I want homeless people to get the help they need to make their sorry asses productive members of society. Why?
1) I want to walk down the street someday without seeing them , smelling them, or hearing them ask for my spare change.
2) If they get jobs, that widens the tax base, meaning I pay less. ME!
3) I have heard rumors that some homeless people might be mentally ill. If it turns out there is some truth to this, then getting them the meds that stop the voices in their heads will mean more business for, and therefore more money for......ME!
Evidently I'm not the only greedy bastard out there. It seems like a few hospitals have figured out that offering free care means more for THEM! That's right, giving away their product saves them money. I'll let today's New York Times explain:
AUSTIN, Tex. — Unable to afford health insurance, Dee Dee Dodd had for years been mixing occasional doctor visits with clumsy efforts to self-manage her insulin-dependent diabetes, getting sicker all the while
In one 18-month period, Ms. Dodd, 38, was rushed almost monthly to the emergency room, spent weeks in the intensive care unit and accumulated more than $191,000 in unpaid bills.
That is when nurses at the Seton Family of Hospitals tagged her as a “frequent flier,” a repeat visitor whose ailments — and expenses — might be curbed with more regular care. The hospital began offering her free primary care through its charity program.
With patients like Ms. Dodd, “they can have better care and we can reduce the costs for the hospital,” said Dr. Melissa Smith, medical director of three community health centers run by Seton, a Roman Catholic hospital network that uses its profits and donations to provide nearly free care to 5,000 of the working poor. Over the last 18 months, Ms. Dodd’s health has improved, and her medical bills have been cut nearly in half.
Now who do you think ends up paying the $191,000 tab patients like this ring up? That's right, ME! and YOU! through higher taxes and insurance premiums. So by being smarter about it's charity care, this hospital cuts our bill in half. More for everyone! But most importantly, more for ME!
The other alternative of course is to cut off all charity care and let poor people with diabetes, asthma, heart disease and other chronic conditions die in the streets. If you think this is a viable option, then seriously, I don't want to be in the same society as you. Please go to Alabama and form your own country, with my apologies that we didn't let that state leave the first time it tried. Getting back to the Times story:
Other answers to the insurance crisis are being tried around the country, including the creation of subsidized, bare-bones policies for small businesses. Vermont, Maine and especially Massachusetts are using combinations of state and federal money and employer mandates to extend insurance.
Still, only a fraction of the uninsured, in Central Texas and in most other states, are benefiting.
“All these local efforts are commendable, but they are like sticking fingers in the dikes,” Ms. Davis of the Commonwealth Fund said,
I suppose based on what I said earlier I should hate dikes, since they generally don't want me sticking fingers or anything else in them. From what I've seen however, the dikes are no great loss to the average straight guy.
Getting back to the point of this post though, the hospital in Austin becomes more.....liberal about it's charity care, ends up saving money and making more resources available for us all. Remember that the next time some gasbag, condescending caveman conservative tries to tell you liberal ideas just don't work in the real world.
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