Just don't call it "health" care

No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, let’s not call this current Washington battle “health“ care. ObamaCare is technically about insurance, but more accurately it‘s about a government take over of the economy. We Americans already have health insurance for the poor, and health care for everyone, in case you’re reading this in Europe. In fact, one of the programs for the poor, SCHIP, will cover children up to the age of 28 whose parents have incomes up to $70,000 depending on the state (350% of poverty level). I should be so poor (our income is about $34,000)--but I digress.

If you want to know what government health insurance and government health care look or feel like, please read, “HIV Clinic” an essay by Eric P. Walker, in the March 3, 2010 issue of JAMA. The patient described therein has both health insurance (provided by the government for the poor) and health care (a clinic for the poor in her neighborhood).

According to Walker who is a physician’s assistant, the patient comes to the clinic for a prescription for pain but has to walk to the pharmacy to fill it, because her bus pass voucher has expired. There is no one to provide her private transportation (later in the essay you learn she is married to a creep who stole her pain medication). On the way to the clinic she bought a package of crackers at a gas station because she hadn’t eaten since yesterday. She can’t have surgery for her pain because she doesn’t have a stable address which the hospital, following government insurance regulations, requires for a patient to be discharged.

So let’s just stop right there Mr. Walker. First, you say you work in an HIV clinic, so I’m assuming she has been diagnosed and is receiving the drug cocktail that will extend her life. There are two primary ways for women to get HIV--1) having sex with a man who had sex with an infected man, or 2) through IV drug use. In my opinion, men who have sex with men and bring home STDs and AIDS and/or abuse their wives and girlfriends are a much bigger health problem for poor women than private insurance company CEOs who serve the middle class or Cadillac insurance for the wealthy and union members. When will those men be called before Congress and shamed?

Second, let’s think about all the unintended consequences of good intentions that have been building up dating back before you were born. Since that great leap forward known as the War on Poverty--programs that have contributed to her secondary conditions not related to HIV or her health. There is no pharmacy in her neighborhood to fill her prescription and probably no supermarkets or grocery stores where she can buy nutritious food. Democrats and Progressives control all major cities in the United States--Detroit, Chicago, LA, NOLA, Cleveland, etc. They first drove out all the small businesses through regulation, taxes, or pushing legislation for their inner-belts and highways taking land and homes through eminent domain. They railed against mom and pop stores and Asian shopkeepers that were charging “too much” for goods and service, compared to larger stores. Then they marched against any superstores moving in insisting they be unionized, after which they moved on to friendlier suburbs offering tax breaks. Currently in the name of saving the planet they are working through a variety of programs called cap and trade and sustainable agriculture to take away the stop and shop gas stations (remember Mr. Walker, gasoline is bad; processed food is bad) in poor neighborhoods, so soon that HIV patient probably won’t even be able to buy crackers in her neighborhood as she walks to the clinic to pick up her prescription which can‘t be filled locally.

Third, her central city community is fortunately served by public transportation which is tax subsidized by the suburbanite voters who moved away 30 years ago. Because she’s poor, she has a voucher for a bus pass. That’s got to be a Catch-22 nightmare only a bureaucrat with a social work degree could come up with. Does she have to go to a government agency in another neighborhood or city building and sit and wait to pay for the pass with her voucher issued by a different bureaucracy? It is dated, and it has expired. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that she would need to take the bus to the same office to apply for the voucher, but with no mail box, she might be turned down. It would be a good guess that the government didn’t give her a taxi voucher, or a handicapped van voucher, either because, 1) the bureaucrats decided she wasn’t that sick (years ago when she signed on for the alphabet soup of programs), or 2) because no thinking taxi or van driver would go into her crime ridden neighborhood which went down hill when all the businesses and home owners were driven out by do-gooders, or 3) they need to support the city transit system rather than a private company or small business like a one-man cab company.

Dear naive ObamaCare supporter: nothing in this so-called "health care bill" being pushed by Pelosi, Obama and Reid will help this woman. She already has government health insurance, and she’s still infected, still in pain, still denied necessary surgery, still homeless, still married to a creep, and still a victim of all the progressive politicians who destroyed her neighborhood 40 years ago.

And you want this for the rest of us?