8 Thursday, January 23, 1997 Pahrump Valley Gazette
An alternative to Health Care madness
When I was young, we had one doctor in town. His
name was Dr. Coogan. No one had health insurance and
if you got really sick, you went to Dr. Coogan and he gave
you a shot of penicillin. You always knew that if you went
to Dr. Coogan, you were going to get a shot of penicillin
and it was going to hurt like the dickens. No one ever went
to Dr. Coogan unless they were really sick.
If you were so sick that your parents were sure you were
going to die, then they called Dr. Coogan and he made a
house call. House calls are such a thing of the past that
some readers won't even know what I'm talking about.
Believe it or not, there was a time when if you were really,
really sick yourparent could call the operator. She would
connect you with the doctor's office. They would explain
the problem and the doctor would come to your house and
fix you up. It was called a house call. It cost $7 for a house
call that was twice the going rate for an office visit. No
one ever called for a house call unless it was a definite life
and death emergency. The majority of the
family had to vote for it. Dad's vote counted
for 90%. The rest of the family's vote counted
for 10%. If it was a majority vote to have a
house call, then so be it. We didn't have too
many house calls when I was growing up but
then again, we didn't have too many deaths in
the family either, unless you counted the horned
toad, the two lizards and the chipmunk. My
two sisters and I counted these but Dad did not.
He not only refused to vote for a house call, he
wouldn't even go along for an office call and
its mandatory shot of penicillin.
Oh, by the way, the $3.50 for the office call
included the shot of penicillin whether you
needed it or not. You didn't get it if you didn't
need it. If Dr. Coogan thought that you were faking it,
he'd give you a syringe full of sugar water in the hind
quarter and he wouldn't be kind about it and no one ever
tried to fake it more than once; I can tell you that.
Anyway, now almost everybody has this thing called
health insurance. It' s an interesting thing to watch. People
lie and cheat and steal to get it and once they get it they
$10 per month Equipment Rental
stand on each other's shoulders to see who can get there
the fastest for the mostest. Being sick don't seem to have
too much to do with anything anymore. It costs so much
This Man's Opinion
by Brent Mathewson
money that if you're in the program,
no one feels they can afford to not
use it. Everyone wastes their share
plus whoever else's share whose shoulders they happen to
be standing on. The health care system in the U.S.
presently costs over 400 billion dollars a year and that's
not an exaggeration and you ain't seen nothing yet. When
Medicare was introduced in 1965, it was budgted at $2
billion and was projected with allowances made for infla-
"To bill anyone $14,072
for a one-day stay in the
hospital, is dishonest
and irresponsible. "
tion to cost $10 billion by 1990. The real figure for 1990
was $67 billion.
A few years ago we were told that Hillary had a plan
that would start out at $30 billion to $100 billion a year.
That' s real cute. How would you like to buy a used car and
be told it will cost between $3,000 and $10,000? Just sign
on the dotted line and they will let you know in a day or
two what the real figure will
be. You say you wouldn't
sign such a document and I
say you not only would but
you already have and when
given an opportunity to can-
cel it, you won't. If you'll
bear with me a little while
longer, I'll prove it.
The Health Care System
in this country is so out of
whack that anyone that can't
see it is standing upside
down with his head in the
sand up to his ankles.
There are a lot of big
secrets in this country that
needn't be secret at all. All
we have to do is open our
eyes and look. The health
care system is a major ex-
ample. The system is de-
signed to be abused. We didn't get to where we are today
by accident but by design and where we are headed
tomorrow is also being designed. The insurance compa-
nies, the pharmaceutical corporations and the major hos-
pital chains are all owned by the same people. This is not
free enterprise. It seems ridiculous to have to say it hut
people own those corporations, and one of the last things
they want you to realize is that this is a fact. The
Vanderbilts, the Fords, the Rothchilds, the Rockefellers,
the Krupps - and the list does no go on and on - a select few
families own controlling interest in a very major corpora-
tion in the U.S. that has anything to do with health care.
Controlling interest does not mean that they have to have
51% of a stock, although in some cases this is true. Five
percent of the stock in any of these corporations is enough
to ensure a seat on the board of directors and if you' ve got
a family member on the board of directors, you've got
controlling interest.
What can we really do collectively or indi-
vidually about the mess our country's health
care system is in? There is one thing we can do
and two ways to do it. If you do it as an
individual, you simply get off the merry-go-
round and your worries about the expense of
health care are behind you. If we did it collec-
tively, the whole damn bloody mess of our
health care system would come crashing to the
ground. As an individual, the first thing you've
got to do is quit going to the doctor every time
you've got a bloody nose. I mean quit period
- unless it's a life-threatening situation like a
compound fracture of the leg, not some little
dinky thing like a broken bone in your foot.
A year or two ago my wife, Renie, broke her
foot. What did she do? We borrowed a couple of crutches,
stabilized it in an ace bandage, fed her more than a few
aspirins and kept her weight off it. She spent a lot of time
working jigsaw puzzles for a few weeks and 6 weeks later
she was as good as new. You would be surprised, at least
we were, how many people asked her how she expected
her foot to heal if she didn't get it x-rayed.
Collectively, if everyone would immediately cancel all
insurance policies that had anything to do with health
care, this problem could be resolved in very short order.
Anyone not willing to do that is willing to buy that used
car I talked about for $3 - 10 thousand. We should
homestead our property. It costs $15. In this state, you
can homestead your mobile home. If you do come down
with that broken leg, you' ve got to be prepared to use some
common sense and protect yourself financially, pay what
you can afford if you absolutely must use part of the health
care system. Renie and I figure that in our case, that would
be about $1 per month, give or take 10%. You may say
that would be dishonest and irresponsible. To bill anyone
$14,072 for a one-day stay in the hospital, is dishonest and
irresponsible.
That figure is not an exaggeration or a misprint. That
is the average billed price per day to stay in a Las Vegas
hospital today. Of course, that does not include any doctor
bills. $14,072 per day! Wow!
I wonder if you get to ke your clothes off before they
do that to you.
That is this man's opinion.
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