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First, let me admit that I don't know anything about health care beyond the basics of pill swallowing, X-acto knife self-surgery and not getting blood on my wife's carpet.

I tell you this so you'll understand why what you're about to read makes sense only to me and a few others who think like me. And by that I mean Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R+++++-Utah.

Currently, my health care needs are met by the benefits that come with my job at the newspaper. These are modest benefits intended to supplement the cost of keeping me mostly alive.

For example, let's say I was badly gored by a javelina on Temple Square during General Conference. Yes, I know that javelinas have not been seen on Temple Square since 1997, but this is just for the sake of argument.

For treatment of my wounds, I would first pay the annual $1.5 million deductible on my policy, after which the insurance would kick in and cover the remaining $11.27, or what it would take to tip the person who later pushes me from the hospital to the curb in a wheelchair.

Sounds complicated, I know, but this is more or less the insurance plan enjoyed by most Americans today.

Now that Congress has gotten involved — again — in coming up with affordable care for all Americans, things may get a lot worse. In fact, they are already getting worse.

Chaffetz recently suggested that a way for Americans to fund their health care is through personal sacrifice.

"And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on that," he said, "maybe they should invest in their own health care."

Sacrifice is what the congressman is talking about here. You want health care? You have to find a way to afford it. You're in luck, because I have a health care plan that can help with that.

Under KFC, or Kirby's Fixit Care, we would ensure affordable health care by helping you make the right choice.

With apologies to the congressman, we're not talking about cellphones either. Anyone who's ever been hospitalized knows you can't get a Band-Aid and two Tylenol there for what an iPhone costs.

What if the sacrifice required a person to choose between a college degree and the removal of a brain tumor? Why should anyone expect to live in an actual house that he or she loves and wants in order to afford chemotherapy?

Obviously, something has to go. Sacrifices must be made. KFC will take care of that by making the decisions for you. Under KFC, we will cut health care costs the way they did in the old days. First, by abandoning the elderly and other no longer useful people to the elements.

Calm down. We're talking about the benefit of the whole, people. If grandma is no longer productive, or has become a real drain on the family budget, just drive her out into the desert and leave her. She won't complain about it for longer than two or three days at the most. I promise.

Mental health issues used to be handled in a more cost effective way. Instead of therapy and medications, the afflicted were once deemed demonically possessed and burned or buried alive. Makes sense. Wood and dirt cost less than hospitalization and meds.

If babies were born with severe defects (or with just the wrong sex), some cultures left them where the surf would carry them out to sea. Problem solved without a tax hike. You could even argue that the surf was in God's hands.

Why spend thousands of dollars trying to save a gangrenous leg when a doctor (vet, butcher, or, hell, even Sonny and I) could saw it off for less? Your life would be saved for the price of that leg you just loved and wanted.

I don't expect everyone to agree with KFC. But I am getting on in years. I have my desert survival kit ready, just in case.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley