Friday, July 17, 2009

Getting What You Pay For

One of those shrill voices that pass for news reporters these days was introducing a story on the health care reform bill that is being worked on right now. "WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR THIS?" he wanted to know.

Um. We are. Just like we are now. We, the taxpayers and health care consumers, are paying for the uninsured now. Whether in higher premiums or higher health care costs, we are paying.

And the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round.

Our local on-line "newspaper"'s brain trust of commentators has been screaming for days now about how we just need to lock up all the criminals and never let them out of jail.

But none of them will want to pay taxes to build more jails, to hire more guards, to expand the courts so they can move criminals through the systems more quickly.

Every time there is some improvement needed - schools, jails, roads, bridges, health care, immigration, social services - everyone loves to scream about how something "needs to be done", but let the money for it come up in a referendum or a proposed tax increase, then suddenly it isn't our responsibility to pay for the cost of these things.

Loki sez: Let's all put on our magic hats and just wish everything we need into place.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Case in point!! My husband has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. We have chosen the option of robotic surgery removal. The multi-million dollar machine is in one of the 2 major hospitals in our town.....however our insurance covers procedures only at the OTHER hospital. They will NOT issue a waiver....however...they will cover the procedure done at
Indiana University Medical Center a THREE hour drive from our home AND it costs twice as much!! The blessing in all of this is the DR has done over 700 of these so he clearly has plenty of experience. He will be in for 3 days...when we drive home he'll have a catheter which will will drive back to have removed 4 days later!! I am thankful that we do have good insurance and he has unlimited sick pay from his job.
Thanks for listening...God Bless,
Pam, South Bend