The Medical Freedom Channel

It happens about once a week, though less often lately since I’ve been spending less time among “working people” - you know, the folks who divide their lives into … their lives, and what they do to earn a living, usually at something they don’t really care to be doing, but somehow the bills must be paid. (I put those of us who have found ways to do something enjoyable with our time, and the money has finally started to follow, in another category.)

Anyway, about once a week or so, I still run into someone who is grumbling and mumbling about the horrible job (s)he has, and how unappreciated (s)he is there, and the terrible and demeaning things they require being done, and … My first reaction used to be, “So why don’t you quit and get a better job, doing something you’d like to be doing?” But invariably, the answer would be the same [imagine panicked voice, similar to someone in a horror-film]: “I can’t do that! I’d lose my health benefits!”

Now kick this up about ten levels of magnitude:

Your current “job” involves risking your life, in a foreign land, with hostiles all around you, as part of a military invasion of a country where your efforts at “liberation” are not only not appreciated, but challenged at every turn … and you have finally completed your contracted commitment, and even gotten back stateside and planned to get the heck out of that madness …

But then you look at the job prospects, and consider the meager yet essential healthcare and other “employee benefits” that came with that job, and after some deliberation and with great reluctance, you SIGN UP FOR ANOTHER TOUR!

Believe it or not, this is what is happening, with more than a few military veterans, including some whose initial intention, four years ago or more, was probably to learn some skills, get some college paid for, do a tour either stateside or in some non-hostile place like Germany or Japan, and by now be moving on with their lives. Instead, some of these young G.I.’s are reportedly signing up and even agreeing to go back over there into that disaster-area … for the health benefits for their wives and children!

If this is not enough to convince Americans that we need to break this bondage, which in some terms amounts to indentured servitude, between non-salary considerations and employment, I’m not sure what will be. Large companies are already starting to sever that connection, largely due to their inability to afford to pay for these “benefits” as they’re currently constructed. Smart politicians in some states are taking steps to ensure that their healthcare reform measures include “worker-owned” healthcare programs, featuring the portability of being movable from one job situation to the next. A few companies have even transferred their health coverage benefit to the hands of their employees, while offering incentives in other areas, up to and including simply passing the savings along in the form of bonuses and raises in salary.

With all these trends in process, and accelerating in their momentum, it seems absurd that nobody is trying to break the bonds for our fighting men and women, who have far too much to concern themselves with, without having literally to make “life and death” decisions based on health insurance coverage. It’s time for the armed forces to start treating their “employees” in this allegedly “volunteer” service like adults, who can make decisions for themselves and their families. It’s time to wean them off the government teat, perhaps by simply paying them more for risking their lives, so they can buy their own family’s protections as they see fit.. Until then, this news that servicemen and women are being forced to choose between continued soldiering, and a shutdown of medical care, is definitely not good.