Craig Carter: Health care costs that just ain't right

Today we're going to venture into the realm of "ain't right."

When Lovely Wife and I worked, we paid an awful lot of money for health insurance. However, the insurance we paid for only covered 80% of the cost of our health care, and that didn't kick in until we had paid a prescribed amount out of our own pockets first. The insurance companies call this a "Deductible," but we all know what it is.

A scam.

You can call a skunk a pussycat, but that sucker is still gonna stink to high heaven. Just call it what it is: Fraud. And it simply ain't right.

And speaking of ain't right, now that Lovely Wife and I no longer work (neener, neener), we're on Medicare, which is health care for us fogies and biddies. Only, guess what? Medicare only covers 80% of any health care cost. So you have to get "supplemental insurance," to pay for the stuff Medicare doesn't pay for, and that, my friends, ain't right. But guess what else? Your supplemental insurance has a deductible, too, meaning it won't cover any of the 20% Medicare doesn't cover until you pay a prescribed amount out of your own pocket first.

That really ain't right.

And while we're on the ain't right train, Medicare doesn't cover dental or eye care costs (Because apparently our eyes and teeth are separate entities of our existence). So you have to get insurance to cover those things. And guess what? You have to meet a deductible before your eye or dental care insurance kicks in, too.

The epitome of ain't right.

Also, prescription costs are a separate part of Medicare. It's called Medicare Part D, but it was recently announced that the president is ending a government subsidy for Part D at the end of this year, so if you're on Medicare, chances are very good your prescriptions are going to cost more. Unless, of course, you sign up for a supplemental prescription plan, that won't kick in until — you guessed it — the ain't right monster rears its ugly head again.

Some will say I'm a socialist, wanting the government to pay for my health care, prescriptions, eye and dental care and all, but I paid a percentage out of every one of my paychecks to specifically fund all this. They're called "entitlements" because we paid for it, so we're entitled to it.

See how that works?

But we're told this is just the way things are, and we should just accept it. Much like we're told we have to accept the president literally spending billions of dollars on vanity projects like gilding statues, refurbishing the White House and building an arch that only he wants, while drastically cutting funding for things like CDC programs that track parasite outbreaks in the food supply. Which simply ain't right on a whole other level.

The sad truth is that things are the way they are, namely, ain't right, because the people who are supposed to be in charge of making ain't right, right are securely in the pockets of the corporations that created the ain't right in the first place.

Say it with me, boys and girls. "That. Ain't. Right."

In a truly just universe, senators, Congressmammals and their minions and staffs should have to live on the average salary of people in the jurisdiction they represent. If they want to represent us, they should also have to purchase private health insurance and deal with the deductibles and the denied coverages and the hidden fees and costs, and the extra charges for dental and eye care and all the rest of the shenanigans (Irish for you know what) they force us to deal with.

Yeah! I think that's one heck of a grand idea. Force all elected officials to live on the average salary in the jurisdiction they represent. Make them shop for their own groceries and pay for their own childcare and deal with all the things the "hard working people" they claim to represent have to deal with.

You can bet your bottom dollar things would change faster than you can say, "No, really. That ain't right."

The best way to fix all the ain't right in this country is to subject all the elected people who created and perpetuated the ain't right to live with all the ain't right they created and perpetuated.

Craig Carter is an Ontario resident and can be reached in care of Argus Observer, P.O. Box 492, Ontario, OR, 97914. The views and opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily represent those of the Argus Observer.