Dear fellow taxpayer,
We Frosts have experienced health care in four different nations: England, France, Canada, and the United States. Our experience has amounted to something like comparison shopping. We have to say that, given Medicare and Medicaid, we are more than pleased with the American system. We think the Brits have a slightly better one, but we much prefer to live in the States.
To complement the professional attention, we actively pay attention to our own state of health, with particular attention to nutrition.* This feels like responsible adult behavior : not to trash our bodies with reckless, irrresponsible behaviors and then drag ourselves to a physician afterward and say, “Here I am, Doc. Heal me (on taxpayer dollars). Wind me up and turn me loose so I can trash my body anew.”
The current health-care debate seems to be focusing on cutting the heart out of Medicare. Consequently we are convinced beyond all doubt that Congress has no idea what they are doing. Clearly they have forgotten what it’s like to be a citizen taxpayer out there defenseless, as we ourselves wer for many years. Some of the present rules are extremely weird but ostensibly liveable. We ahve recently learned of one such taht is interesting, to say the least : Even though it is well known that no level of X-ray is safe, and that sonograms are just as good at detecting breast cancer, still if Medicare is to pay for it, you have to have an X-ray before you can get a sonogram.
When it comes to the matter of abortion adn teen pregnancy, we could write reams. The government–paid for by your taxes and mine–refuses to fund real-world, practical sex education for the kids. Then when they get pregnant, Congress proposes not to pay for abortion. This has to be pure grandstanding, not to mention the legislation of religious belief into federal law. Are you as grateful as we are ?
In this nation, teen pregnancy is presently running at 42.5 pregnancies per thousand in ages 15 to 19. Compare that rate with the Netherlands, where sexual freedom adn education are required. There the teen birth rate is 3.8 per thousand–less than 1/10 the U.S. Surely any sensible, rational person can understand that on any sort of cost curve education is the cheapest; abortion is the second least-expensive–and welfare is off the graph. It makes absolutely no sense for Congress to hold up the much-needed health-care reform act for something that would really save billions because of some ancient fundamentalist principle. By the way, copulation is not forbidden in their black book.
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