Think about it; what did we do in the pioneer days out on the prairie when we came down with an appendicitis attack? We would go, “Ouch. ooh, ahh” for a few days and then die. Easy! No paperwork, no deductibles, no out of pocket expense, no arguing back and forth with insurance companies, doctors and hospitals - and no funeral expenses! Well, hardly any, maybe a shovel and a hand chiseled, homemade headstone, “Here Lies Clem. He Didn’t Have Health Insurance.”
You know, doctors used to make house calls, believe it or not. They would load their huge doctors bags into their Model T Fords and drive thirty miles one way on dirt roads to lance a boil for a bushel of apples. Of course, that doesn’t happen now, the main reason being that huge doctors bags don‘t fit into Porsches. And what doctor in his right mind would subject his baby to a dirt road?
We’re spoiled. We don’t know how to gracefully take excruciating pain anymore. I mean, other than avoiding pain and death, what do we need health insurance for anyway? A friend of mine, just the other day, broke his leg trying to remove his Happy Chimes from his foreclosed house. And by golly, he set that leg himself! It’s not that he didn’t have health insurance, but he didn’t want to pay the upfront, $5,000 deductible out of pocket expense. Not sure what a broken thigh bone costs to fix these days, but my wife broke her little toe a couple of years ago and went to the emergency room. After an x-ray and treatment, which consisted of the advice to, “Tape it to your other toe,” the bill was $1,000!
Oh, I digress. Okay, so how do we fix health care? You fix it by not caring about your health! (Get it - health care, not care-ing about health?) Hmm.
So why worry about getting sick until you are sick? Then you can worry all at once. If everyone dropped their health insurance, doctors would get smaller doctors bags and make house calls again for a bushel of corn and a goat. I guess the loose corn (without the basket) would fit in the Porsches trunk, and maybe the goat in the passenger seat holding the doctors bag, I don‘t Know.
And hospitals would run specials: Kidney Transplants Today - Only $50.00 with mail in rebate.” Nurses would learn how to knit again, and doctors would be chasing the nurses - again - while health insurance companies would be eeking out a living by recycling eighteen million pages of exceptions and deductibles addendums.
And the Government? It would be partying with Wall Street. “No more Medicare and Medicade! Here comes more tax cuts for my wealthy friends!” Booyah!
Oh, and I almost forgot . . . here’s a bullet to bite on.
E. Raymond Rock (anagarika addie) is a meditation teacher at:
http://www.dhammarocksprings.org/ and author of “A Year to Enlightenment:
http://www.amazon.com/Year-Enlightenment-Steps-Enriching-Living/dp/15641...
His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk.
He lived at Wat Pah Nanachat under Ajahn Chah, at Wat Pah Baan Taad under Ajahn Maha Boowa, and at Wat Pah Daan Wi Weg under Ajahn Tui. He had been a postulant at Shasta Abbey, a Zen Buddhist monastery in northern California under Roshi Kennett; and a Theravada Buddhist anagarika at both Amaravati Monastery in the UK and Bodhinyanarama Monastery in New Zealand, both under Ajahn Sumedho. The author has meditated with the Korean Master Sueng Sahn Sunim; with Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society in West Virginia; and with the Tibetan Master Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. He has also practiced at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco.