Free health care? Afraid not
Ken Odor

May 13, 2008

A trip to the vet can be worse than a heart attack, it seems.

Or it might give you one after you get the bill.

With good health insurance, a human being may get off by paying just a small fraction of the total cost of a serious medical procedure, whereas when Rover or Kitty Kat gets sick it’s cash on the barrel head.

I base this observation on personal experience, both from paying the bills for my own health care, and having taken animals to the emergency vet several times (not here in Mechanicsville, I might add).

Of course you don’t really get away with not paying the bill for your heart attack, knee surgery, facelift or whatever. You just pay for it indirectly, through deductions from your paycheck and (hopefully) a donation from your employer for health insurance.

Then, after what seems like a never-ending flurry of forms, write -offs, statements and the like, you end of picking up the tab for what’s left.

But with Rover or Kitty Kat, cold cash or good credit is the ticket.

Now I’m glad good care is available for pets and other animals, don’t get me wrong. Just this past week, while on vacation, I had to avail myself of it for one of our two dogs, now on the mend, I’m happy to report.

But seeing as how the mutt is 13 years old, I’m wondering if the largish bill is worth it.

Sounds right cold, I know.

Like most folks, we love our pets, but let’s face it, they’re not people.

The whole experience made me think about the current debate on health care and the upcoming presidential elections.

One Democratic candidate promises government regulated universal health care for all. The other promises expanded, but not mandatory government regulated health care.

The Republican nominee proposes a more complex free-market approach to the problem, which seems to turn some folks off precisely because it isn’t so simple and requires some thinking. Just like it did when we decided how much we were willing to fork over for last week’s pet health care emergency.

But at least one thing was clear during our doggie crisis, and that was who was going to pay.

We were picking up the tab, no one else.

Nevertheless the idea seems to persist that there should be a way to provide health care that doesn’t have to be paid for.

Maybe so, but only if you are a dog.

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