Wanna know what your new government health care system is going to look like?

I will tell you.

The more I read, the less I like the reform bill.

First, it will become mandatory for me to purchase health insurance. If I don't, the government will fuck me with a seven hundred dollar fine. To the assholes in Congress that passed this monstrosity, I'm sure $700 doesn't seem like a lot of money to them. Pocket change really.

Want to know what it means to me?

Seven hundred dollars is the rent plus the light bill. That is what seven hundred dollars is to me. It is also groceries for a month and a half. It is a gym membership at the community center for two years. It is half a year's worth of fuel at current prices.

In other words, seven hundred dollars is a lot of God Damned Fucking Money on Planet Murphy. To make this money, here is what I'd need to do.

1. Work at a job which pays roughly $12.00 an hour for two weeks at forty hours per week. After I get fucked on taxes, including the Kansas City Gross Earnings Tax, aka the E-Tax, I might get enough to cover the bill.

2. Teach two weeks worth of history classes at current rates.

3. If I were at a minimum wage job like the one I had at World's of Fun in the summer of 2007, I'd have to work a month and a half.

Now I know, someone will say, "But you can opt into Medicaid." Yeah, great. From what I hear, Medicaid is about as worthless as the Veteran's Affairs Medical System. And there are a lot of Docs who are saying they won't take Medicaid anymore. There is additional talk about cutting Medicaid reimbursements to those Docs that do.

Well, that is just fucking wonderful.

I suppose my possible saving grace is that my veteran's status and my ties with the Veteran's Affairs Medical System means that I will somehow be exempt from the Mandatory Insurance Requirement. I can just hold up my VA Medical Card and say, "Nope. I'm covered, buddy." But then again, I'm zero percent disabled, meaning that I am at the bottom rung of the system. If I actually earn enough money, the VA expects me to pay for my care.

So I'm probably going to get shafted with this bill, this mandatory bill, this seven hundred dollar no lube assrape of a bill that I can not afford.

Or I can quit teaching, go find another security guard job that is full time and dial into a worthless fucking Healthcare Management Organization.

And as it stands, it'll be shitty care no matter which way I go.

Oh, what are my complaints about the VA? Oh, let's take it by the numbers.

First, I have an umbilical hernia. I've had this for more than fifteen years. The VA saw it in 2000, before I had Uniguard health coverage. They said, "That could kill you, you need to get it fixed."

"Okay," I replied. "When?"

"Well," they said. "Figure six months to a year for a consult, probably another year to eighteen months after that."

"Wait, wait, wait a minute. This could kill me. Right? That is what you said. This could kill me dead while we are sitting here jawing about it yet you want me to wait nearly two years to get it fixed?"

"Well, maybe it won't take that long."

This is at the same time that the Kansas City VA Medical Center had a rat infestation problem and patients were waking up to find maggots in their noses and wounds.

Yeah. Cut me open right now. Hell, may as well fix it with a pocket knife and some fishing line myself.

Second, broke my collarbone back in 2003. Again, before Uniguard health coverage. I was whisked down to the VA Medical Center. They said, "You've got a broken collarbone. Not much we can do for it. Here is some motrin."

The Doc held up a bag full of 600 mg pills of motrin. Motrin doesn't work for me. It doesn't work at all. I can eat the whole bag and shit it into the toilet without any effect at all. The idiot Doctor may as well have held up a bag full of skittles.

My mother was there so she'll verify this next exchange.

"Doc, those pills won't work. They do not work for pain with me."

"Well," she said without missing a beat or waiting for me to finish my sentence. "I'll give it to you for the swelling."

I looked at my mom and replied, "What part of 'Those pills don't fucking work,' did this idiot not understand? I may as well have had the ambulance take me to a vet, they don't expect their patients to talk back to them."

Beer numbed the pain. That is what I ended up using. I'm extremely resistant to pain meds. The Docs never seem to hear me.

Last example, summer of '96. I ate at a Chinese place and came down with something awful. Cold sweats and chills, hallucinations, the running trots, aches and cramps. For six days I fought this crap. Within the first twenty-four hours I went to the VA Medical Center and tried to get some help.

Since it was June they gave me a saline bag and pumped that into me. Nothing. Then the Doc showed up and wanted to probe my butthole.

"Doc," I said, trying to hold the contents in place, which was a Herculean effort on my part. "I wouldn't do that."

"Why?" she asked.

"The contents are under pressure."

"I know what I am doing," she said.

Do I have to tell you what happened next? Needless to say, she went for a change of clothes. In any case, they collected a sample, declared that I was dehydrated and sent me home where I languished in bed on death's door step for another five days. In the meantime my father's heart gave out and my schizophrenic brother decided he wasn't getting enough attention so he decided it was the perfect moment to have a mental breakdown.

Whereupon in a sane world, the response would have been to shoot my brother and put him out of everybody's misery.

I digress.

On the sixth day, my mom asked me if I wanted to go back to the VA.

"Why? So they can squirt another bag of saline solution in me and say I am still dehydrated? I'm sweating my balls off and freezing to death at the same time. I'm no Doc but this isn't fucking dehydration."

So we went to a private doc who stuffed a needle in my buttcheek. I don't know what it had in it. He charged my mom fifty bucks I recall, money she probably didn't have, and sent me home.

Miracle of miracles, within an hour, I was better. Within 24 hours, I was back in the saddle.

The story doesn't end there.

Six months later the VA Medical Center called me to let me know that the tests came back on the sample.

I had food poisoning.

"What? Did you call to see if you managed to kill me with your incompetence?"

Three examples of my experience with government healthcare. All negative. But I could go on.

There is the Army's reaction to shin splints, "Just stretch a whole lot and run more."

There is the Army's reaction to an incredibly stupid order to shave more than once a day, "Just be real careful not to cut yourself."

There is the Army's reaction to any cold or flu symptoms, "Just go for a two mile run and you'll feel better."

There is the Army's reaction to any objections about the flu vaccination which makes you sick everytime you get one. "It is a myth that flu shots make you sick." And their reaction when you show up a week later sick due to the flu shot, "The flu shot didn't make you sick."

A Brave New World, my friends. Things will be so much better now. Now you will get the same shitty substandard care that I have always received at the hands of the government. It won't be what the Aussies have and it won't be what the Europeans have either.

It'll be a nightmare. One would be better off to lay in a stock pile of hacksaws, fishing line and pocket knifes in order to do the work themselves.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri