When I was working at the paper mill, I was telling this guy Bruce about something that had happened while he was off on vacation. When I finished my story, Bruce said, "Beagles, I've always believed that there was something strange about you, and now I know what it is. You are issue oriented rather than people oriented. If somebody comes up with an idea, you support it if you think that it's a good idea and you oppose it if you think that it's a bad idea. At no time do you even consider whether or not you personally like the guy who came up with the idea, or if anybody else likes him either." I said,"Isn't that what you're supposed to do?" Bruce replied. "Well, maybe that's what you're supposed to do, but you are the only person I know who actually does it, and I know a lot of people." I had never thought about it like that before but, the more I thought about it, I decided that Bruce was right.
People have been talking about socialized medicine for as long as I can remember. Of course we had it in the army, and I didn't think much of it at the time. I believe that's because I was comparing army health care with the health care I had experienced with Doctor Lyers, our family physician, and Doctor "Uncle Les" Janes, a dentist who was actually a personal friend of the family. (He wasn't really my uncle, but he was too good a friend to call him "Mister", and kids in those days didn't address adults by their first names.) I could tell you stories about these guys but, suffice it to say that they don't make them like that anymore. Doc Lyers died while I was in the army, and Uncle Les died a couple years after I got out. My experience with health care professionals since then has been mixed, sometimes it was better than others. Looking back on it, though, I think that the health care we had in the army was, on average, at least as good, and it was free. Of course it wasn't really free, somebody was paying for it, but it was free to us.
I think that's what most people expected from socialized medicine, free health care. Truth is, somebody will have to pay for it. Those doctors aren't in business for their health you know. (I make small joke.) Seriously, though, people need to make up their minds what kind of health care they want and how it's going to be funded. Until the people make up their minds, I doubt that the politicians will be able to agree on anything.
Before Obamacare was passed, I read somewhere that about half the people in this country were already on some kind of government health care plan like Medicare, Medicaid, or veterans benefits. With Obamacare, it seems that the poverty level has been raised so that more people than ever will qualify for Medicaid. The people who have to actually buy insurance, then, will surely be in the minority. The insurance companies aren't in business for their health either, so they will have to charge the people who are paying more to make up for the people who are not paying. I guess that kind of happens now, health care providers have to write off some of their bills as uncollectable, and they charge their paying customers more to make up for it.
I don't think that Obamacare is "better than nothing". It just adds another layer of bureaucracy on top of the mish-mash of programs, both public and private, that we already have. Better to clear the deck and put everybody on one program. That's what I think anyway.
If I have time this weekend I'm going into the "help" section and see if I can find a way to either make this spell checker behave properly or disable it. When you type a word that the program doesn't recognize, you should be able to either add it to the dictionary or tell the program to ignore it.
See you Monday.
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