All this Hitler/Nazi stuff about Obama and his attempts to reform our healthcare system is hereby declared null and void.

As many others have pointed out, the oppositions’ statements are often false and so ratcheted up with hyperbole that rational debate is proving impossible.

Moreover, according to Internet protocol based on Godwin’s Law, the mere mention of Hitler and Nazis does two things:

1. The person who drags Hitler and Nazis into the debate has automatically lost the debate.

2. With the debate lost, the conversation must immediately cease.

Since a lot of the healthcare debate is occurring online, I submit that Godwin’s Law is in effect.

However, the debate must continue because:

1. I haven’t had the stomach to wade through the guns/Hitler signs/death panels/socialism lies to fully understand any of the plans under consideration.

2. I am convinced by the fact that my employer pays an amount equivalent to 30% of my salary to provide me with a “good” healthcare plan (high deductible and significant out-of-pocket expenses) is proof that the system is corrupt.

3. I’m waiting for someone, other than me, to shout The Emperor Has No Clothes with respect to the “group rate” nonsense.

As for No. 3, I’m either missing something key or the rest of the country is. Here’s what I think: if I still worked at the university, the premium for my healthcare would be significantly less. Same body, same mind, same prescriptions, same doctors, and same insurance company and yet the small nonprofit I work for is charged far more because we’re a small group. Huh what?

A co-worker, who is following the debate closely and committed to the idea of reform, tried to explain this the other day. I was feeling uncharacteristically polite and didn’t tell him that he’d clearly drunk the Kool-Aid.

His explanation centered on the idea that because Marshall has a far larger number of people, the risk taken by Mountain State Blue Cross Blue Shield is smaller. When I spluttered and said “But, but. . .” he then used the car insurance industry as an analogy as if those crooks were paragons of virtue and right-thinking.

And furthermore, sitting on my kitchen table is a bill from my doctor. The charge was $295. The insurance company said, “Oh no you don’t” and decreed that the charge should only be $65. With the deductible and out-of-pocket provisions of my policy, I am responsible for that $65. If I had no insurance at all, I would have to pay the $295. I have no right to say, “Oh no you don’t.” Okay. I might have the right, but it’s not going to get me anywhere. If I was still working at the university (who would be paying far lower premiums for my healthcare), I would have long ago met my deductible and my share of the $55 would have been less than a third.  (If I were disabled or elderly, Medicare/Medicaid costs would be less yet.  And, yes, I’ve heard the argument that those two programs pay less than the actual cost of treatment, but I’m not drinking that Kool-Aid either.)

Same body, same mind, same doctor, same illness and same insurance company. 

What part of this makes sense to you?

Ignoring the nonsense of state lines having something to do with all this, why isn’t West Virginia as a whole one large group? If that were the case, theoretically, we’d all have far lower premiums because the group is larger. Right? RIGHT?

Same insurance company, same bodies, same doctors, same illnesses, same drugs . . .

Completely whacked, I tell you. (And I haven’t even got into the balderdash about hospitals losing money over the uninsured and underinsured. Anybody besides me noticed the endless construction going on at St. Mary’s and Cabell-Huntington?  Nor have I gotten into Big Pharma and the rate of new drugtores being built.)