Health insurance is the dumbest system anyone could ever create for dealing with sick people. Insurance in general makes no sense. I can understand paying for things that you are going to use. If I buy a CD (plastic containment system for music, popular circa 1985-2005), then I get to keep that CD and the music that is on it. One does not have a similar thrill of ownership with health insurance. My insurance company won’t even give me a book listing my benefits. I am paying approximately $2400/year for a plastic card. They could at least make the cards out of something slightly more substantial, like pewter.

At its heart, health insurance is a punishment and reward system for bodily functions. According to Wikipedia, the health insurance system as it stands today did not develop until the 1950s. Before that, when you went to the doctor, you paid him for the doctoring he gave you. Now you pay the insurance company in advance for the doctoring you might get in the future, and then you pay the doctor a little bit more when he actually gives you that doctoring. What Wikipedia does not say, and what I have always been curious about: why does health care have anything to do with employment? I can understand that it is in a company’s best interest to make sure their employees are physically well. But there are an awful lot of areas where my employer does not seem to care about my health. Like food. Employers do not buy my groceries. Or sleep. I am required to buy my own mattresses and make sure I get to sleep at a reasonable hour.

The only thing I can think is that health insurance was originally used to lure employees, much like Free Weed Fridays are used today. (Note: I am self-employed, so I cannot say for certain whether Free Weed Fridays is a universal phenomenon or just something that exists at my company. However, I am happy to report that I have successfully retained 100% of my employees since instituting this policy!) So back in the 50s, when jobs were so readily available that we had to actively breed more human beings to keep our giant industrial machine running, Ford would call up recent high school dropouts and say, “Hey! If you come work for us, we will give you lots of money for mindless drudgery and pay for all your doctors’ bills!” And then General Motors would call and say, “Hey! If you come work for us, we will give you lots of money and pay your doctors’ bills and buy your glasses!” And so on.

This system might have worked well back when the employee was king. In a magical world in which high school dropouts get to choose between high-paying jobs based on perks, this system works wonderfully. Because in this system, people who cannot find a job are just lazy and deserve to die of gunshot-related diseases. (As a matter of fact, one of the perks that Lee Iacocca credited for having saved Chrysler in the ’80s was his policy of giving employees handguns to shoot people who declined jobs at Chrysler.) During this time, the costs of medical procedures and drugs became artificially inflated, because everyone had so much friggin’ insurance that the only way the health care industry could make money was to drastically overcharge for their products and services. A doctor might make $10 to draw blood if he charges $75, but he will make $20 if he charges $150. But in a perfect system, the entire $20 would go right to the doctor, who will still be making a nice profit over the $.02 he paid for the syringe.

At some point in the not-too-distant past, employment-seekers began to outnumber employers by a significant amount. At the same time, health insurance moved from being a nice bonus to being a life-or-death necessity. And that is why we find ourselves in a serious bind today, because something one needs to live is unavailable to a large segment of the population. What I can’t wrap my head around, is that it seems like this problem would affect everyone in the country equally. I have insurance. It’s pretty good insurance. And it is still completely useless. I don’t know anyone who would say they were completely satisfied with their health care. So who wants this system to continue? How does an industry become so powerful that their vote counts for more than the vast majority of individuals in the country? The health insurance industry has enough money that they can literally afford to buy common sense.

And that brings me to the point of this post: the forces of reason need to learn how to be outraged. Because for some reason in our political system, whoever is the most outraged, wins. And right now, the people who are most outraged are the people who want things to remain exactly as they are. I cannot understand how someone can be outraged when things are exactly as they want them to be. I can understand being defensive in response to the outrage of others. But the people fighting health care reform are proactively outraged at things that have yet to happen. (Caveat: Yes, I get outraged at the thought of flying cars, but that’s different. It’s unnatural.)

And meanwhile, the forces who believe health care is a basic right are forced to find logical, sensible arguments to defend our position that morality should not be monetized. That seems incredibly backwards to me. In a reasonable world, the people who are suffering under the current system would be outraged, and the opposition would have to find logical, sensible arguments as to why things should not change. Because I’m pretty sure all the logical, sensible arguments one could muster to defend the current system are based on things that are not facts. Like, “people enjoy going to the doctor and will do so more often if it is free” or “people do not currently have to wait to see a doctor.”

Maybe the main problem is that the forces of good don’t really care to live in a world filled with anger. And so by definition, the angry people get to have all the outrage. Or maybe the problem is that outrage trumps reason in the first place. Regardless, I am awfully tired of seeing people who are afraid of change winning the war. It sure would be nice to live in a world where common, human decency was not considered a position that needed to be defended.