As passionately as you all are about this topic I am hesitant to post a reply to this thread. It seems about as much fun as rubbing myself with bacon and jumping over the fence to play with the guard dogs at the local junk yard. But I'm honestly undecided on this issue.
I read the Fred column that Brewer posted and felt that he oversimplified it to somewhere way beyond ridiculous.
In Fred's world there are the insured and the uninsured, the brilliant and the near-retarded, the quick and the dead.
It seems to me that the underlying question is not that of socialized medicine but rather: What is our attitude as a nation toward people who are not very smart? Who furthermore are culturally impoverished?
Word-crafters of my acquaintance rail against Hillary for supporting socialized medicine. They seem to think that the beneficiaries of the program would be people like themselves, only shiftless. “I studied and worked my way up and made something of myself, and I take care of myself. Why don’t these lazy bastards to the same?” Easy. Because these of my friends have IQs averaging in excess of 140, while the lazy bastards (who in fact are neither) check in at maybe 90.
I'll be honest and admit that I have a decent health plan in retirement - and after being on this board for a while I am acutely aware of what a really great thing that is. I used to whine and complain about my HMO's cost and policies, but not now, not after seeing how it is for other people. And, mostly as a result of reading what others have posted here, I believe that there are people like Mary Sal Wooten rotting away in her trailer, and that such things are a national tragedy that should be addressed. (OMG, an opinion changed)
But I've never believed that the situation was all black and white, have or have not, smart or dumb, generous people or “Screw’em, I ain’t paying a cent" people. I've always thought there was a middle ground, but never knew how many people lived there.
Examples would be DW's oldest brother and sister. Both self employed and can make good money when they try but have never been world-beaters. Neither are dumb, both attended at least a couple of years of college, and both are adept business people - although not very ambitious. There are both cases of "I want to support my lifestyle but I don't want to work too darn hard for it." Both were irresponsible with financial matters in the past and took their lumps. One learned and the other didn't. Oldest brother got health insurance in his late 40's - "It sucks what it costs but it's stupid to not have it." He had to work harder to pay for it, actually started budgeting and being careful with money. Oldest sister never learned, has some health problems but refuses to get insurance - "It's too expensive, I can't afford it." But she manages to take vacations several times a year, trades corvettes every few years, etc. Her BF is the same way (although he's a better business man and harder worker) with a very good income and no insurance - "Screw that, I'll take my chances on not needing it and put my money to work elsewhere." He usually tries to negotiate health care payments on the few occasions he has needed something done.
What would Fred say about these people?
So like I said, while I know that there were people like BIL, SIL and her BF, I never had a good feel for what percentage of the problem they represented until I read the report from the Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf
On page 21 are the figures for the uninsured by select characteristics, and near the bottom they are identified by household income. I was a little surprised to see that nearly 16 million of the uninsured are in households making more than $50,000 a year. I thought, hey some of those people might live in high cost of living cities. But I was stunned to see that 9.3 million of them are in households that are making more than $75,000 a year.
Go ahead and tear the flesh from my bones gang, but I have to believe that most of the people in that 9.3 million are not the intellectual and social dregs that Fred was talking about. Most of them have to be saying "Screw it, I've got better things to do with my money."
