A little over a week ago, a couple buddies and I braved a chilly January night to watch some rock bands play downtown. Rock & whiskey & beer are a nice combination, and after the last band finished around one in the morning, we shuffled out into the cold breezy air toward the car. About a block away from the car one of my friends (not driving) was feeling especially juiced. He walked behind the other two of us, jumped up in the air and grabbed us by the shoulders. Yanking us backward unexpectedly, we all fell down and laughed for a moment. The two who got pulled down stood back up, but the third, who did the yanking, did not. He had broken his leg.

It was the same break from when he was a kid, and I think I feel back partially on his leg. Within two minutes, a cop drove by. Seeing a guy down the ground, he stopped the car, and I told him my friend thought he broke his leg. Within five minutes, we had three cop cars, a fire truck & an ambulance (it was a slow chilly night). The EMT & fire department guys declared the leg broken and took him off to the hospital. The other two of us went home. A very strange end to a cold January night.

My friend ended up having surgery the next day after he sobered up, and he now has a titanium rod in his leg. He came home after two days in the hospital and has gone through the first dizzy week after surgery with his leg up much of the time. His leg looks like a Frankenstein monster with staples and scars. Even though the incident wasn't my fault, it's still disheartening to have bad things happen to people, especially when they are with you when it happens.

As a bit of luck, my broken leg friend was the only one of the three with health insurance as he works in the public school system. My other friend is unemployed, and I am an uncovered independent contractor. My friend opted for the good surgery as opposed to the big cast he had when he was a kid. Medical advances have been made for broken bones in the last twenty years. Hooray for medical advances! He will use up his two weeks of sick leave he had accrued, and although the school initially balked at any more time off, they changed their tune after he came in with his stapled & scarred leg.

So there you have it. That's what happened. But what does it mean?

Well, of course, there's the obvious lesson. Don't yank your friends backwards unexpectedly after drinking & rocking. Jeez, we're three crazy bachelors in our thirties and still doing this stuff. Then, there's the political hot button issue of health care. It really is a can of worms I don't like to open, but here we are. Grab a can opener.

First off, I think our current health care system is a racket. My friend looked at Blue Cross Health insurance prices for New Mexico, and this was the basic approximate break down: $60 a month covers you after a five grand deductible, $80 a month helps you after a twenty-five hundred dollar deductible, and $120 a month covers you after a five hundred dollar deductible. Huh. Wow. Well. You know, for being a guy who never sees a doctor, it's hard to contemplate a plan of any kind.

The 60 buck plan is just plain stupid. No one should pay over $700 a year for the privilege of paying up to five grand for medical care. Paying one grand so you can $2500 worth of medical bills is better but still doesn't seem worth it. A $500 deductible sounds about right, but I'm not willing to drop $1500 a year to attain it. What are the odds in Vegas these days? I make working class wages, and again, I haven't been to a doctor for anything other than a physical in almost two decades.

Maybe if I actually went to the doctor, I might think differently. My last surgery was to remove my wisdom teeth about five years ago. It cost a grand and wouldn't have been covered by health insurance anyway. You need dental insurance for that. Huh. Health insurance is different than dental insurance. Figures.

I try to be proactive about my health. I try to stay in decent physical shape with occasional running & stretching, I try to eat a better quality of food, and I try to stay away from the high hurdles these days (I broke my arm in 7th grade because of those beasts). I take vitamins, herbs and try to get enough sleep on as many days as I can. I have no health insurance, but I want to be healthy.

If I get hurt, I have to go to the public hospital, wait for half a lifetime to receive any treatment, and get the bare bones (hey, a pun!) treatment when it comes. All because I'm not kicking down to an insurance company. All because I'm not in on the racket. Jeez, how long has it been this way?

If you have a company covering some or all of your health coverage, that's cool, but there's still the rest of us. While many people don't care about the rest of us (what's up Republicans!), the rest of us don't really like (or can't afford) to pay for the privilege. So if we get hurt, we get punished. Here's hoping we stay healthy and no one unexpectedly yanks us from behind.

Am I for universal health care? Yes, I am. It's not a top priority for me, but it seems like everyone should be able to get decent emergency medical care without kicking down thousands of dollars to some massive insurance company who doesn't really care about you or your health.

Other than that, I'd rather not get too hung up on the subject and continue to live life in a healthy doctor-free way.

Chris Jungle has received more assurance than insurance.