Don't Vote by P. J. O'Rourke

Author:P. J. O'Rourke [O'Rourke, P. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, History, United States, Humor, Political, Topic
ISBN: 9781848879423
Publisher: Grove
Published: 2010-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

This was not President Obama’s suggestion. President Obama suggested we find somebody to pick on that we hate even more than we hate sick people. With the clear-sighted political instincts for which the president is known, he suggested we pick on health insurance companies.

Everyone hates health insurance companies. Health insurance companies are always trying to get us to bet that something terrible will happen to us. And it’s not like they’re very good about paying up when they lose. “Your heart? Preexisting condition! Preexisting condition! You were born with a heart.”

The president’s idea was that the government get into the health insurance business to compete with private sector health insurance companies. The government would be just another competitor, like any other health insurance company. The only difference is that this competitor, being the government, has the legal monopoly on deadly force. This competitor has guns. What’s another competitor, just like any other competitor, except it has guns? Suddenly, over at Blue Cross, it was like being the last legit trash hauler in New Jersey.

To put it another way, private sector health insurance companies are on the ducking stool. And President Obama has a scummy pool of numbers to dip them in. Forty-six million Americans, including nearly 8 million children, have no health insurance—figures that appeared in 2008 on the official Barack Obama Web site.35 That’s 15 percent of the population. But, if you enjoy hating health insurance companies this is not a statistic you should look at too carefully the way Sally Pipes did in Top Ten Myths: “Myth Three: Forty-six Million Americans Can’t Get Health Care.” It seems that almost 10 million of the uninsured make more than $75,000 a year,36 and 18 million make more than $50,000. These people should be able to buy some kind of health insurance or pay for their own medical treatment unless something extra terrible happens to them. The more so since these 28 million Americans tend to be young—nineteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds are one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the uninsured population.37 Another 10 million uninsured Americans turn out not to be Americans. That is, they aren’t U.S. citizens.38 Personally, I think when they get sick they should get as well as anyone else. But, technically, they’re uninsured Canadians or uninsured Brazilians or uninsured chainsmoking Czech grad school habitués overstaying their student visas or whatever. Furthermore as many as 14 million uninsured Americans aren’t uninsured. They qualify for the social insurance available under Medicare, Medicaid, and/or State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but they have not been enrolled.39 Among these are a full 70 percent of uninsured children.40

Let’s see, 10 million plus 18 million plus 10 million plus 14 million equals... Surely the official Barack Obama Web site could have produced even louder calls for hope and change if it had claimed “52 million Americans have no health insurance.”

And there are those among that 52 million who do need help with their medical bills, people who make a decent wage but

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