Woe is me.

I've never looked forward to November 5th more. Will this election just be over? Though I'm not undecided about my choice of candidates, I can't get excited about any of them. For me, November 4th will be a "lesser of two evils" decision for me. Oh, so sad.
That being said, I have a few thoughts on the issue of health care. I know it's a mess. Unfortunately, coming up with a decent solution is not easy and I certainly haven't given it enough thought to propose anything solvent. What I do know, however, is that I dislike the idea of funding anyone else's medical care, particularly those with preventable conditions, and those whose costs could have been shouldered had they purchased their own health insurance. I know, I know, we're already doing that. It's in the form of higher insurance premiums, employer cutbacks to insurance benefits, taxes that fund Medicaid and other health-related programs... but is more government subsidization for health care the answer? I'm not convinced. My reasoning? Most government-subsidized programs encourage irresponsibility. When people know they can get something for nothing, most will go for it. It's simply human nature. Even otherwise hard-working people will take advantage of freebies when they are made available to them. I see it all the time. I don't blame them, I blame the system for providing incentives that encourage people to look to the government first, instead of relying upon our own enterprise or our families in times of need.
Allow me to illustrate. Less than a year after Tim and I got married, we decided that it was time to "stop preventing" pregnancy, as we put it. Though we had no idea how long it would take us to conceive, we purchased supplemental insurance and added it to the catastrophic policy we had acquired when we first married. Of course, our premiums went up, but we figured this would lower the cost of having a baby overall. Fellow students advocated applying for Medicaid, for which we would most certainly have qualified, being students and having very little income. "We didn't have to pay a cent!", they argued, which only solidified my opinion that our planning was the right decision. Though they might have had to delay starting a family without the help of Medicaid, we didn't have to, and we preferred it that way.
We were pregnant within two months. Tim started a summer internship in Boise, forcing me to quit my job and lose my benefits while I spent the summer completing school and working feverishly to find a new job in Utah in the fall. Call it luck, but the job I found completely paid for all costs associated with my pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum checkups for our first daughter. I consider it a blessing for having prepared adequately to shoulder the financial burden ourselves. I could be wrong.
Soon after having Anna, Tim graduated from college, without having acquired a full-time position. We relied upon his parents' good will and moved in with them while he searched for a long-term solution. Although we had no income stream for those few months, we had saved a bit of money during school and decided to buy health insurance until a new job could provide a better alternative. Times were uncertain for us, but with Tim's parents limiting our living expenses, we felt it important to insure our little family against any unforeseen problems.
Again, we were blessed. Tim found a great job working for Micron, making more money than our "poor student" brains could handle and we started our lives anew.
Now, I may be oversimplifying things by using a personal example as justification for my lack of support for subsidized health care. I think there is a place for government assistance. I don't pass judgment on my friends who have benefitted from such assistance, rather on the system that rewards people for not emphasizing personal responsibility first. Relying upon taxpayer money to pay medical bills (and other expenses) should be a last resort only. Many of us would be more inclined to prepare for a rainy day and turn to our family and friends if a faceless government did not make financial assistance such a viable option. The fact remains that someone is paying for these programs. And they don't have any choice in the matter, so they cannot benefit from the "charity" they dole out in the form of taxes. In a perfect world, we'd all take care of ourselves and each other and we'd reap the rewards of doing so. In an imperfect world, I don't have the answer. There must be some way we can help out our neighbors without discouraging accountability. I just don't know what it is.

P.S. I realize that I take risks at offending by expressing my position on certain issues. That's not my goal. But this is, after all, a blog. And I welcome comments to the contrary. As long as they're not too personal. Because I tried to make this as impersonal as possible.