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Are they joking or what? Anyone who tries to tell you that universal health coverage is possible is either joking or deliberately insulting your intelligence. Insurance is based on the fact that few people will get sick or need coverage, and that is why so many people can pay relatively little money for insurance. It is the ancient 3% rule, where for every $100,000 of coverage one would pay $3,000 per annum. At that rate, only 1 out of every 34 people could get sick and claim the $100,000 coverage. Every morning across America, insurance agents get up and have a cup of coffee while they read birth notices, death notices, marriage announcements, graduation announcements and whatever else they can get their hands on, to see who will be available to buy insurance. That is because the more people who buy insurance, the better chance they have of being able to cover people. In health coverage, however, you do not have term insurance like you do in life insurance. Health insurance is an ongoing insurance because the rate of being sick is greater than the rate of dying. That means, if you are paying $3,000 per annum for health coverage, you will pay it forever. The end of the term is whenever you die. The biggest hurdle to get over in health insurance is the idea that it is an entitlement. You get coverage only when you are sick in health coverage, but many people want to have an insurance company that pays for all of the doctor's visits. This is insane, of course, because then the concept of insurance is bounced onto its head. Insurance is for an emergency or a need, not a convenience. The next hurdle to get over is the overhead. For every $100 you pay in, about $30 in round numbers is used for overhead, those expenses that need to be met to feed the bureaucracy. Technically, the $3,000 per annum paid for the $100,000 policy would no longer yield money for 1 out of every 34 people, because $900 of that is used for overhead, and the results would be closer to 1 out of 48 people. Now, many people think that a solution is to make the doctors get paid less money to do their work, which, of course, is how Fidel Castro does it in Cuba, where doctors get paid a few dollars a week with some meat and eggs as a bonus. Imagine Congress, giving themselves a raise almost every year, asking doctors to take less money. Tom Cruise can make $20-million per movie, and nobody asks him to take less money, but Congress wants doctors to take less money. Why doesn't Congress take less money? That is too good of an idea for those millionaires to handle. The truth of the matter is that it will take in excess of 50%-60% of your salary in taxes, forcing doctors to work for $10,000 per year, and asking people to come to the emergency room only if it is a life and death matter, before you will even get close to trying to pay for what is termed universal health coverage. Even then, you won't get universal health coverage. It is a joke. No doctor will work for peanuts. But, the joke sours when you understand it is pure socialism, an evil which failed because it never considered that 30% of all tax revenue goes to overhead, and it is much better for the people to keep their money and use all of it, rather than to give it to the government and see them use only 70% of it on real health coverage. It is millionaires in Congress who are so far removed from reality that they consider Castro a solution. Cuba does have universal health coverage for the price of peanuts. But, they drive 1957 Ford trucks, and they have trouble buying meat or eggs, or just about anything else. You see, in Cuba, universal health coverage is only an illusion. They "think" they have coverage, but they have only what Fidel allows them to have. Even in Cuba, a small island with few people, universal health coverage is a mathematical impossibility. Let taxpayers keep their money and buy whatever they can afford. Let the insurance companies do whatever they can to provide whatever benefits. Let the free market rule. But, please, do not ask doctors to take less money when you live in Washington, D.C. END OF ARTICLE Mr. J.V. Presogna is a writer, composer and artist with a background in science and mathematics. |