by Caleob Tomas King

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But why are we all one layoff away?
Why are we buying insurance from work?
And why are our premiums cut from our wage?
And run by our bosses, who seem to be jerks…

The reason we ask our employers to pay,
Instead of deciding, ourselves, what to buy,
Goes back to the (price controlled) World-War-Two days.
Where prices and wages were soaring sky high.

You can’t run a war with a high price for labor
That puts a big cramp into what you can buy.
So we capped the pay of ourselves and our neighbors –
An edict supplanting demand and supply

Shops couldn’t compete for the best and the brightest,
By paying the best just a little bit more,
But management said “well you know that I’ll bet”
“We could pay for their doctor, when they’re sick and sore”

This got round the law, just as quick as a wink
(the market finds ways ‘round each controlling attempt)
And your job and health insurance were linked -
Especially since it was all tax exempt!

Now when insurance companies start misbehavin
And take what the can (I guess they’ve read Hobbes)
People don’t call up their broker and change-it
To alter your health care, you’ll have to change jobs.

And without competition the market won’t work
A fact that I’m sure we all are aware
Choice turns to quality (it’s one of its perks)
Which makes me suspicious of one single payer

Whenever the government gives a command
It has consequences that no one can see.
Perhaps the one thing that we can understand,
The results would be different if people were free.

Cause if people would choose it, then why all the force
To get this new program its much needed funds?
When you look at it clearly, its seems that the source
Of all this compassion is millions of guns.