It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with the uninsured, followed by three, four, or six more of them, all needing care and importuning every provider for treatment…
Maybe a government shutdown's just what we need. I mean, it won't stop PPACA from rolling out and over most of us. As the Associated Press reported today, turning the lights out in D.C. would leave much of the law on track, especially, next week's open enrollment of the public exchanges.
"Many of the core parts of the health care law are funded through mandatory appropriations and wouldn't be affected," Gary Cohen, the Health and Human Services Department official overseeing the health care rollout, told reporters this week, and as reported by AP.
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But, hey, maybe it'll finally be enough for voters to kick them all out in November. That alone would be worth the price of a shutdown.
Maybe employer-sponsored health care is already past its prime. It's been dying a slow death for more than a decade now, long before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act showed up – with the number of Americans enjoying employer-sponsored health care tumbling more than 10 percent in that span. It's too expensive for employers to keep funding something that's clearly not working, anyway – for either party. Besides, we're a dual-income nation now – at the very least – so employees need to start paying their own way.
Maybe we've just outgrown employee benefits, altogether. It's not like employers need to work that hard to draw (let alone keep) the best talent anymore, anyway. It's a buyer's market. In a job market that doesn't look nearly as good as the DOL numbers suggest, employers have their pick of the litter. How much longer do we have to pretend that talent is something we can't already find on every other resume these days? They should be grateful for a paycheck – forget about life insurance or disability. That's their problem.
While we're at it, maybe retirement's an antiquated notion, too. Given our advances in technology, and government care for everyone, there's no real reason we all shouldn't plug away until we slump over our desk with our last (or dying) breath. We owe it to our employers, anyway. It's time we stopped feeling as if somebody owes us some time off. That's what childhood is for.
In closing, "I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich…
The End."
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