Who’s Becky Akers and why does she think she understands health care in the US enough to write an op ed on it?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090720/cm_csm/yakers I'm one of the nearly 50 million Americans who don't have health insurance. I don't want it, either...Ok she’s amazingly healthy and doesn’t need it, doesn't want it. Take that all you people that need health care.
...So I might purchase catastrophic coverage if it were reasonably priced – just as I might visit doctors for lesser complaints if their care were reasonably priced...Oh wait she needs it and wants it if it was at a good price. So that didn’t take long to completely undermine her initial argument. So why's it so expensive?
...In fact, the incentives run the opposite way as patients demand more procedures and tests while magnifying problems I resolve out of my medicine cabinet into emergency-room runs. Doctors who get away with charging Medicare hundreds for diagnosing Grandpa's indigestion would charge me the same...Freaking grandpa getting sick. What a bastard. And what about all you faking it young people? Young people getting tests and diagnoses and using the machine that goes bing. How dare you actually use the health care system! Becky has that dialysis machine in her medicine cabinet, but you demand expensive dialysis instead. But clearly there has to be something even more evil than sick people that makes Becky not need health care.
...Though we can't choose whether goods are rationed, we can choose how they are. Either the politicians and bureaucrats who bring us long lines at DMVs, failing public schools, and the endless war in Iraq will decide who gets what kind of treatment, or the free market will...Oh it's our government making it expensive with it's medicare. Last time I checked we can’t choose who runs private companies that run the free market and might care or not if you live and die. We CAN choose the politicians that run our social programs. Don’t like your DMV, public school or war policy, pick new politicians. Don’t like the CEOs that run the health insurance industry... you’re * out of luck. Sure you're free to pick your insurance company, but as many Americans find out your friendly insurance company might become less friendly only AFTER you need it. What's poor Becky to do then? Actually vote for talented politicians rather than flat earth creationist that cure people with snake handling? Screw that says Becky, let's trust the free market instead. That has never failed us before in the last year(oops), month(oops), this week was a good stock week right. Trust the free market!
...Contrast an inferior, run-down veteran's hospital with a general one...OK here comes the contrast. Oh wait Becky never gets around to any comparison of any system in the whole piece. I guess we just assume they suck because the mighty Becky says so. You can trust her she's the one that does(n't) need health care.
Absent such meddling, the price of medical care would return to reasonable levels. It benefits no provider of any service to charge such astronomical fees that customers can't afford to patronize him. That's right with the free market if you get cancer it's all the leaches and blood lettings you can afford. The free market has spoken! So here’s the whole point of her article, the cost of the medical industry is you wanting medical care. If only you were all as healthy as the writer that doesn’t need health care (but needs it) then we could afford health care. And expensive health care would be cheap because no one in the free market ever offers services too expensive for you to afford. Which why so many poor own their own home, fly on their Jet while wear their designer cloths to go to private college. But no, you sick bastards make it too expensive and so uncle government comes in and make it so good honest Americans can't get good honest health care. Becky’s fantasy patients driving up the costs with magic requests for more and more tests reminds one of Reagan’s Cadillac driving wealth fare queen. Sure a few people abuse the social service system in America, but vastly more are helped and the cost of these moochers is vastly lower than people like Becky imagine. Which is why Republicans always promise to cut the pork and waste out of social programs when running for office then are completely unable to balance budgets by doing this once in office.
One final gem from Becky
That doesn't mean everyone could finally buy all the procedures they wanted or even needed – but that's where private charity would come in.Because you know that's working out so well now. Private charity works ok on small problems but as Katrina showed most Americans, not named Becky Akers, it is generally powerless to raise the funding needed to deal with catastrophe. There’s 1/6 Americans without health care, I don’t think a local bake sales is really the answer to our health care problem. Actually Becky, we are asking for a national charity program. So you should be FOR single payer.
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