I feel like I’m diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

Cannibals don’t eat clowns…
….they taste funny.

President Obama has said there are 50 million Americans without health insurance.

Critics have said “show me one American without access to health care”.

I am the person Obama is talking about.

I’m a self-employed single musician.
Health insurance for me is at least $400-$700 a month, so I don’t have it.
In any case, no one will cover my 4 pre-existing ailments.

I don’t qualify for Medicare or Medicaid.
I’m not indigent, so I don’t qualify for public services either.
$50,000-$100,000 worth of out-of-pocket costs stand between me and good health.

Between the testing, surgeries, treatments and dangerous drugs the AMA tends to prescribe, I would be wiped out financially and hooked on Oxycontin by the time they fix my 2 congenital illnesses and 2 permanent injuries.

I’m not choosing not to have health care – it’s beyond my affordability without a 40% raise in income. And even then, they’d cover me, but nothing would cover the pre-existing ailments.

If I had the $500 a month to spend, I’d get it. This is not a choice for me – health insurance is out of the question and treating my illnesses doubly so.

If doctors won’t even try to make services affordable and I’m stealing from everybody else if I ask for the government’s help, where’s that leave me?

“Dying in the street”? (Over the top, yes. Ridiculous? No.)

I pay taxes, too. Why can’t I get help?

I’ve never met a doctor willing to give a discount for cash. I’ve never seen a hospital willing to cut room rates. I’ve seen doctors rack up $50,000 in tests and miss a $5 blood sugar test.

There is no competition controlling the medical industry. Insurance companies pay the rates and take it back from us through premiums and rejected or partial service payments.

I’m a lucky one. People dealing with cancer in their family can easily be $250,000 or more in debt over medical care while maintaining full coverage.

Making up numbers won’t change this and debating who’s paying for what won’t help, either.

I’m not going to pretend to peg an exact number, here. I’ll just say that I would be shocked if there were any fewer than 30 million people in my situation or worse.

A network of federally-backed hospitals offering discounted or free medical care to low-income or self-employed citizens would not kill the current system like some say. They would just lose the customers that can’t pay without having to sacrifice everything they own to afford the rates.

Oh, wait – that’s a large segment of the population, because you need to make over $100,000 a year after taxes without kids to safely handle the expense of a serious injury or illness.

What’s so un-American about having something of some sort in place?
Tax credit for doctors who discount? — Something? Anything?

Private or government based – I don’t care.

Grass roots hippy doctor movement?

Wal-mart hospitals?

Medical co-ops?

Drive-through surgeons?

McHospitals on every corner?

One such network of healthcare already exists – the Veteran’s Administration. Why not use the VA system as a base and expand it for citizens who apply for the program and meet the requirements?

Or, maybe we could figure out where the bloating is in the medical industry and control that, enabling the rest of the profession to behave more responsibly. Outrageous fees for hi-tech equipment and obscene pharmaceutical profit margins account for a great deal of the cost of medical care.

Billing a la carte for each and every service in your hospital stay certainly drives those rates up as well. Precautionary testing, unrelated to the illness or injury being treated, but run on the basis of medical family history, can add thousands of dollars in unseen costs to a patient’s bill.

When billings exceeds a patient’s insurance, the patient has to pay.
Full price. Now.

If a procedure has been performed and the insurance company says it wasn’t necessary, the patient has to pay.
Full price. Now.

If you’ve already been treated and your injury isn’t covered, you pay.
Full price. Now.

As a musician, I have always had to cut my rates when the market is down.
Fact of doing business.

But not when people’s lives depend on your services.
Then you can always charge to the hilt in spite of the economy because folks just plain have to pay it.

Maybe I just don’t want to be the guy who says – “those 50 million people can die in the street for all I care”.

National medicine or not – do we really want this to continue the way it is now?

Is any change at all out of the question, here?

I’d prefer not be one of the 50 million, but I am.

Which street should I go die on?

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather…
 
     ….rather than screaming in horror like the passengers in his car.

99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

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Discount applies to a variety of packages, including:

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(This promotion runs through the end of summer 2009.)

42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

I just got lost in thought. It wasn’t familiar territory.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

A day without sunshine is like, night.