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I wasn't working full time last year — at least through the first half of the year — so I didn't enroll in the state–mandated health insurance. I couldn't afford it. (Well, I guess I could have — if I had stopped doing things like, you know, paying rent or eating.)
I am working full time now — and I didn't like being treated like a criminal because I didn't sign up for health insurance — so I signed up before the deadline this year, and now I am in compliance with the law. (Well, that is what I have been told ...)
I had my annual checkup earlier this month. It was the first time I had ever met my doctor. He was assigned to me by the state because the doctor I have been seeing for years isn't on the state–approved list. That meant I had to go through my medical history with a stranger rather than see a doctor who is already familiar with my medical history. I wasn't too thrilled about that.
Nor am I pleased with the fact that this insurance doesn't cover my monthly prescriptions. In fact, it doesn't kick in on anything at all until I pony up six grand.
I pay nearly $375 a month for this policy. I'll be damned if I can see any benefit to it.
Oh, excuse me. There is one benefit. I am entitled to one no–charge visit with my state–assigned doctor per year. I gather it's a no–frills thing. When I met my new doctor, one of the first questions he asked me was how extensive I wanted the appointment to be. I replied that it was my understanding that my policy entitled me to one visit per year.
His response? "Oh. You want the free stuff."
Now, I'm a journalist. I studied journalism in college. I have worked as a reporter, an editor, a journalism instructor. The study of language is a given in my line of work, and I know — probably better than most — how easily language can be manipulated and misused to achieve whatever the user wishes to achieve. Successful politicians know it, too. For that matter, I suppose, most people today have a smattering of a familiarity with how it works.
Anyway, as I just said, I'm shelling out nearly $375 a month for this policy, and the only thing I really get in return — unless I get hit by a bus or something like that (and then it will cost me $6,000 up front) — is one visit with my health care provider per year. What the hell is affordable about that?
It certainly is not free. It costs me nearly $4,500 a year — and it isn't nearly as thorough as the annual checkups for which I paid $300 before the state compelled me to carry this policy.
Oh, sure, I understand why the doctor calls it free stuff. As far as he is concerned, I suppose, it is free.
But not really. The doctor is paid for that annual visit by the health insurer, not the patient (and I use that term loosely). It's a very cursory, bare–bones examination. Whatever the insurer pays for it, he/she is being overcharged.
Actually, we're all being overcharged so a small group of people can have their policies at discounted rates. That's what the Supreme Court upheld this week — the state's practice of using money from the working class to subsidize health insurance policies for others.
The policy doesn't cover prescriptions, but it does cover contraceptives. I mentioned to a friend that I was having to pay for someone else's contraceptives. This friend, whom I have known since before my high school days, is as devout a supporter of Barack Obama and Obamacare as you will find, and he tried to tell me that subsidizing contraceptives was a social obligation — the same way that we all (symbolically, at least) pitch in for the upkeep of roads and schools.
I really can't follow that logic — although God knows I've tried. Actually, I suppose I can follow it — up to a point. I agree that everyone is entitled to drive on good, well–maintained roads and send their children to good schools.
But contraceptives are different. Subsidizing contraceptives suggests that sex — like good roads and good schools — is a right. I disagree. If sex was a right, people would be entitled to grab anyone off the street and have sex with that person. Never mind if the other person didn't give his/her consent.
The law doesn't permit people to have sex with anyone, consent be damned. In fact, the law has a specific word for the act of sex with others without their consent. It's called rape — or sexual assault in the namby–pamby jurisdictions that won't call things what they are.
Sex is not a right. Sex is a privilege.
Even if you're one–half of a married couple. I have known many men who believed they were entitled to sex with their wives whenever they wanted it (and some even thought they were entitled to sex with their children). It was a wife's duty, they said — and then the courts began to rule that there was such a thing as spousal rape.
Clearly, unless you're talking about masturbation, sex is not a right.
(Now that the courts are handing down rulings that re–define marriage, I expect that sometime in the not–so–distant future there will be similar rulings establishing boundaries for sexual behavior in same–sex marriages. Seems like the next logical step to me. But I digress.
(I don't really care about that, though. I don't really have an opinion on same–sex marriage. I do have an opinion about the health care law.)
But it's that "free stuff" part that really bothers me. People believe it. Clearly, at least one doctor does.
I am an adjunct journalism professor at one of the community colleges here in Dallas, and I was there during the 2012 presidential campaign. I couldn't begin to tell you how many students told me they were voting for Obama "because he's going to give me free health insurance."
From the start, it reminded me of something I have heard all my life: There is no such thing as a free lunch. As a youngster, I thought that was absurd. Of course there were free lunches.
But as I have gotten older I have realized that the statement was true. Even if something appears to be free, you'll wind up paying for it in the end.
