An ‘un-American’ Medicare recipient
Published: October 12, 2009, 12:30 am
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Imust be un-American, and I may have placed my country in great peril from socialists, communists, fascists and I don’t know who else. For health care, I participate in a dreaded “public option,” Medicare, and have done so for 15 years. Along with most of 45 million people, we have been dependent on and spoiled by Medicare. And most of us like it better than private insurance and, at the risk of undermining our youth, they may like Medicare, too. I go to and trust doctors who participate in Medicare, and none has threatened to pull my plug.
Also, I was a beneficiary of “socialist” medical care during my two years in the U. S. Army, where doctors who were paid by Uncle Sam treated me for various ailments. And since then, I’ve gotten some free care from Veterans Affairs, where the doctors, nurses and janitors also work for the government.
In addition, I have participated in a “death panel,” but not one that Medicare paid for. I went to a lawyer, who charged my wife and me a bundle for drawing up a living will, an advance directive and a health care power of attorney giving a loved one permission to have doctors pull my plug, in case I couldn’t.
Because of my irresponsible behavior, I suffered a stroke six years ago. As a result, I cost Medicare, plus my secondary insurance, thousands of dollars in medical and rehabilitation bills, paid in part by taxpayers. Four years ago, I was foolish enough to have a bout with a nasty cancer, for which Medicare and my secondary insurance paid tens of thousands of dollars more, despite my advanced years. In contrast to what some members of Congress seem to be saying, Medicare didn’t seem to care how old I was. But it cost the taxpayers another bundle.
The doctors, nurses, radiation and chemo specialists who treated me and arrested my cancer worked for and were paid by a public, not-for-profit hospital. Not exactly the American way, but it worked for me. (This hospital, which may not be patriotic, won’t accept Medicare Advantage policies.)
To be fair, people whom I know as good Americans, like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., have gone to socialized government hospitals, such as the one in Bethesda, Md., for surgeries.
Presidents have gone to Walter Reed. (I don’t know how much, if anything, they paid. They all have the same insurance President Obama has proposed.)
If lawmakers get swine flu shots this year, they will be government-administered. I don’t know who will pay; mine will be paid for by Medicare. But all of us, lawmakers and ordinary people, Americans and un-Americans and even illegal immigrants, will depend on the government’s Centers for Disease Control to help us deal with this threat.
I also relied on government, namely the GI Bill, to get a college degree, while I was working as a cub reporter. The government didn’t seem to care what I studied. At least one of my philosophy professors was a liberal. And the GI Bill gave me a VA loan, at ridiculously low interest rates, which must have cost the taxpayers plenty. But it enabled my wife and me to buy our first house in Houston, where the current governor wants the state to secede again from the United States. Would that mean the Bushes would no longer be Americans?
When my wife and I and our daughters went on our early vacations, using the new interstate highway system that that famous un-American Dwight Eisenhower (see the John Birch Society) had proposed, we visited San Antonio’s Alamo, where we learned it had been restored by the Works Progress Administration, which helped the Texas economy, despite the state’s secession in 1861.
But I digress. In addition to those dollars that the government has spent to get me educated, housed and healthy, I’ve spent some time as a reporter hearing that the federal government can’t do anything right, like General Motors, Lehman Brothers, Eastern Air Lines, Pan Am, TWA, Bear Stearns, American Motors, Enron and other icons of private enterprise. The only things I could think of that the government has done reasonably well were the Manhattan Project, the FDIC, the FDA, Yellowstone and other National Parks, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and the Washington Monument.
Last but not least, for 15 years or so, my wife and I have been paid modest but significant sums each month by Social Security. Many people who are real Americans consider this another example of an un-American, big government, socialist infringement on our freedoms that is bound to fail because it’s a Ponzi scheme. You could ask Bernie Madoff. He could get Social Security if he weren’t in prison.
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