Lifestyles: Health care - who do you trust

By Bruce Watson

Published on August 07, 2009

Only a few months ago, Americans were clamoring for health care reform. Something, anything, that would fix a "broken" system.

Now Americans are worried. Seems they don't trust the government to reform health care. Fear, a pre-existing condition, is once again working as a cancer, swarming around change and killing it, cell by cell.

After the last eight years, I don't trust the government to do much. But I have abiding trust in the American health care industry.

First, I trust my insurance company to double my premiums every five years. How reassuring for Americans to sit back in our nearly foreclosed homes, knowing that insurance companies will boost our premiums by 15, sometimes 20 percent a year. That's trust you can take to the bank - for a withdrawal.

Many critics of the president's plan fear a loss of choice. Americans can choose from 100 different shampoos, 200 toothpastes, 300 kinds of floss. We want the same choice in health care, and I trust the private sector to provide it.

When I get sick, I can choose the doctor's office where I will wait and wait and wait while an army of clerks fills out forms piled on by insurance companies. When my doctor finally sees me and prescribes medicine, I can choose to buy it myself because my prescription drug plan has shrunk to the size of an aspirin. Or I can choose to trust my immune system. And if my immune system fails me, I can choose to get sicker, perhaps even die.

And when my insurance company tacks on its trusty 15-20 percent gouge, I can choose to cut my coverage drastically, as I did a few years ago. Or I can choose to go without insurance, as 50 million Americans do. Choice, that's the American way.

How sad to live in a socialist country like England or France. They don't get all these choices, no!! They go to one doctor, have one health plan. Why they can't even choose to die sooner than we do. Life expectancy in England is 79 and in France it's 81. Those French just keep living on and on, suffering through socialist health care. But here in America, we choose to rank number 50 in life expectancy, and our big, bad government will only improve that over our dead bodies.

But in the end, it's all about the American pandemic - fear. I'm afraid that even a small public plan, as proposed, would lead to more taxes. And Americans are allergic to taxes. Before we'd give the government even a few hundred more dollars, we'd rather pour $10,000 a year down that rathole labeled Private Health Insurance.

Let some faceless bureaucrat tell me which doctor to see? Hah! I'd much rather have some faceless corporation tell me which medical tests I can't get. And which diseases aren't covered. And what basics I have to ration so I can afford health insurance.

A socialist single-payer system would be un-American. Not for us a taxpayer funded, monopolistic, government program. That would be too much like our fire departments. Or police. Or public schools. And we Americans know you can't trust these bloated government bureaucracies.

I trust that fear, spread like a virus by the insurance industry itself, will soon cripple any meaningful health care reform. And I trust my fellow citizens will breathe a sigh of relief. We almost saw change come. We almost trusted government. Instead, we chose to trust the companies that put us here - spending twice as much on health care as any other nation, trusting profiteers with our health, and choosing to die sooner than citizens in 49 other nations.

Settle back and nurse your fear, America. It will all be over soon. You won't feel a thing.