The Gift Horse

We have probably all heard the saying, "Do not look a gift horse in the mouth".

Well, around 1991, Anne was taking riding lessons from the daughter (Amy) in a family we knew. Anne grew attached to Pepper, the old horse Amy had that she rode on. Anne was told one day that they would like to give Pepper to Anne as Amy got a new, younger horse. Yes, a gift horse, literally. She was so excited and as you can imagine, it was too hard to say "no thanks", and we became the proud owners of a 27 year old horse.

Not everyone, including us, had a place to keep a horse. So, the gifters made us another offer that we could not refuse. They would board our horse for us. It started out costing $100 per month for hay and boarding. We also bought a saddle from them, which also stayed at their barn. In case this is not all coming across clearly, all of a sudden we bought their saddle and received their horse and began paying them a monthly fee for them to keep the horse they always had at their own property. It was also my responsibility to tend to shoeing the horse and to pay any vet bills.

For them, it worked out great, they still had everything they had before with one difference; I was now paying them $100 every month and covering some of the work and other bills.

We ended up having the horse for around three years with the last portion of the time being a trade for a place to board Pepper in exchange for us feeding some horses for the property owner.

Our gift horse probably ended up costing us around $3,000.

I can laugh about it now...

America appears to be on the receiving end of a "gift horse" in the near future. We all need to step back, reconsider the consequences and unintended consequences of socialized health care. Do not be too quick to think that all of a sudden you will get free health care. What will be the cost to you of this? Nothing from the government is free and with no strings attached!

The health care plan, being proposed, does not have coverage of the "uninsured" as one of the main goals. This plan is designed to eliminate competition, gain a monopoly of the health care system by the government, increase taxes on the achievers, put more of the public's money in the hands of the government, and basically set the government up to dictate and control most every aspect of our lives. Those are the intended consequences. Some unintended consequences will be a lower quality of health care, fewer doctors who make less money, longer waits for medical appointments and procedures, and less choice by the patient.

There are exceptions to every rule. I believe that this time, we need to not only check out the horse's mouth, we need a through inspection - the shoulder length glove kind.