Who Knew?

One thing you got to say for Obama, he did not start his Presidency by going right after the toughest, most important issue around--gays in the military.

He had to slap aside his own version of the Cuban missile crisis which was thrown at him by the fates just to test him, and then he went after something which should have been a no brainer, something everyone could gather round the campfire and sing Kumbaya: healthcare.

He could have diddled around with Afghanistan, that graveyard of empires. Aside from the families of those fighting there, and aside from the effects on the economy of spending all those billions a month on those military exercises, most of us here in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave are not much affected by what goes on over there.

But healthcare, now there's something which effects every last man, woman and child, one way or another, eventually, right here in the homeland.

You got to hand it to him, he chose wisely.

And every one has an opinion about healthcare here.

We all know, for example, that whatever it is we are doing here, it has got to be the best. This is America. We are always the best at everything, except maybe at soccer, but that's a game for guys with no deltoids and no biceps.

And we also know that next to all the Mexicans streaming across our Southern border looking for jobs, the next biggest illegal immigration problem we have is all those Canadians flooding across the Northern border looking for hip replacements, and they are coming here for brain tumor surgeries which they have to get on a ten year waiting list to have in Canada.

Because, outside of the US of A: HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED.

You want it, you cannot get it. At least, you can not get it instantly,which is very unAmerican. It's unAmerican because here in America you always can get whatever you want instantly. Just look at our supermarkets open 24 hours and our refrigerators which are just packed with instant gratification.

Americans have always had health care instantly and supersized. At least that's what we tell ourselves.

And, oh, did I forget to mention how all the best medical research and all the big innovations are done right here in the US of A, because we got competition here, driving innovation and unleashing the powerful horses of mental acuity--except for a few things like CT scans which the English somehow stumbled upon, and adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer (Italy) and about two dozen other major advances which we would have come up with sooner if it hadn't been for the FDA and all those government agencies which hold back the flood of energy coming from our medical schools and universities.

See, we are so much better than the rest of the world because the rest of the world all has socialized medicine. The rest of the world is just too dumb to fend for themselves, so they walk like sheep into the maw of these big socialized bureaucracies where they get inefficient care. Except maybe for England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Canada and mabye even Cuba where polls show the local citizens are quite happy with their care.


You know, I can't understand the English. They say they wouldn't have our healthcare system to save their lives--which is exactly what health care systems should be all about. They say we've got the world's best system for 10% of our population and one of the worst for the other 90%.

But, hey, when did we ever worry about losers here in America?

What we got here in America is efficiency and sometimes progress requires some tough choices.

Just consider this: There are roughly 400,000 physicians delivering health care in this country. There are roughly (and this is a hard number to pin down because the insurance industry is a little embarrassed by it) 15 million people working for health insurance companies, efficiently denying insurance to sick people, people with pre existing conditions, old people who just might get sick and reduce profits, people who don't work for big companies, people who have been sick, visited doctors in the past (showing they are inclined to use the system and cost companies money) and people who just don't look healthy.

Now, if you figure the average salary of all these people is $50,000, going from all the clerks who process the forms to the CEO's of the insurance companies and the members of their boards of directors, you get roughly $250,000,000 as the cost of the insurance company employees.

If none of those insurance people showed up for work tomorrow, not a single patient would go without care, nobody would die or get sicker.

But if any of the 400,000 doctors failed to show up for work, bad things would happen.

So have we got efficiency here in the USA or what?

And now Obama wants to wreck all that. He's gonna ruin everything.