Gambling For Health Care

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – You have to marvel at the lack of frontier spirit that we as Americans currently exhibit in this which is supposed to be the greatest of all debates, whether or not the public is going to be responsible for everyone’s health services or medical services, or whether or not the individual ought to be responsible for it.  I think the answer is clear, don’t you?  Check out today’s audio and transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Mark is in Texas next on the Mike Church Show, Sirius XM Patriot Channel, Mardi Gras Day.  Hello, Mark.

Caller Mark:  How are you today?

Mike:  Good.

Caller Mark:  You were talking about healthcare and I’m kind of a new listener to your show.  I do enjoy it.

Mike:  Thank you.

Caller Mark:  One thing that always has surprised me with insurance companies is nobody ever has really called them what they are.  An insurance company is nothing more than a casino.  My background is in software.  We write slot machine games.  Slot machines are based on probability.  There are a certain amount of outcomes that will come through reel strips and symbols within games.  A lot of the algorithms we are forming actually come from part-time insurance mathematicians.  They write the algorithms for the insurance companies to give them a certain amount of return on the probability of 16-year-olds getting in accidents.

Mike:  It’s called an actuarial table.

Caller Mark:  Exactly.  When you look at what we have created at this point, we are all forced to participate in the largest casino ever created.

Mike:  If you put it that way, yes.  You probably are currently participating in said casino.  Somebody came up with a very intriguing proposition that I saw just the other day.  I have several of you that have sent me some wonderful tracts on repairing the healthcare system.  I’m currently reviewing a couple of them.  They are equally intriguing, although I haven’t gotten all the way through them.  I did read this one, though, and many of you have seen it as a speech given at the prayer breakfast.  Of course, this is all the rage now.  Right-wing conservatives being the not-serious, unintellectual boobs that many of them are, are already trying to nominate this guy a la Herman Cain to run for president.  That’s how silly this is.  His remarks are not silly.  In his remarks, he said — AG, who was the guy at the prayer breakfast?  His name escapes me.

AG:  Ben Carson?

Mike:  Carson, that’s it, Dr. Carson.  Dr. Carson was, I think, spot on when he said: If you’re going to have this silly scheme, you ought to have an HSA, health savings account, that you’re given when you’re born and your parents can start stuffing money into it the moment you’re born.  You stuff money into it and then you can use it your entire life.  Here’s the best part: if you don’t use it all up, you can pass it onto your kids.  There is a cost benefit savings right there.  I don’t want to use it all up.  Maybe I don’t want to have my broken hip fixed.  Let me just pass away in peace, will you?

I guess the point is that there are no shortages of workable, market-based or Christian charity-based solutions to the problem of providing medical services — because that’s what they are; they’re medical services, not healthcare — to those that are in need.  To me, this has to be one of the largest boondoggles ever created in the history of man.  It is a creation of our own making.  We are the enemy, we in our belief that someone else ought to be paying for this.  The entire industry has basically been co-opted with this and goes along with it.  I don’t know whether that’s because of apathy, whether it’s because of a lack of inertia, or whether it’s just one of those instances where “I’m just one guy, one gal, one nurse, one doctor, one hospital, one clinic.  I can’t do anything about this.”

In that statement of futility is the answer, Mark, the fact that you are one doctor and that you ought to be able to offer your version of a solution is what is missing.  That is the solution.  That’s the solution to changing my sparkplugs.  That’s the solution to repairing a flat tire.  That’s the solution to repairing a broken glass on an iPhone.  It solves my broken dishwasher.  Some plumber may say, [mocking] “Lots of people come into your house and say, ‘Go spend $600 at Lowe’s and get a new dishwasher.’  I just happen to carry the most popular motors around with me.  I can replace that motor for $250 and your dishwasher will be up and running like new in two hours.”  You have to marvel at the lack of frontier spirit that we as Americans currently exhibit in this which is supposed to be the greatest of all debates, whether or not the public is going to be responsible for everyone’s health services or medical services, or whether or not the individual ought to be responsible for it.  I think the answer is clear, don’t you?

Caller Mark:  Absolutely.  Like I said, if you use the comparison, and they’re similar on a math level, people walk into casinos and you’re participating in that environment.  How many ever walk out healthy?  Not very many.  When you force us to walk into a healthcare casino, you’re not going to walk out healthy.  The insurance companies are going to make a whole lot of money.

Mike:  That’s always been the rub.  The corporatists didn’t want anyone to think there was anyone benefitting from this.  They just wanted everyone to think that the enemy was socialism.  [mocking] “You’re not socializing my healthcare.”  You already have socialized medicine, sir, maybe you’ve heard of it.  It’s called Medicare.  We already have socialized, state-controlled means of medical production and it’s called Medicaid.  It’s called the ERISA Act.  They already have co-opted much of that industry, and it is an industry like any other.  Don’t tell me you don’t want socialized medicine when you already have it.  What you don’t want is socialized medicine where the costs are spread out among those that are able to pay them and those that are not able to pay don’t have to absorb it.  Well, they absorb the free stuff.  They absorb the benefit of someone else’s labor while expending none of their own other than driving their lazy, loser, fat behinds to a doctor to go suckle off the teat.

It really is, again, another example of a rudder-less, moral-less, virtue-less society.  People imbued and filled with virtue and with a chivalrous moral character and backbone would say: I am not one for charity.  I will only accept it if it is the last resort.  I demand that you give me a note so I may repay you at a future date.  That is the kind of charitable civilization that the United States was when Alexis de Tocqueville visited here.  Sure there were people getting charity, and sure they were thankful to their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to God Almighty that there were Christian people there to provide it.  The government didn’t do it; people did it.  According to de Tocqueville, the American way was we chip in on these things, not because we’re coerced to do it by government, because we real responsible to do it by God.

End Mike Church Show Transcript