August 24, 2013

"You know, it's hard to die. It takes a long time, and it's not easy to get killed."

A Rush Limbaugh pronouncement, made the other day, that's stuck with me. I like it out of context, but here's the context:

People in this country have been so bombarded with "This is gonna kill you and that's gonna make you sick," or "this genetic trait's gonna kill you" or whatever, the people of this country have been so bombarded with the fact that they're gonna die tomorrow that they think the only way to stay alive is to have health insurance.

This has been one of the biggest scams that's ever been perpetrated on the people of this country.  I am not kidding you.  I honestly believe this.  Now, I know some of you are shouting, "Hey, Rush, don't downplay this.  Health is a big thing."  I know it is, but, you know, it's hard to die.  It takes a long time, and it's not easy to get killed.  When it happens, those are rare criminal examples, but they're not the result of lifestyle choices.  There's no insurance policy -- go talk to this poor kid in Duncan, Oklahoma.  There's not one insurance plan he could have had that would have kept him alive because the culture killed him.  And the same thing with Shorty.
It's hard to die... but the culture killed him.

19 comments:

TRISTRAM said...

I do understand his point. I don't really agree. It is trivially easy to die in traffic, in deep water, falling from heights. But we have been trained to avoid those situations.

The sad thing about some cultures or sub cultures is that it isn't training enough young people on how not to die young.

Michael K said...

This the source for a lot of the nonsense about "preventive medicine." The largest decline in death rate is due to public health measures like clean water and proper sewage treatment. Medicine has little to do with it except immunizations for common communicable diseases and "the culture" is attacking that.

I was reading a book about trachoma yesterday and this disease, which was a terrible scourge causing blindness for millions, is best treated by... sanitation and clean water.

When the French invaded Egypt in 1790, they encountered this disease and even set up hospitals for French soldiers afflicted. Soldiers often have sanitation little better than the poor in these hot dry countries. There are still a lot of cases in those countries but it is gradually being eliminated.

Malaria used to be endemic in the US at the time of the Civil War. William Mayo moved his family to Minnesota to get away from malaria in Missouri. It was eliminated by sanitation and understanding what caused it.

Preventive medicine is mostly political unless you have diabetes.

harrogate said...

Honestly, Rush spends the lion's share of space in the transcript on the boilerplate Pat Buchanan stuff, but never really shows that people shouldn't be very worried indeed in the United States if they don't have health insurance. That's because such a thing cannot be shown.

Sam L. said...

Someone will disagree, but probably not tell us why that's wrong, other than raaaaaacist!

Bigus Macus said...

From an old favorite Irish Song.
"Look at the mourners, bloody-great hypocrites Isn't it grand, boys, to be bloody-well dead?
Let's not have a sniffle, let's have a bloody-good cry And always remember: The longer you live The sooner you'll bloody-well die.

traditionalguy said...

Rush is right. The health insurance expectation had always been about a way to get medical problems treated without a bankruptcy. The Plans only paid for 80% after deductible and that in effect only covered serious disease and trauma while we paid routine medical care.

But Medicare changed that expectation into end of life Free Care. But even that required a portion of the patients Social Security benefit to have been paid into Medicare for years and still left the need for another $1800 a year premium for a Medicare Supplement policy before the Free Care idea was achieved.

Now we have a Marxist King Democrat Senate that has us headed straight into no insurance at all but a Giant Nationalized Health Care Bureaucracy to get political control over our existence.

That will result in triple the cost for about half the benefits. But it will along the way hire the rest of the 51% voters the Dems need as government drones are thankful for their new power and pensions and early retirement. The rest of us will be lucky to get treated as good as VA medical care meets its patients needs today.

ken in tx said...

What I know about killing and dying, has to do with dogs. I love dogs and I would not voluntarily kill one for anything, except my male pride I guess.

My MIL once shamed me into killing a stray dog she had encouraged to hang around by feeding it. She decided that it was spreading fleas and if I was not man enough kill it she would. I took it out to the edge of the woods and shot it in the head. It died quickly.

One time, my brother shot a stray dog that was killing our chickens. Actually, I did not live there at the time and I was only there for the weekend. The dog was not dead. It was in a ditch behind the house howling loudly. The house was in the city limits and a patrol car was driving around trying to find who was shooting a gun in the city limits. I was delegated, as the oldest brother, to kill the dog. Since I could not shoot it again, I chopped it's head off with and ax. It took a long time and the dog howled until it died. Not a happy chore.

That's what I know about killing and dying.

Sometimes easy, sometimes hard.

Cedarford said...

Harrogate - I wouldn't say the "boilerplate Buchanan stuff" was not worth spending considerable time on.
It is the core truth of the situation.

"Teenagers who can shoot and kill a man out of summertime boredom are moral barbarians, dead souls. But who created these monsters? Where did they come from? Surely one explanation lies in the fact that the old conscience-forming and character-forming institutions -- home, church, school and a moral and healthy culture fortifying basic truths -- have collapsed. And the community hardest hit is Black America."

Which harkens back to Michael K, who surely knows that public health measures like sanitation, cleaning up polluted or unsafe workplaces and communities does have far more benefit at far less cost that heroic critical care expenses. If there is a distinction between public health measures which are political as well as just arising from "miracle new technology" and preventative medicine, I do not see it as significant.

Prison and all the fat lawyers wallets needing filling for dealing for dangerous thugs is enormously expensive. Far better and cheaper, wouldn't it be, to address the broken black community systems that breed such a healthy crop of violent and depraved black thugs??


jimbino said...

