Divided We Fail...Fails.

While watching some good ol' American foo'bah yesterday, I saw a commercial that the AARP is paying for. I have no problem with the AARP, except when they get into issues that are outside their game, like gun control. Now, this commercial doesn't really fall outside their purpose, as its all about health care. What I'm trying to figger out, though, is who thought this particular commercial was a good idea.

The commercial has a bunch of alleged humans ostensibly asking our politicians, "Don't say it just to get votes". "Don't tell us something you're not going to do". "Don't lie to us just to get votes". Honorable ideas, right? In general, yeah they are. Naive as can be, but honorable. The problem is, in their zeal to get their political ad on the air to have politicians always tell the truth and only do things that they say they're gonna do, they made one major, major error. They guarranteed that no politician was going to listen to the add, pay any attention to it, or have it impact them in any way: all of the "actors" in this commerical are kids. Not a one of them can vote.

I understand the artificial heartstring factor attendant with the use of kids. If I hear "if it saves just one child's life, it'll be worth it", I'm gonna projectile vomit for record distance. I'm even making sure I don't eat too much rough stuff, like pepperoni, to be sure I set the mark and don't tear my throat up too much in the effort. Why is it nobody ever bothers to ask what'll happen if the proposal in question happens to cost a kid's life at some point? Things that make ya go "hmmmmmm". Sorry, Arsenio; I know you haven't worked in a long time, but I'm not paying ya for that.

The thing is, health care isn't inexpensive. The whole process is costly. Look at the technology involved. None of it is cheap. Equipment costs a ton of money. Urban and suburban real estate where hospitals are located costs a ton of money. Medical fraud costs a ton of money. What are we gonna do, push the doctor button on the educational CNC machine and pop 'em out en masse? Education costs a ton of money. I know that, and I'm not even a medical student. If my degree is costing me this much money, a doctorate in doctoring will, by simple volume of required courses, cost more.

Hey! Let's get the government to pay for it! Yeah! They have money! We'll just have them pick up the bill! What a great idea!! Uh...Captain MENSA, I have some news for you: the gummint doesn't make money. They have no industry that generates capital. In fact, everything they do costs money. So where is the cash for health care coming from?

Go get your last pay stub. Got it yet? Well, get it. I'll wait. OK, you're looking at your stub. See that heading under "deductions"? Yeah, that's your money getting sent elsewhere. That FICA dude that's getting a nice fat chunk of your check-the largest single deduction out of that gross amount-goes to the gummint. Do you really want them to make that number even larger? Maybe double it? "If it leads to quality health care, it'll be worth it". It won't. How long do we have to allow the gummint to prove that they're not the best mechanism for creating, administrating, and handling buraucracies? If you think they'll do medical care any different from Social Security or any other branch of the gummint, you're out of your damn mind. It'll be every bit as inefficient as any other branch of the gummint. They are simply not the best way to get it done. Never have been, never will be, simply cannot be.

Do I think medical care is horrendously expensive? Of course I do. Would I like to see it cost less? Of course I would. However, I'm not willing to get a second rate doctor to do that, when my life is what we're talking about. There's very little that can be done to make it less expensive to field a quality doctor. It costs what it costs, and I'm not willing to sacrifice my care to a second tier doctor that got his doctorate in some third world country.

If socialized medicine, such as it is in England, Canada, and other places around the world, is so freakin' great, why is it that most of the world's leaders come here to the US to be treated, rather than dealing with the systems in their countries? Ain't for no reason. Think about it rationally a minute and maybe you'll get it.