More On Health Care...

Greetings.

Well, we passed the bill. It's not a great bill. In fact, there are some parts of it that I think really suck - like individual mandates. Even though it's not really the right way to fix health care, however, it is a step in the right direction. It is going to insure people, and slow the skyrocketing cost of premiums, and that's a start. Unfortunately, we've got a completely broken system and this is like putting a strip of duct tape on it to patch it up for now.

Here's the problem with our system: Everybody gets sick and utilizes health care. You see, "insurance" works because a large group of people put a relatively small amount of money into a pool that pays the relatively large bills when catastrophe strikes one or a few of the people in the pool. This system works really well when you insure property - because property really doesn't get damaged all that often. There are throngs of homeowners and car owners who pay monthly premiums, but who will never file a claim in their lifetime. This insures that the premiums they pay stay relatively low and that the insurance company can still turn a profit.

Health care, however, is a horse of a different color. Everyone gets sick. There is a much smaller percentage of people who file little or no health insurance claims. Almost everyone files claims throughout the year. In addition to this, those people who get really sick (an even larger percentage than the people who file property claims) usually have claims which total a lot more than the property claims do. When that happens, everyone's premiums just keep going up to cover the costs of the claims. This means that the business of insuring people's health is just simply unsustainable.

All that being said, the problem gets even more severe when you consider that this system - which is doomed to fail - comprises a sixth of our economy. This is the justification that a lot of people use to keep our current system of health insurance. To me this whole debate is like a person who has a vast collection of cassette tapes. He knows that digital media is better quality, but if he converts all of his stereo equipment to digital then that means he'll have to go out and buy all of his albums on cd or download them all from iTunes - either way it will cost him a lot of money. The Republicans are like the voice in his head that says "Ahh, tapes sound better anyway. Digital media is socialism and un-American. Those idiots who like digital media just want to take your tape collection away." The liberals (like myself) are pushing for him to just bite the bullet, spend the dough and upgrade his whole system, and the current health care bill is like a guy who offered to transfer all of his tapes onto cd's for him - still crappy analog source tapes, but now playable on a digital system. I guess that's about as dumbed-down as I can make it.

I am the Reverend Humpy and I have approved this message.