I want to scream and break the tv or tear up the newspaper every time I hear some right wing pundit or simpering politician (I’m looking at you, Paul Ryan) talk about the unaffordability of government healthcare (stuff like Medicare and Medicaid).

You see, when the government cuts back on healthcare spending, that money isn’t saved. It’s still spent on healthcare.

Let me try to explain this. Let’s say I make $500 a month and my wife makes $2000 a month. So we make, as a household, $2500 a month. We have a doctor’s bill this month of $200. I can pay it. She can pay it. We can split it up. It doesn’t matter. It has to be paid.

That’s healthcare. Unless we are prepared to let folks die… we, as a nation, are spending on healthcare. The $2500 is the money available, as it were. My $500 is the government’s income and my wife’s $2000 is the everyone else’s income. One way or another, that money is coming out of our national income.

But here’s the kicker.

I can negotiate with the doctor to pay 10% less. My wife cannot do that, because she doesn’t have the negotiating gene (not true in real life). So if I ask my wife to pay all or part, the total bill will be higher, because I can get the same healthcare for less money.

The government, by virtue of being a far larger player than any individual person, can negotiate with doctors, hospitals, and drug companies over what it will pay for things. As an individuals, we really can’t. So when that healthcare spending is pushed onto us as individuals, it is a guarantee that more money is spent on healthcare and less on everything else. These stupid plans put forward by mathematically challenged children like Paul Ryan will not save the nation any money. Like that household in the example, I can make my wife pay for more of the bill, but it’s all coming out of our household income, so the solution is not to argue over which half of the household pays the bill, but rather to look at how the household as a whole can save money. Paul Ryan and his crew want to push the bill onto us, saying, see, it will save money. Which is just stupid. It just means someone else pays. That someone is us. And we’ll pay more. Ugh.