A front-page headline in today’s Washington Post proclaims: “The Choice for Voters: Health Care of Tax Cuts.”
The choice is between higher taxes and more federal money spent on health care and the opposite.
That’s easy: I’ll have the tax cut, please.
I say this as somebody who was once upon a time a freelance writer and therefore for several hair-raising years lived without health insurance.
Everything they say is true: If you lack health insurance, you’re afraid to go to the doctor.
When you don’t have insurance, the cost of a trip to the doctor is prohibitive (both because of medical advances and because there’s no incentive to hold costs down–it’s almost academic to those with insurance).
Yes, it is scary not to have health insurance; the desire to have it curtailed my footloose and fancy-free life as a Bohemian many years ago. I was forced to make a choice. I got a job. The health insurance was a key factor in my decision to get a job (along with withholding so I wouldn’t end up owing Uncle Sam from my meager earnings).
Should the public at large to have been assessed to pay for my health insurance during those years I made a different choice?
I realize that some of the people who lack insurance aren’t living in an attic as impoverished writers; they are parents of children, they are people who work at low-paying jobs.
But they still have the power to decide how to allocate their money. I see no reason why I should subsidize their choices or they for mine.
And I don’t just want the tax cut for myself–everybody should be in charge of his own financial decisions.