People who write, legislate and complain about health care have pretty obviously never been sick, had a bad cold or, well, been anywhere.

"You can keep your doctor," Pres. Obama says.

Hell, I'd like to SEE my doctor. You know who I see when I "go to the doctor?"

I see a physician's assistant. I'm sure the physician's assistant is a great fellow with whom to have a beer, probably plays a great game of squash, maybe even makes a lovely bearnaise sauce, but the guy's no doctor. The guy doesn't even claim to be a doctor, yet he's the one who gropes and peers at my sagging middle-aged private parts whenever I have to "see the doctor."

When the people in charge of the health care debate start jackassing about "your doctor," I laugh because, as an insured (yet fairly broke) consumer of the American health care system, I see my doctor about as often as I see a unicorn.

When I was in the hospital for knee surgery, I saw "my" doctor twice and I was unconscious on one of those occasions. I saw the janitor who emptied my wastebasket more than I saw my doctor, and, this being America, the janitor spoke better English than my doctor.

That hospital was more committed to making sure that my wife didn't smoke on the property than they were to getting a doctor into my room every day.

I did sometimes see a hospitalist. A hospitalist is a doctor they pay to see you so your real doctor doesn't have to bother. When my 85-year-old mother was in the hospital for a couple of months, the thing I learned first was that the old lady wasn't gonna see her doctor on a Saturday. Sundays weren't good, either. Even the hospitalist went back into his hole on weekends.

Death panels? The clowns screaming about death panels haven't ever been out of the house. We have death panels NOW. They're called insurance companies, and their motto is, "If you ain't got the dough, it's time for you to go."

I want health care to be administered through unions, and I want all the workers in this country to belong to a union. This makes me a communist, just like your dad who fought in World War II, came home, got a job in an auto plant and joined the UAW.

We're probably not going to get that kind of universal health care because the rich people think it's bad for them, I mean bad for us.

But I don't just want affordable health care. I want to see a doctor, any time I want. I don't want to see some imitation doctor with a junior college degree who took the job so he could be close to the drug cabinet.

We have it all wrong in this country. Doctors work for you. Insurance companies work for you. You pay them, so you give the orders, not the other way around. You pay them well, too, so they oughta kiss your ass for the money, like you have to do for your crummy little $300-a-week paycheck.

If affordable care pays for a system that treats the consumers like an annoyance, like the drooling grunters of a lower species, then it isn't affordable and it isn't care.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Marc Munroe Dion's books, "Between Wealth an Welfare" and "Mill River Smoke" are available for Kindle and Nook at Amazon.com.