Indigent Care & You

It sickens me to watch a winning issue like health care lose ground to utter lunacy. Remember how we started all this? With warnings about rationed care and death panels for grandma, and now, a Socialist coup in the form of an insurance mandate. These are steaming piles of stupidity hurled from people who don’t even try to know about the things they argue against. It’s madness to debate. 

Here’s a perfect example. The Co-Founder of Tea Party Patriots, Jenny Beth Martin, debated the insurance mandate on the MARCH 26, 2012 EDITION of Hardball with Chris Matthews. Toward the end of the segment, Matthews asked her how she would pay for health care if she were in an auto accident out of state. Her response reveals how absolutely clueless she is about what she's saying:

“I’m not expecting the hospital to do it [provide health care] for free. I’m not expecting that. And the thing is, even if you don’t have insurance, you still have access to health care. The argument that if you don’t have insurance you can’t get health care is not a valid argument.” 

See?! She doesn't get it. We're trying to have a debate over the cost of health care, not whether people have access to it. In fact, her response is further proof for why an insurance mandate is so important!! But she doesn't notice. She's moved on to her next talking point. And she and millions of other Tea Party “patriots” are screwing the rest of America with this sort of willful ignorance.

Alright then... Since Ms. Martin and her brain trust understand they get health care without insurance, maybe we should start the conversation there. Let’s consider that every state in our Union has laws requiring health care professionals to help uninsured people in need of emergency care. It's called care for the indigent, for the people who are unable to pay for services. Indigent care is costly, but it fits with the Hippocratic oath that doctors take before they practice medicine. 

Put simply, health care professionals are sometimes obligated to care for us. That means they are required to pull us into the health care market. We don't chose to participate in health care when we’re badly injured or unconscious; we are brought in and fixed up. And seriously… we want cared for when our lives are on the line. But we have to pay for it. 

That’s what we’re talking about when discussing the health care mandate, Ms. Martin. It’s about paying for the care that doctors are required to provide us in certain instances. We’re not trying to justify an obvious abuse of the Hippocratic oath to avoid personal health care costs. Those skyrocketing costs don’t vanish just because you don't pay them.