How Medical Insurance Makes People Sicker

(Status update: Since Tuesday, my income went up by $20.10, total for the week so far $33.86, and a local lurker drove past and stole all the raspberries s/he could reach from the unpaved road. I am not making this up. Such wonderful neighbors I have these days. Attention ratbags: if you want more and better raspberries than you stole from me, go to https://www.starkbros.com , which is the online branch of the place from which my father bought the ancestors of my raspberry brambles. The first few generations will bear bigger, juicier fruit on less hardy plants; over time the brambles will evolve back toward their wild prototype. Maintaining raspberries is such fun--retraining the briars that always want to grow across the path, cleaning out the smilax and blackberries and wild roses, contending with stingingworms while picking the berries...If you place $10 in a clean dry screw-top jar in the hedge, below the brambles you attacked, I'll pray that God will choose a gentle way to discipline whatever you have in the way of a soul.)

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

This snippet came in the e-mail from some wonderful young people at West Virginia University. (They have some sort of journalism course where they put together a local e-newspaper for school credit, and they share lots of wonderful things. Warmly recommended to local readers, although they're not Virginians and use "Appalachia" to mean all the Mountain States when, as we know, it means one specific town.) I called this bit of news...predicted it twenty years ago, actually, though the brand "Priscilla King" was "born" in 2006. Here's the official documentation that it's happening:

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After analyzing data from nearly 6,000 women in Appalachian Ohio, researchers found that alcohol misuse was on the rise. The data, provided by the Community Awareness, Resources, and Education (CARE) Project, showed that women living in Appalachia are more likely to report health problems related to alcohol abuse than women who live in urban areas, and they are less likely to seek help due to the stigma surrounding seeking help for substance abuse, lack of anonymity and scarce access to health care providers. (via News-Medical.net)
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You too can read the e-newspaper; visit 100daysinappalachia.com to sign up.

What else can we expect if Obamacare is replaced with anything insurance-based? More transmission, and less treatment, for other conditions as well as alcohol and drug-related diseases...

* sexually transmitted diseases

* vermin-transmitted diseases (lice, bedbugs, potentially human fleas)

* infectious or contagious diseases that may be chronic or asymptomatic for the "immune carrier," such as tuberculosis, where the carrier is able to work as long as others don't realize s/he is dangerous to them

There are medical as well as moral and economic reasons why the replacement for Obamacare needs to be cash-based, not insurance-based.

Should this post have an Amazon book link? Of course it should. Here's the latest information on all the diseases that an insurance-based medical care system is likely to promote...two big fat volumes, known to trigger hypochondria and aggravate indigestion and nightmares in anyone who's not tough enough to become a doctor. (Yes, I read this kind of thing; my body's not up to working with sick people every day, but my mind can handle it.)