french fried physicians
We got a lot of folks down here on the South End who can’t afford health care insurance. You can bet your next CAT scan bill it’s a hot button topic from the Marina and Bait Shop to the Pretty Pooch Pet Grooming Salon. You’d be pretty lucky to get more than minimum wage anywhere down here — which may or may not explain either the high rate of unemployment or our entrepreneurial zeal — but you can surmise for yourself what the health care benefits are for any employees lucky or unlucky enough to have a job. Even the owners of what few businesses we have left down here rarely have their own coverage much less cover some group plan for all two employees.
Oh, it goes without saying that our rural lifestyle, our lack of stress, our generally upbeat esprit de corps, should assure us plucky South Enders a healthy, doctor free existence. But accidents do happen and none of us can be certain what creepy genetic pre-disposition has in store for us. And so, when a neighbor falls prey to a stroke or cancer or some other malady not even nettleopathy can cure, we have to circle the wagons and form a tighter knit community to deal with expenses and carpooling to the clinics or generally just helping out.
A lot of the newcomers with health insurance aren’t accustomed to living in an outback where hospitals are 40 miles away and 911 call might arrive 30 minutes after the onset of their heart attack. They want clinics and paramedics and they want taxes raised to pay for that. But definitely not to pay for our health insurance. Don’t want government in that! Although, in all honesty, even a lot of us without insurance don’t want government involved either, if the chatter down at the Diner is an index of public opinion. I tell em maybe lay off the chicken fried steaks and the four egg omelette a couple times a week, put that money in the stock market and you’d be pretty much on the road to a health care plan. Hazy Jake says, ‘Are you kidding me? You think I could save enough money that way to pay for even a sprained finger much less cancer?’ He’s got a point, of course, but I was mostly thinking about avoiding that next French fry heart attack. Then again, the stress of playing the stock market might be even worse….
Hits: 24