Half of Rick Perry’s political donations come from a handful of zillionaires » « Rumors of my death have been greatly …

Let em die, part one

All through my recent medical odyssey one thing kept coming through loud and clear: I was damn glad I had comprehensive health insurance benefits. Without it I would now owe the doctors and hospitals something like $50,000 and that’s assuming I got the same level of care, and the same deeply discounted rates large insurance companies pay for medical services.  

In the Republican presidential debate this week, Wolf Blitzer posed a hypothetical question to Dr. Ron Paul. If someone chooses not to have health insurance and gets badly injured, who should pay for it? Dr. Paul answered in part, “What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself, … That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…” ” Blitzer then asked if we should just “let the person die?” Several in the audience screamed out “YES!”.

Here’s a question: How about those of us who have paid for health insurance? Should we be allowed to “just die”?

I ask because it happens that, in addition to the employer-sponsored insurance that probably saved my life this week, I have been paying premiums into another comprehensive plan that is statistically likely to save my life many times over in the years ahead. I started paying in 35 years ago, when I was 14 years-old, and because I’ve paid in so faithfully for so long, I could collect now if unable to work. But odds are I’ll stay healthy and pay in many thousands of dollars more between now and the day I start using the insurance. After what happened last week, especially in the light of the Republican just-let-em-die attitude, it feels good knowing I’m paid up and covered. 

That medical insurance plan is called Medicare. And what’s alarming is many of those same right-wing libertarians, who insist paying for insurance be a prerequisite for getting treatment, are hell bent on taking away my bought and paid for Medicare insurance, after I have covered my part of the bargain for more than three decades.

It’s ugly that some Teaparty wingnuts are so proud of letting the uninsured “just die” that they’ll shout it out in public — what impressive Christian family values they have! But those sickos are eclipsed by a second brand of Teaparty clowns so vile, so evil, so perversely twisted that they’re fine with letting people like me who have paid for medical insurance “just die.”

Half of Rick Perry’s political donations come from a handful of zillionaires » « Rumors of my death have been greatly …

Comments

  2. noastronomer says

    Most people are discussing the obvious issues with the exchange. I haven’t yet seen anyone address the real problem, the core issue : Wolf Blitzer asked the wrong question.

    Because the correct question is :

    If someone cannot afford health insurance and gets badly injured, who should pay for it?

    For people who are not covered by an employers plan health insurance is incredibly expensive. If you work for a small employer, or if you work a couple of part time jobs or if you’re self employed then paying for health insurance may well simply not be an option.

    Almost nobody who can afford health insurance doesn’t buy it.

  4. leftwingfox says

    This was a hard lesson wake up call for a middle class Canadian kid living in the US.

    In the two years I lived in Maine, I figure I put around $3000 into Temporary health insurance, employment insurance, and Medicare/Medicaid. Yet when I sprained my ankle badly enough to go into shock and miss a week of work, none of that was there when I needed it: I was making too little to afford healthcare, too much for government assistance. That $1000 bill and a week of lost wages nearly drove me into bankruptcy.

    After that point, I was painfully aware of how many basic services require a credit check or inquire about recent bankruptcies.

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