I was made aware the other day of a web site set up to make people aware of the health care crisis.

Health care crisis? What health care crisis?

I guess while I’ve been asleep these last 25 years, we’ve ended up in a health care crisis. I guess that means that we don’t have any doctors and hospitals are going out of business.

Hmm, no, apparently it doesn’t. Apparently “health care crisis” doesn’t mean that health care is unavailable; it means that some people don’t have health insurance. So if there’s a crisis at all, isn’t it really a health insurance crisis, and not a health care crisis?

Even then, is it really a crisis? A few years ago when people started talking about socialized medicine, the number of uninsured that was talked about was 20 million. Now it’s 40 million. What happened?

I guess the experts (and presidential candidates) would have you believe that the cost of health care premiums is just too expensive for folks to afford. So they don’t have it. Then when they get sick, they don’t go to the doctor or hospital because those services are too expensive too. So then they get sick enough to have to go to the emergency room, where they’re treated and admitted.

If they can’t afford health insurance, they can’t afford the hospital bill, so chances are the hospital just writes the bill off and takes a loss as charity care. But that write off doesn’t just come out of nowhere. The money was spent to pay the doctors, nurses, janitors, and everyone else involved in that person’s care. So the hospital has to raise its rates on the people who do pay to keep from going out of business. That means insurance rates have to go up because those people who do pay are the ones who have insurance. That makes it harder to get insurance, and the cycle continues.

But is it really a crisis? Even assuming that 40 million uninsured number is accurate, don’t we really need to look at the reason they’re uninsured?

Speaking of reason, Reason.tv did just that. They have a plan to cut the number of uninsured in half. It’s really simple too and could go a long way in solving our “health care crisis”. What is it? Well, you should watch the video for the full details, but they sum it up in two words: Get some.

Yeah, that’s right. They suggest that those who are uninsured buy insurance. It’s really a simple solution. Instead of spending $1,200 a year on fancy clothes, spend it on health insurance. Take the $300 (or more) a year you spend on cigarettes and put it towards health insurance (that’s a twofer; by stopping smoking you reduce a lot of health risks). That big screen TV you wanted to buy? Put it off until you can really afford it and buy health insurance instead.

That still leaves us with 20 million uninsured. Chance are, most of those are eligible for some form of health insurance already; they either don’t know it or again, just don’t want it.

We’ve seen what the government’s economic bailout has done over the last few weeks. Do we really want them bailing out the health care industry?