easier and just a tad more fair?  I guess that depends on your individual perspective.  In the United States the health care system is out of synch with the needs of the patient most of the time.  Health insurance is very expensive if it gives you what you want when you need it.  Trouble with this is you are spending a lot of money on a policy that covers you when you have a catastrophic illness.  Hopefully you won't ever have to use it. However, keeping this coverage is expensive and if you never use it where is all that money going?  Likely into the gas tank of a newly purchased Maserati Saloon driven by the corporate executive of the Insurance company covering you. 

Cheap insurance coverage can be just as expensive in the event you actually need to use it and very often will present you with an extremely limited benefit package while you are lying on your back in an emergency room where the bulk of your bill will be accrued.  Sadly this is usually when a person discovers just what sort of policy they have and it usually isn't what they thought it was.  This is the type of insurance people have today a cheap premium, massive deductible and extremely limited coverage with a set of complex rules that in some cases render the coverage useless if, for instance, the hospital you were taken to happens to be outside the 'coverage' zone.  I wish I was joking. 

It just doesn't make any sense!!  What is worse is the climate that foments this nonsense, a climate in which the executives are immune from criminal prosecution for what can only be considered fraud via an exemption to the 'anti-trust' laws, the laws prohibiting the formation of a 'monopoly'.  Our insurance industry currently operates under an exemption to this law.  Obamacare is meant to end this exemption, hence the tidal wave of resistance to it.  The trouble is that it was written by politicians.

What does makes sense, the wrong kind of sense, is the fact that the industrial model of health care in the United States is highly profitable for the corporate executives at the top who make enough money to afford the expense of keeping a United States Senator as a pet and a Congressperson as a step stool.  Yes, this is a cynical point of view but an accurate point of view none the less.  There is a reason why the term 'honest politician' is an oxymoron. 

 I can get my dog to do anything I want him to so long as I have a dried piece of liver in my hand.  A dog treat that will render my Airedale Terrier into a hair covered ball of obedience.  Oh yeah, he will roll over, sit, stay and hump my wives leg on command just to get that treat.  Of course I would never do that to my wife, mostly because I like living. The point is he would do anything for a dried piece of liver, even risk death, which is what would  happen if he humped my wives leg. 

Senators and Congresspersons are little more than a well trained dog, who will do anything for a treat, a treat being a pile of cash in an off shore account or a well paying job at a firm where they really don't have to show up except to collect a pay check, which in all honesty could be mailed to them.

I do wish life made better sense than this.  








No comments:

Post a Comment