Small Business Clowns Don’t Get Health Insurance So We’re Asked to Bail ’em Out
When small business clowns don’t get health insurance and get sick, the community is asked to bail them out. It is happening all over the U.S.
A great example is Broadway the Clown of Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Broadway The Clown is a fixture at Bowling Green fund-raising activities. He often gets paid, sometimes he doesn’t. Broadway is actually Nick Wilkins, the owner of Balloon-a-Gram. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Instead of buying health insurance because it is too expensive, he is taking a hand-out from do-gooders. Many of these same do-gooders are very vocal against providing affordable to health care to those with pre-existing conditions. They are against Obamacare.
While Wilkins gets back in the swing of things, he has many medical bills he’s trying to pay. Having had neck and back surgery in the past, Wilkins was denied insurance, and when he found an insurance company that would accept him, the price was too high for him to afford.
So instead of demanding that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans support Obamacare, the local do-gooders are playing golf.
Wilkins is the beneficiary of the sixth annual Day for Danny Golf Benefit, which will be Monday at Indian Hills Country Club.
“Broadway the Clown is always a vital part of any event we have in this community,” said Bobby Hilliard, one of the organizers of the event. “He’s a staple here. We thought it would be great to sponsor him.”
I don’t know Broadway the Clown. I’m sure he’s a nice guy. When he was healthy, he made the decision not to buy health insurance. He said he couldn’t afford it. But I know a lot of other small business people that can’t afford health insurance. Hell, I know a lot of bigger business people that can’t afford health insurance.
I’m tired of the local newspaper making it front page news when somebody who is uninsured or underinsured needs a community benefit to pay their medical bills. What about the thousands of other people who don’t have the community connections or appealing sob story? What about the schlubs who are working three jobs just trying to survive? What happens to those medical bills? Who pays them?
You know who! Clowns like me through higher insurance premiums and higher taxes.
I don’t mind paying higher taxes – if everyone else does too. I’m ready to make sacrifices. I’m ready to pay insurance premiums – if everyone else does too.
The only answer is to force everyone to have insurance. Force those healthy people to buy insurance to pay for those unhealthy people’s care.
Everyone. Even small business clowns.
Sorry, I disagree. Forcing people to have health insurance is not the answer. Even WITH health insurance the cost is sometimes too much. Especially in this economy. How are the jobless/homeless expected to pay ANYTHING for insurance? For that matter how about a family with 2 kids barely able to make ends meet with what few bills they have already? Some of them can’t even afford to drive to work! Gas prices prohibit it.
Controlling the greedy “health care” system is the answer!
Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors and insurance companies are the real demons. Limit them and you have solved a huge part of the problem.
It ain’t a gonna happen though. Too much money lining the politicians pockets. Just my dos colones worth.
Of course you are right. This is too huge a problem for one solution. Tort reform is another part: limit the $$$ lawyers can collect from suing docs and pharma and that lowers costs, and on and on and on.
The bigger number of people that pay in… even if it’s a small amount will spread the risk among a larger pool. The healthy young person MUST be a part of the plan.
The point: a small businessman who can’t afford healthcare so he depends on the community to pay his bills is a sad state of affairs.
Many possible solutions to this problem. Firstly, our diets and lifestyles in America are terrible and conducive to disease. Naturalnews.com has all kinds of alternative and natural remedies which are cheap and focus on preventative measures; all that people are lacking is the knowledge and application of these.
Secondly, why is health care so costly? We need to look at the past where people didn’t have as much health care, let alone health insurance, and see what they would have done. I remember trying to get a band-aid for a cut I got while out exercising, from the school nurse. They wanted to also apply a bunch of antibiotic creme and so on – all I needed was a band-aid! And I didn’t even need that; really, I could have just held my cut together until the blood clotted. So, there is a great need for frugality. If healthcare were cheaper, then perhaps it would be more acceptable to just “pay-as-you-go” rather than get health insurance; you know for certain that more is charged for services than is strictly in accordance with frugal living.
Thirdly, we should perhaps acknowledge that we don’t have the resources to care for everyone and everything. If we can live without some kind of costly operation, we should consider it – again, look to what existed in the past. We should act in strict obedience to necessity in a situation and consider the utility of what we do and how we heal. We are actually causing more problems for ourselves by thinking that it’s desirable to live forever; I am not there yet, but I hope to die of some natural cause in my older age, if I make it there, rather than try to fight it and use costly measures. As is consistent with my Catholic upbringing, I acknowledge that there are ordinary measures to extend one’s life and extra-ordinary ones; let us only use the ordinary ones.
Fourthly, why shouldn’t good health be costly? In some sense we need to re-prioritize our lives and, instead of gambling and wasting away our health in dissipative monetary or physical activities, let’s get people to invest in better health and use the time they have in ways that contribute to health rather than disturbance!
Fifthly, we should adopt free and effective ways to take care of our health. Rather than be on high blood pressure pills, we can reduce our weight and do deep breathing meditation. These things DO work wonders; in fact, the pharmaceuticals are highly inferior in many regards in many cases. So it is important that we understand all the costs of health and to choose the effective alternatives where possible.