Not having health insurance is not freeloading. Not paying your bills is freeloading

Not having insurance is not freeloading

Ina Hughes always manages to annoy me.  Ina Hughes writes for the "Knoxville News Sentinel".  She has a rather myopic world view and does not seem to understand the phrase "correlation is not causation".  Miss Hughes also does not seem to understand free will.

Apparently, Miss Hughes spent days in the hospital for tests and a medication update and wrote about it in her column today.  Miss Hughes saw a woman in an SUV (clearly living too large) park and enter the emergency room.  The woman wanted to see a doctor for a cold (clearly an idiot). 

When Ms. Hughes questioned the nurse, the nurse told her these people don't have a doctor, don't have insurance and don't pay.  Ms. Hughes posits that these people are freeloaders because they don't have insurance.  She also posits that they have car payments, eat out and have gym memberships.

The Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare is going to fix this because these "freeloaders"  will be forced to have insurance, in Miss Hughes world.

Big problem.  These people have free will and may choose to pay the fine and still not have insurance.  They may choose to wait until they are ill and then get Affordable Care Act Insurance.  Since we don't (yet) have debtors' prisons or jail sentences for those who do not take Obamacare, what is to stop them.

More importantly, I disagree with Miss Hughes that people who don't have insurance are freeloaders.  People who don't pay their debts are freeloaders.  In my world, people who don't have health insurance are taking a big risk.  In my youth, I turned down company offered health insurance for more vacation time.  When I did see a doctor, and you can see a doctor without insurance, I PAID the bill.

People who don't have insurance are gamblers.  People who don't pay their bills are immoral jerks.

Obamacare, The Edsel and New Coke!

Fourth Edition

It is not about the marketing!

The front page of the Bearden edition of the "Shopper News" has another article about the "Looming" Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare signup deadline.  Writer Betty Bean features a new quote from Mayor Rogero, 

"Faith leaders like you share a vision of a responsibility to care for our nation's sick, our nation's children and the overall health of our community."

Silly Southern Baptist that I am, I thought our "faith leaders" had a vision to get our Souls to God. But then, I am a backsliding Baptist so maybe I missed the Sermons about serving the State by having Health Care.

Ford Edsel

New Coke

More importantly, our Mayor Rogero, President Obama and all of the other Affordable Care Act pitch persons have failed to learn the lesson that companies like Ford and Coca Cola learned.  While the failure of Ford's Edsel and Coca Cola's New Coke are taught in Marketing classes where one would never find organizers/agitators, they are also of recent enough vintage that surely the Mayor and the President had to have heard a little about them

The lesson that Ford and Coca Cola both learned with their failed products is that - no amount of money or slick advertising campaigns will induce the public to buy a product that the public does not want!

You cannot jawbone us into it either.  Force is the only way!

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Knoxville citizens exist to provide money to Church and State

Third Edition

Op-ed vision makes me think of "1984" (the book not the year)

In today's "Knoxville News Sentinel", there is an op-ed by four mayors regarding the Affordable Care Act or ACA or Obamacare.  The mayors of Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville and our own Mayor Madeline Rogero.  This is a column clearly built by committee.  It is way too long.  I didn't even want to read it.  My husband said I had to because of the funny laugh lines in it.

First of all, the mayors claim 800,000 uninsured Tennesseans exist while the State website claims 683,000 uninsured Tennesseans exist.  Could the cities and the state check with each other?  Is that hard?

Next the mayors claim that "the peace of mind and financial security that come with health insurance was out of reach to many Tennesseans", according to the article.  Now, I am sorry that any one person suffers for any reason, but even the mayors' number 800,000 is only 1.2% of our state's population of 6,500,000.

The part that reminds me of the book "1984" by George Orwell is when the mayors (and I suspect Mayor Rogero wrote this part because it echoes earlier statements, write

"Certainly, getting covered impacts the individuals and families in our communities, but more residents with health insurance also helps our cities at large. It helps our local economy, because preventive care yields fewer people missing work because of illness. And it helps our budgets, because it places less of a burden on our local health systems. Ultimately, more of our residents getting coverage means better quality of life for all of our residents."

How dare you miss work, you drone.  Don't you know that you exist to serve the State during the week and plink coins in the offertory on the weekend.

This drone is signing out.

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