Left out of the debate re:healthcare are the various states that do provide some sort of "public option" even now. My daughter receives socialized medicine via Illinois' AllKids program. This saves me, a fellow well-below the poverty line, about a grand per year. Beyond that, it saves me the nightmare of going into major debt because of a health issue. Basically, if you're a kid then Illinois is Canada.

The "other side" of the debate (the pro-sick children side) questions the government's largesse, as if providing health care for citizens were some kind of crazy splurge (if so, then every other developed nation on the planet needs to learn to withhold basic services as well as the US). For example, this blogger doesn't like getting $75. He's free to give his stimulus back, of course.

AllKids was apparently created by our previous governor, a famous nutcase and crook. But, hey, people are complex beings -- perhaps he did one or two good things between hair appointments and pay-to-play schemes.

Just look at the amount of money that is saved by this public option:

a) Personally, it saves me (a poor person) at least $1000 in health care since I don't have to add my child to my health care.

b) If I did add my child to my health care, the service would be less convenient and cost more. So, again personally, I save mental strain there. My emotional state comes at a small price, let's say 50 cents.

So far, we've saved $1000.50.

c) When my child gets sick I don't have to take her to the emergency room for a routine illness. I'm not saddled with a ridiculous bill and the taxpayers/ hospitals are not paying insane amounts of $$ because my uninsured daughter got the flu. (For the slow people out there: getting the flu is not a moral issue. Good people get the flu too. Everyone deserves treatment for their flu.) The average emergency room visit was $1881 (in Florida in 2006, anyway).

Now we've saved $2881.50.

d) Because I have access to health care, my daughter gets preventative medicine. This saves untold $$$ to everyone. How could we even estimate it? Think of all of the emergency room visits and illnesses prevented simply because people in Illinois can take their kids to the doctor. I'm going to be conservative and say we save, maybe, an average of $10,000 per child.

Now we've saved $12,881.50.

e) As mentioned before, all healthcare insurance costs go down. There's more -- not less -- competition with a public option. So by simply having this option available, everyone saves a little bit. If everyone in Illinois saves just $1 a year then that's $12,901,563.

Now we've saved $12,914,444.50.

f) Would you rather live and work in a state that offered a public option or one that didn't? Do you prefer to live in a place that takes care of children or one that doesn't? Would you be more likely to move your business and family to a place with a public option? Let's put people's happiness at $.50. Another incalculable: how many taxpayers move to Illinois in part because of this tiny safety net?

Now we've saved $12,914,445

e) I forgot! I save my place of employment money as well. Think of the savings to those always-mentioned "small businesses" when their workers don't need to add their children to their health care.

So this is what socialized medicine gets you: a more competitive marketplace and less money spent.

I'm not saying AllKids is perfect -- I'm sure it isn't. This is Illinois after all. But from my perspective, AllKids has been great. It makes the standard of care here at least as good, if not a little better, than it was in the Federated States of Micronesia. When my daughter was sick, I took her to the clinic, payed $10, got some anti-biotics, and she was fine in two days. Imagine the hassle at an emergency room!

So, yes, we need a public option. A real one. Will we get one? Probably not. (You really should read this article!)

Here's how our $75 dollar hating blogger ends his blog-thing:

"It doesn’t really matter if you subscribe to the Obama apologist thought process that government can take care of everything without being intrusive and even if it is intrusive, it intrudes more on the evil bastards that work for a living than on the innocent victims that welcome its assistance."

I love this run-on sentence, from linguistics standpoint. One could parse it so many ways. Let me try to paraphrase: "I doesn't matter if you agree with Obama that government can take care of everything without intruding*. Further it doesn't matter if you think that if government is intrusive, it intrudes upon evil working people more than innocent victims who receive government assistance."

So basically, um... actually I'm not sure what Mr. Blogger dude means. He, and other pro-sick children folks seem to not believe in even the most basic social contract. The people give power to the government, agree to abide by its rules and government in return should do nothing whatsoever to provide basic protection to its citizens in the form of healthcare. Taking care of your citizens is a non-zero-sum game -- everyone wins!



* I doubt Obama really thinks this. But how could I know?