Note to self:


For want of insurance, the patient was lost.
For want of universal health insurance the entire kingdom was lost.

To fix one problem, let us give it to the very same people who have engineered the worst financial crisis since John Law helped precipitate the French Revolution. There will be another reign of terror when the public awakens to just how much has been swindled from them by the politicians who are really lawyers refusing to admit that the system is broken mostly because they continue to condemn any mention of tort reform.

They protect their own and especially the big groups who put them into office. Big business is gone and it is now big unions who need the government option for their retired members because their leaders squandered the pension funds and could not make up the differences on the risky investments that have failed. It’s all about the UNIONS: GM bailout, universal healthcare, tariff protectionism that will guarantee China and Russia will never cooperate in the proper diplomatic subjugation of Iran and N. Korea, and the financial sector. Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail because very few union dollars were invested, but AIG has not only big union money, but also constitutes a major part of union insurances.

Organized unions, organized government and all other forms of organized crime do not actually create jobs, but only stifle industry and send entire economic sectors either underground or offshore. Trust in this country is gone and will not return for more than a generation, since anti-business policies prevail, there will be no real jobs created and the death spiral will continue, fueled by the absolute worst economic decisions possible. If we want healthcare for everybody, we should be creating jobs for everybody and first regulate the physicians’ liability insurance system and then pool a portion of the resources so that insurance companies can cover every person, even the indigent, based upon their ability to pay. The key is the economy; no money means no healthcare for anyone.

I strongly believe in helping the poor and providing free schooling to children even if their parents came here illegally, and I have been in my own healthcare situation in the past, where I just did not want the extra expense (with AS I probably protected myself without knowing it) and traveling all over the world meant I was in places where I would not be covered. Good thing medical care in other countries is quite reasonable. So I do believe that some level of medical care should be free for anyone really needing it.

Now here is just one dilemma: Arthritis drugs that seem to work well for AS cost about $2000 per month but I know that AS can and should be treated for about $50 per month, but only with enough active participation by the patient. My treatments will avoid future hip replacements and will avoid future shoulder surgeries, and will avoid osteotomies like I went through, being unaware of the proper treatment for so many years. The treatments will keep people with AS from becoming disabled—another cost savings story altogether. AND some of these treatments can be VERIFIED for compliance.

Physicians and pharmaceutical companies do not want these treatments, and certainly neither do the ambulance chasers! But when the government starts running healthcare, THEY might be very interested in such a cost savings and, in estimable nanny-state fashion, also become interested in which patients are in compliance, and which are not.

When they tax sugar drinks, alcohol, and tobacco perhaps it is not such a stretch to tax what they think is wrong with foods—like the cholesterols—the fatty fast foods and what about starch for a person with AS? What will we say to Big Brother! It’s MY BODY and MY CHOICE? My choice to become disabled if I want to do so? All the hypocrisy has absolutely no limits.

And did anyone consider who in the heck would ever run an insurance company where 10% (AS, RA, PsA, etc) of the patients were costing it $2000 per month whenever they are not having their $50K hip replacements and just how many people need to pay into that system to keep it afloat? How much will the plan administration cost (60% in the case of the Federal government) so premiums are well over $300 per month per client. Ok, that is the rheumatic chronic illness side of the costs, what about cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and the host of other ailments that are the plague of our peoples? What will the real premium become? $600.00…$1600…$2200 per person? Mark Twain said that a “consultant” was a person who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is—but I say the government steals our money through legislation and they hire PR firms to make us believe it is in our best interest; “they” know better what to do with our money. Like fight wars but not ever win, and pay deadbeats to clog the streets and bum cigarette and booze money off people with jobs.

NO THANKS!
I have “Plan B:” My wife is a Filipina and we will both pursue dual citizenship, so I will be conveniently a Filipino citizen when it comes time for me to pay premiums, because I will have my next procedure(s) done in Philippines for 15% of the cost here in US. Out of pocket is then reasonable, due to the incremental savings.

Insuring every person in the US will not be the only cause of hyperinflation, but healthcare burdens will serve to really accelerate our economic decline, just as punitive taxation, excessive trade imbalances, the next (commercial this time) real estate bust, and the flight, en masse, of capital business interests and IP (Intellectual Property).

Get used to less and less costing more and more; when everybody gets on the merry-go-round at once, it eventually…stops.