Some Small Print I Would Like To See

The debate over health care in America has turned very tendentious and downright ugly. I will admit that I have not followed the 'debate' very closely but I occasionally hear sound bites that are pretty outrageous.  These outrageous statements are usually made in response to something that sounds pretty reasonable.  Some of the bloggers I follow occasionally write interesting, informed, and articulate posts about various aspects of how it might work or how the current system doesn't work. 

I added my comments to one such post that had been met with some uncritical, opinionated, prejudiced garbage. This was my seat-of-the-pants, OMG, WTF-is-going-on emotional response so it may not be extremely well thought out but here it is anyway:

Can we please get a notarized and binding contract from everybody who spouts off against government involvement in healthcare that they will: 1) never enroll in Medicare or Medicaid until they are already dead and then agree that since being dead is a pre-existing condition, they will not be covered, 2) agree to pay cash in advance for any unscheduled use of municipal ambulance, fire, police or emergency vehicles, 3) agree to pay at least the triple the cash rate of #2 plus interest (charged at the highest rate allowed under our current credit card usury limits) if they cannot pay cash in advance, 4) agree to pay cash in advance for any use of hospital ER services except for the hours of 8am to 6pm for which the ER services required payment will be triple the standard rate since they should have seen an available physician instead, 5) as with #3, triple the rates of #4 if not paid in advance, 6) agree that company health benefits are of benefit to themselves and without them they could negotiate correspondingly higher salaries for which they would have to pay taxes and therefore further agree to pay such tax amount even if they have "company benefits".

I feel better now.  And I did not even need to take a pill.

But don't even think about getting me started on the "death panels" ....