by Rich Herschlag

I want to keep the health insurance I have—which is no health insurance. I was dropped when I had a heart attack. My insurance company called it a preexisting condition, and they were right. Heart attacks have been around a very long time. The important thing is that I treasure my insurance company’s free market right to maximize profits at all moral and ethical costs. I would willingly die defending that right. And now, finally, I may get that chance.

I try not to worry about my needless impending death. I don’t lose sleep over the pointless suffering between now and then, and I refuse to get down about leaving my wife and children behind without any health care of their own. What I do worry about is the prospect of private insurance juggernauts experiencing a ten to fifteen percent decline in annual gross revenue due to the availability of a public option. Now that’s scary.

I don’t have a doctor. But if I did, I wouldn’t want some bureaucrat coming between me and him. Like Sarah Palin, I am against Obama’s death panels. I prefer Liberty Mutual’s death panels, because at least they’re American. I am not impressed with claims of socialized medicine working in countries like Britain, France, and Canada. It’s far better to die of septic shock in a free country than to receive antibiotics in a single-payer one. Single-payer systems, as we know, just aren’t fair. Why should one person have to pay for everyone else? What if that person runs out of money?

I’ve always relished getting the insurance statement envelope in the mail following a surgical procedure. It makes me fee a little like a nominated actor on Oscar night. I never know if I’m going to be reimbursed 80 percent, 50 percent, or not at all. I firmly believe the suspense has kept me going all these years. But under a single-payer or a public option, let’s face it—the thrill will be gone.

Bleeding heart liberal commie pinko anti-American leftist homosexual traitors contend there are 47 million uninsured people in this country. But the truth is, 46,999,996 of them are illegal immigrants and the other four are my family. Let’s get something straight, though—we don’t want a handout. We have a little thing called pride. I can proudly say I’ve been turned away by some of the biggest names in healthcare, from Aetna to AIG to CIGNA to United Health—a virtual Who’s Who of the insurance business.

I am not in the least offended that members of Congress receive superior healthcare provided entirely by the federal government. I recently spoke to my congressman regarding this issue, and he personally assured me that were I ever elected to the House or the Senate, the exact same health plan would be made available to me.

One day, should I miraculously live that long, I’ll be eligible for Medicare, and the government better keep their grubby hands off it. Back when our country was founded by a few brave men, many of them gave their lives for Medicare. If these same patriots were alive today, they would do what any patriot would do in the face of a government takeover of Medicare—show up at Obama rallies with loaded assault weapons.

Because of government interference in the natural order of things, bloodletting has become a lost art. Castor oil and cod liver oil for treatment of everything from a common cold to multiple bone fractures has become a thing of the past.

Amputations are way down, and that’s a problem because, as everyone knows, a severed limb cannot be reinfected. I am not troubled by life expectancy in the U.S. ranking 35th, a bit behind Bosnia and a hair ahead of Albania . Life expectancy is vastly overrated. Post-mortem relapses are increasingly rare.

I am dead set against government sponsored preventive care. Preventive care not only weakens our natural defenses against disease but also casts our government in the role of parent. My own parents had a different approach to medical concerns. When my right foot hurt, Dad would stomp on my left foot, and vice-versa. Mom said he picked this up while watching old episodes of The Three Stooges, proving once again that we can certainly learn a lot from our forefathers.

The fact is, the misguided outcry for a public option—or any sort of healthcare for that matter—represents a serious threat to intelligent design. Intelligent design is a constitutionally guaranteed right granted by our nation’s founders. Under intelligent design, we evolve into a superior civilization as the strong survive, the weak perish, and the really weak run Blackwater.

Government programs are doomed to failure. Aside from the GI Bill, Social Security, the FDA, the Hoover Dam, the Federal Reserve System, the FAA, the SEC, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the National Guard, and NASA, name one government program that works.

I believe the Earth was created in six days by an all-powerful benevolent God and that on the seventh day He created our current healthcare system in His own image. Tampering with the Lord’s healthcare system is heresy and will surely bring the wrath of nations down on this once great land. When that day comes, we owe it to ourselves to bleed to death and resist the evil temptation to show up at a free clinic.

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Rich Herschlag is the author of Before the Glory: 20 Baseball Heroes Talk About Growing Up and Turning Hard Times Into Home Runs (HCI, 2007). His other books include Lay Low and Don’t Make the Big Mistake (Simon & Schuster, 1997) and The Interceptor (Ballantine, 1998).