the vodka glass half full

                He told me about life in Russia after 1991.  He said Putin was the best premier in his lifetime.  America, with all its economic woes, all its inherent inequalities, all the things people want government to do, he claimed is better that Russia on a good day.  Inflation he said was the trouble with Russia.  You could see a car for 20,000 and the next week it might be double that. 

                Beer flowed freely and the taps were clean.  Vodka was not on the menu.  He orders his food to go and quaffs a 25 oz. mug as he waits smacking his hands again and again to punctuate his politics.  Smack!   He punches his fist into a hand dry and worn from manual labor.  He tells me when he came over here he worked 3 jobs for the first 2 months.  Then he had appendicitis.  What cost him a total of 1,000 dollars here would cost 50 at home.

                The consensus, between us, was that, at its core health insurance in this county is a scam.  We, the insured, will always lose.  The system is designed to make a 3^rd party rich by exploiting our misfortune and directing the provider.  He takes another swig of beer and smacks his palm once more.  Like a boxer fighting alone in lights that cast no shadow his accent traces his love of this country.  I ask whether he has health insurance and he looks at me like it is a question no one should ever have to ask.

                                The most expensive thing the average healthy individual would have for medical expenses is a night in a hospital.  Something must be very, very wrong and sever before a hospital will admit you and keep you over night.  Many insurances carry very high deductibles.  In some cases the bill must top 3 grand before the insurer even pays.   The big ticket items, the ones that could make the insurance start paying, are never well within our reach.  It is a scam like I learned Columbia record club was.

                When I was 14, 15, 16, Columbia records sent ads saying you could get 9 records or tapes for a penny.  The proviso was that you buy 5 more within the year at “regular club prices.”  Trouble was that they were always on sale and never at the regular prices.  The hucksters always win.

                He orders another and says the providers are at the beck and call of the companies and HMOs.  Drug companies dope us with pills, according to him, that never fix the problem and keep us coming back for more.  It is a grand scheme and the net result is that HMOs get rich off of us.  Is this right?  Of course it’s not.  Still we quaff our beers and silently thumb our noses at the system.  The irony is that a baby is born somewhere  in this country every day and threatens to prove P.T. Barnum right.  However childbirth's costs surely surpass any deductible and the blessed event is sometime covered entirely.  This fact makes childbirth possibly the most worthy reason to have insurance.