Think it through now people.

Not to overdose on the healthcare theme, but...

What I suspect is at the root of many differences comes down to common sense.

You can promise all you like that under a nationally financed plan: "abortions will not be paid for", and "illegal immigrants will not be covered", and our estimates trump the CBO's and we're certain that the ultimate budgeting for this federal program is spot on. Heh.

Maybe it's not lying, per se, maybe you just haven't fully exposed the facts you've come up with, to the sunlight of the real world. Like so many corporate leaders living beyond their means are able to do, knowing that ultimately they're not held responsible for paying for such mistakes. Maybe you haven't operated enough in the fields you're expressing expertise at to understand how the world really works, in practice not just on paper or oral promises. Mea culpas down the road won't go over so well on this one, I predict, when there's no accompanying treats afforded in the form of bailouts because the money had been long spent, years ago.

So many seemingly intelligent people, on paper at least, who voted for a junior senator based on charisma, and his ability to persuade, now seem to be rethinking their collective purchase. So before we jump into this massive federal program -- that no matter how much a foreign war costs, by contrast has no end date:
Think it through.

If an illegal immigrant shows up at the hospital emergency room bleeding, their bill won't be absorbed into the same system as today? They'll be turned away from care, or the hospital will have to continue to absorb the costs? Hm... doesn't seem to treat the root financial cause that the healthcare overhaul promises to fix.

An illegal immigrant tests positive for t.b., hepatitis, or another contagious disease: he is sent packing with no follow up care, drug treatment, or admission? Or again, the hospital absorbs the costs, as today, by billing other patients: those insured, and those uninsured -- often on payment plans -- who pay their bills outright.

A woman on the government insurance plan is recommended by her doctor for an abortion, for medical reasons, to save her own life, say. This will not be covered, and she will be turned away or have to pay out of pocket in advance for the procedure? And if she's unable to pay but the medical establishment does perform the procedure, the taxpaying public won't somehow be absorbing those costs? Hm...

Likewise this whole, "it won't raise the deficit" talk. Well if services are finite, none of the Medicare/Medicaid insured will see any cuts to their plans, and doctors/drug companies will be fully compensated with no change in private coverage, where will the money come from?

The young people currently "gaming the system" by not costing the system in bills and not carrying insurance that helps cover others ... their mandatory premiums (which assume no uptick in accompanying service demands, apparently), plus all of the promised fraud savings in current government healthcare, and the promised market drivedown of current costs and profits, is going to balance 1) unlimited insurance coverage for all illness; 2) no right of refusal for pre-existing conditions; 3) expanding costs under the mental health parity act, signed just last October that forces insurance to pay for physical and mentally documented illnesses equally; 4) the demographic increase in older Americans with accompanying health needs; 5) undocumented immigrants and their families (who surely will have healthcare needs, and any human worker knows you cannot merely "turn them away" when they are here and in need); and 6)no need to ration, or "triage" priorities for those currently covered? Hmm...

I don't believe it.

Too good to be true.

The costs just don't balance. We all know that, as much as we'd like to wish it away, or put the mea culpas and reckoning off for another day. When somebody else is working and paying for our choices today through their taxes, their own freedoms of "We the People" sharply curtailed by the earlier poor economic planning of earlier others.

No thanks. I want no part of that myself. We do need to go back to the drawing board, and rehaul the entire system. Because with no incentives to improve health or reduce systematic bloat, no way of paying for these airy promises, no tort reform or family ability-to-pay* evaluation, and again, merely pushing the costs off on another generation -- that's not really insurance, only worth the paper it's written on, and it surely won't bring security.

Change, it turns out kids, must wait another day.




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*I think if we had a leader that somehow was able to reshape our familial attitudes and morals: Take Care of Your Own -- we'd be halfway there.

Does a family owe health care to their own parents before luxury lifestyles based on inheritance expectations?

Should a father whose income is capable of paying for offspring produced out of marraige be allowed to transfer his partner and child's healthcosts to taxpayers, by avoiding legal ties?

I don't think it's the poor people and uninsured sometimes who systematically cost us the most: it's often those wealthy who know how to game the system legally, and have much more expensive tastes in terms of healthcare needs than those perhaps with the incentive to treat minimally, particularly at healthy and youthful times of their lives.

Best to just say no now, than to rush this thing through and have to revamp the whole bloody mess later, which of course future Americans will need to do, after so many promises have been broken, and so much internal damage done to the country -- financially, and irreversibly healthwise.