Haterade, choke on it.

Yesterday a casual friend went off on me about the amount of his co-pay to Kaiser and his anger at the amount of money physicians make.

This disgusts me on so many levels.

1. It is your employer who picked your health care plan and the specifics of it. Kaiser did not set your co-pays and coverage levels. Be mad at your work, not at the entity that provided you a service. How much is your health worth? Don't moan to me about paying $600 for two advanced diagnostic tests!!

2. Health care is not a right. Get this through your freaking thick heads people! It is a privilage with responsibilities! If you want it for free and want "the rich" to pay for it, then you better be willing to pay the same amount of your income in taxes!! Oh what, now you scream and cry about losing 37% of your income right off the bat to your nanny-state, gimmie gimmie gimmie government? But you think it is OK for the "rich" to pay it, not you. Give me a break! This shows your hypocrisy and selfishness for what it truly is.

3. I have had hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills with no health insurance. when I made less than $20,000 a year and had a family to support. So don't tell me I don't understand the fear and trevails of being poor and uninsured!! That is crap. I have had a medical bankcruptcy. I have been divorced over the stresses of all of it. I have struggled to find work, feed a family on welfare, been uninsured and sick. And then been denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. All of it. Don't tell me I don't understand.

4. Your family doctor makes about $80-100,000 per year here in San Diego. That is not getting "rich" by any means and equals about $40 a hour if you assume they only work the average of 2,200 hours per year of a regular 40hr a week schedule. A journeyman Teamster in San Diego makes $28 per hour, or almost $60,000 in a year. Why is it that the people who complain about a doctors pay want to bring it down rather than lift everyone else's pay up? You make $10 a hour most likely because of your own choices in life, if my specialist with 10 more years of education than me makes $300,000 in a year and saves my life good for them! They deserve it.

5. What happened to the idea of success being rewarded? What happened to the idea that people are different? What happened to the idea of competition, with the attendant winners and thus losers? What happened to the idea of sacrifice?

If you're drinking the Haterade I hope you choke on it, frankly. Let the people who are doing real work in the right way move forward in life.