Thursday, November 5, 2009

Pay-or-perish bad model

Imagine a world where you had to pay insurance premiums to qualify for fire department services. You forget to pay several premiums, or just cannot afford to, and one day your house catches fire. No fire department shows up with truck and ladder to help put your fire out.

Imagine a world where people viewed this as quite normal and viewed you and others like you as irresponsible for letting your emergency fire protection insurance lapse.

We are the most powerful country in the world, and the only industrialized nation that does not have medical coverage for all its citizens. Medicine should never be profit-oriented, just like the fire department and police department should not be profit-oriented.

Imagine someone being called a "left-wing liberal" for wanting a nonprofit police and fire department for all citizens? What would one have to do with the other? What has happened to simple Midwestern common sense in this country? Oh, that brings us to education …

Chris Bowers
Liberty Lake