Folks who subscribe to insurance are dumber than those who play Blackjack or Roulette. Blackjack is fun and returns up to a dollar per dollar bet. Roulette is also fun and returns some 96 cents on the dollar. Insurance is the opposite of fun and returns from 2 cents (title insurance) to 65 cents (NFIP flood insurance) to 80 cents (Obamacare goal) on the premium dollar. Very bad deals! Insurance is nothing but a bet that you will get sick or injured, that your house will be flooded or that your house title is defective.

Dumber yet is to subscribe to Obamacare if you are:

--climing Everest.
--hitchhiking in Africa.
--spending 6 months as a nurse or researcher in the Amazon.
--skydiving in Europe.
--sailing around the world.

In every case, you will be obligated to pay Obamacare premiums but will have NO access whatsoever to healthcare, unless you pay a fortune to be flown back to Amerika.

All insurance is for risk-averse folks. They live lives full of fear, supersition and religion. Real folks who take chances and chase rainbows will forgo all that nonsense meant for couch-potatoes, the sick, the old and the dumb.

Michael K said...

"sailing around the world.
"

A few years ago, a fishing boat found a sailboat sailing along with no one alive aboard. A skeleton was found in the cabin, on the floor. The sailboat was going along on course with a mechanical autopilot in control. The owner had left Australia to return to Hawaii some months before. I don't think he had filed a health insurance claim.

cubanbob said...

Honestly, Rush spends the lion's share of space in the transcript on the boilerplate Pat Buchanan stuff, but never really shows that people shouldn't be very worried indeed in the United States if they don't have health insurance. That's because such a thing cannot be shown."

Actually what can't be shown is that most people don't need expensive comprehensive pre-paid medical care. A simple major medical and hospitalization plan is what most under fifty year old people need.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The dominate leftwing mainstream press - NBC, CBS, ABC, MSN, Yahoo, MSNDC, NYTIMES, et al are hiding the truth about the 3 teens who gunned down and killed an innocent person.


"Meanwhile, it turns out that one of Lane’s shooters posted a series of tweets over the past few months that expressed animus toward whites, even proclaiming that he’s “knocked [sic] out” white people. In April, 15-year-old James Edwards tweeted, “90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM.” After the Zimmerman verdict, referring to white people as “woods,” Edwards tweeted: “Ayeee I knocced out 5 woods since Zimmerman court!:)"

That's toxic.

Who or what inspired such toxic thinking? THE MEDIA. The dominate leftwing media culture, who lies and twists facts to push an agenda.

How many more innocents will die because they want to seek revenge for Treyvon?

David said...

Harrowgate, Rush was talking about murder and diseased culture, not health insurance. Specifically with respect to African Americans. One of his points was that the topic is taboo. You certainly proved that point.

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stlcdr said...

It isn't just healthcare, it's insurance in general.

There is, somehow, a societal equivalence between safety and insurance. It's also ingrained into our society as litigation. For some reason, some are willing to accept harm (being maimed, potentially for life) as long as they can sue someone and gain financial recompense.

This developed risk aversity means that we, as a culture, ignore the very real risks that we take each day we step outside our door. One can walk out to their car, get in, and be miles down a road with a cigarette, a coffee, and on the phone, while intermittently texting; there is no consciousness or even subconsciousness of risk, the potential for harm, and the extent of that harm.

Conserve Liberty said...

Insurance of all kinds is risk transfer. One rents on-demand delivery of money in the event certain conditions are met.

Those conditions really ought to be limited to catastrophic events (as in Life Insurance for the breadwinners in a family), Homeowner's Insurance and Auto Insurance (with high deductibles) that actually protect lenders more than owners, and major medical insurance plans for catastrophic injuries not covered by other insurance.

What we have evolved is a sort of forced saving through premiums to support an industry of doctor visits and prescription drug purchases. That's like buying monthly auto insurance to cover regular oil changes.

jeff said...

"What we have evolved is a sort of forced saving through premiums to support an industry of doctor visits and prescription drug purchases. That's like buying monthly auto insurance to cover regular oil changes." And your wiper blades, tires and gasoline . But it not fair to pay more for car insurance than someone who doesn't own a car, so the cost is spread out to include them.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, used to think that way... until my gym-going 43 yr old , no health insurance having since my clients got hit by the downturn, still getting carded, ostensibly healthy butt was diagnosed with stage three cancer causing severe anemia and putting me in the hospital for an emergency transfusion approximately two weeks away from surprise death... even as I tried to power through it and "retrain" with a perfect grade point at a top school to be an even more prepared little worker worthy of a survival wage.

It's the stress and broken heart that kills - and we currently encourage that kind of a society for greater profits.



Peter said...

The primary reason to have health insurance- practically any health insurance- in the USA is because the insurance company has negotiated prices for medical services and products.

As an individual, you just don't have enough negotiating power to navigate a system where everyone pays a different price.

Remember that medical bill you got, the one that said your lab work was billed at $125.44, your insurance paid $7.92, and your responsibility was $0.00? Guess who gets to pay the full $125.44?

And it isn't just labs or even hospitals. If you ask a drugstore how much a prescription drug costs, they'll just ask you about your ... insurance. Because if you have none, you'll pay far more.

Perhaps before Obamacare upends the entire medical delivery system in the USA, it might offer that most basic of reforms- and require vendors to charge everyone the same for the same services?

That each, each vendor would still be free to set their own prices- but those prices would have to be transparent. Just as food prices are in a grocery store- posted prices, for everyone.