We Americans need to take responsibility for our health and worry less about how to pay our physicians for treatment and more about how to avoid needing treatment in the first place. We need to stop smoking, eat less, and get off our fat American backsides and move our bodies. We cannot depend on our government to provide our health care nor to take care of our health. The government is not interested in helping Americans to live longer, and cannot afford taking on responsibility for health care. A government run single payer plan or public option insurance scheme could only result in rationing of treatment.
The battle over health care in the USA these days is not really about caring for the health of the American citizen – it’s a power struggle for control of the health care industry. The US government really doesn’t care about the health of its citizens nor about prolonging their lives. In fact, it would be much better for the greater good of society if Americans didn’t quite make it to the average lifespan of 78 years currently expected for Americans.
Americans are already living too long for the collectivist institutions of Social Security and Medicare to survive financially. If health care is taken on too, the government will have to increase its debts to meet its commitments. Medicare and medicaid are already financially insolvent, and the government will not be able to meet its commitments for Social Security payments to retirees after 2020. We the people can’t afford another gigantic entitlement program.
Health care insurance is no guarantee of good health anyway; it is simply a way to spread risks and costs and hopefully provide access to care when we don’t have good health. Medical treatments still have to be paid for and are not ‘free’ just because a person is covered by health insurance. If the patient doesn’t pay for the treatment, then citizens will have to; after all, the citizens are the government. If the government becomes the insurer, costs will either have to be passed along to citizens in higher taxes, or health care will have to be limited (i.e. rationed) so that treatment costs can’t get incurred in the first place .
Good health and long life are blessings not entitlements; neither should health care insurance be an entitlement. The only promise we have of extending our lifespans is in the ten commandments in the Bible, “honor your father and your mother…that your days may be long” – why not give that a try? Maybe we can even make it to 78 without modern medicine.
© Vigilute 2009
Vigilute 