In the “you have *got* to be kidding me” category this morning…

Subcategory: Paternalistic Bullshit, we have this wonderful fellow the NYT found to tell us about how the uninsured are different from you and me.  Because the way that people who haven’t had insurance tend to go all crazy and actually, you know, go to the doctor once they have it can’t possibly be because if you’re not so much affording the insurance, you’re probably not so much affording the doctor (never mind the fear of discovering the feared pre-existing condition...all incentives are aligned against seeing a doc when you’re uninsured lest you become uninsurable, never mind the bills you can’t pay).  No, it’s because you’re stupid:

The uninsured, he said, were very different from the insured people in the study. They had much less education, their incomes were lower, they were more likely to smoke and to be depressed.

The researchers accounted for differences with statistical adjustment. But, Dr. McClellan said, statistics can never completely solve the problem of large differences between groups.

For example, he said, the characteristics of the uninsured are also correlated with caring more about the present than the future. A trait like that, he added, “may lead to the need for more medical services down the road.”

That does not mean that the uninsured do not need health insurance, he said, but it does raise the question of what is the most effective way to provide it. For example, instead of just paying for doctor visits and leaving it to patients to find doctors and seek care, it may be better to also provide case managers who will contact patients and prompt them to take medications like drugs for high blood pressure or to report on their blood sugar levels if they have diabetes.

That’s right.  If you’ve been uninsured, you’re too irresponsible to be allowed to see a doctor in peace.  You need someone to harass you day and night about what an unhealthy asshole you are.

I am so very fucking tired of people being so very fucking sure that financial problems are 100 percent generated by stupidity.  And I am so very fucking tired of people assuming that health problems are generated 100 percent by stupidity.  In fact, right now I think I’m 100 percent tired of people.  No.  Make that 99.44 percent tired of people.  (Ha!) Because there are a few people left, hiding somewhere in America, who just want to be left alone *and* are willing to extend the same courtesy to the rest of us.  Them, I’m OK with.  The rest of you can go to hell.

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