Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.  The point of my last post, Mr. Crank (if that is your real name), involved the healthcare debate being hijacked by the propaganda arts, the Goebbels Peanut Gallery, if you will.  Those town hall paranoids were stoked by the “Fox Transmission”. Using fear in such a way has disturbing ramifications.  NPR just did a nice piece on this, but I never said there was nothing to fear (that was FDR).  Point being, this tactic is effective regardless of the issues being debated.  So for the healthcare debate, we double the number of those ‘real concerned Americans’ invading our town halls.  But sorry to break this to you, Cranko, our healthcare system is changing at light speed and not for the better. Your view of it is a rosy snapshot taken some years ago through a disposable camera now floating in someone’s unattended beer.  And I was clearly not championing Obamacare in my last post.  I stated that our current system ‘sucks ass’ and Obamacare is likely to ‘suck balls.’  What part of ‘sucks balls’ has you baffled? 

I am championing neither side, as usual.  But let’s say a phenomenal new healthcare system is developed for half the cost of your current policy (just hypothetically).  It could easily be derailed by something akin to repeatedly shouting death panels, over and over again.  I don’t want to play Sun City.  This tactic is working far too well.  Politicizing global warming is just as wrong as politicizing healthcare reform.  Using fear and lies to derail whatever threatens super capitalism brings us to a frightening juncture in U.S. history, kind of like the season finale of The Bachelor.  For a Dr. Seuss moment: fear tactics are more fearful than another healthcare option, I fear.  

As for healthcare, I understand the disadvantages of both sides.  You, sadly, are still way too enamored with one side of this prearranged lose-lose scenario.  I know why Obamacare would suck balls.  But, since you went there anyway, let me splain why your side of the current healthcare debate sucks ass.  If you’re loaded, you are correct; this country has the best healthcare available in the world, but for the other 97 percent of this country, not so much.  And that disparity is only growing.  Less and less people can take advantage of this increasingly expensive system.  Every day doctors and behavioral health providers are moving toward accepting only private pay, because they refuse to play this asinine claims-game any longer.  Claims are denied routinely, often for no reason, well, for one reason: no insurance companies can get those cool ice sculptures for their luncheons. 

Government red tape?  Dude, I have to fill out the equivalent to War and Peace to direct someone safely to our restrooms.  We had an hour long training the other day on how to fill out a taxi voucher.  No shit.  Punch line: it should have been two hours!  I still don’t understand it!

I give this system a D and it was a C just a few short years ago.  When something is broken, why not listen, not vote for, just listen to someone’s suggestion on how to fix it?  Obamacare may well add more layers of bureaucracy, but topping this shit pile would be challenging even for this banana republic.  Besides, another layer and it might collapse outright and we can start over.  And maybe, just maybe, there are contingencies in place so the public option wouldn’t completely monopolize healthcare, but no one asked.  Everything I heard came from the euthanize Obama squad (EOS), aka, the Fox News All-Stars.  My last health plan, Last Priority Health, was charging my boss six hundred dollars a month to insure my family.  Each year the cost went up, like 10-15%, and so did my copays.  For six hundred dollars a month there should be no copays and I should get a free blowjob every time I pick up my meds.  “Step up to the window, please” would have a whole new meaning.  

Here’s an example from my town.  I know more about the behavioral health side of life, and, yes, it was completely destroyed by Hillarycare.  Everyday I feel like Deniro in that movie Brazil.  The tsunami of paperwork is always looming over me.  But, for the purposes of this debate, there are nine psychiatrists currently in my area.  Eight work in my agency and the other guy is a private practitioner downtown.  My company is no longer taking private insurance and, much like my last place of employment, is no longer interested in playing the claim-game.  Now we only take AHCCCS (AZ state funds).  So homeless people still have their choice of eight psychiatrists and I, steadily employed, have one choice in fifty miles (Dr. Killpatient).  And, whereas state coverage is limitless, I have X amount of sessions and then I start paying in full.  Oh, that’s after I meet my deductible, which goes up year-after-year faster than a meth head at a Jolt Cola convention.  Each year more and more money comes out of my pay to cover my Incredible Shrinking Plan (1957, Grant Williams).

Doctors, meanwhile, don’t actually have time to meet with you anymore.  They are filling out paperwork and trying to not get sued, which is much easier to do if they can stay the hell away from you.  Thus, you get five minutes a year with your doc, and he is typing the whole time and probably thinking about baseball.  Crankly, your “great system” can’t get much worse, and if Obamacare is worse, great, at least I’ll never have to see clients anymore.  I can just Sumo Wrestle my papyrus pile back in my office.

As for your comment on Native Americans, I have authorized helicopters to take folks from their reservations to their doctor appointments.  No shit.  Oh, that’s only state funds again.  My insurance, for someone stupid enough to work for a living, won’t cover my trip from the lobby to the examination room. Native Americans truly have choice in Arizona and we flip the bill to get them wherever they need to go (at least on the behavioral health side).  I’m not saying this is right or wrong, I’m just sayin’.

Oh, and, by the way: NO, I am not expecting Obama to restore the rule of law.  That ship left port circa 2004.  I am only saying this: Crank, because NO LEADER IN KNOWN HISTORY EVER HAS.  Well, I suppose you could make the argument that we’re overdue.  That was the whole point back in 1776, but good luck with that.  Our term limits are our only hope, so I suggested Obama clean up your guy’s mess on the way out.  That’s why are founding fathers encouraged a revolution if anyone fucked with the Bill of Rights. 

I’ll try to come up with seven more ways to explain this to you, for your next seven posts.  How do you say ‘absolute power’ in Klingon anyway?  And, NO, I don’t care about spending at this point.  This is the part just before bankruptcy when you buy a Porsche with the last of your credit and go on a crack and hooker spree.  If you recall, I was for neither Bush’s nor Obama’s bailouts, but I also understand that capitalism ended last November, or at least capitalism as we know it.  This recovery is a farce.  While you had your Bush pom-poms in full bling, I was protesting, you know, back when something could have been done?  You probably backed Bush’s first bailout, as per “The Transmission”.  So blaming the guy who has been right all along is hardly a great tactic. But keep saying it over and over again and at least the Foxers will believe you.  I have backed NONE of this bullshit, so you lecturing me on being fiscally conservative is your best joke yet. 

Review time, kids: both sides are typically wrong these days.  Democrats (libertards) wrong on most things, Republican (patriotards/The Crank) wrong on most things, and a Third Way (Zano) right on most things.  You’ve been programmed to attack what you think is the only other side of the argument, binary boy, but what you’re failing to realize is that none of your bullets are finding the mark. 

Hat-tip on the discovery of the Sarah Palinlovian reaction. This is a very real psychological phenomenon.  I believe it stems from the realization that the Palin voter, by and large, best identifies this massive group of folks on the very edge of reason. I can hear you already, Crank.  Yes, there are tons of crazies on the left as well.  Maybe the Perez Hilton 2012 campaign will smoke out the shadow-side of green but, for now, the Palin poll will have to do.  You see there are plenty of crazies on both sides of the aisle these days, which is why I like to think I’m not even in the theater anymore (but in a good way).  Or maybe integralists are on the balcony, only this integralist is not beyond sneaking in a bag of rotten vegetables (just in case).

The fear generated around this last debate was created for one purpose: to derail the debate itself.  I don’t care if you’re from ACORN, or you’re a Swiftboater, you’re dead wrong.  The ends do not justify the means.  Right now there seem to be no good answers, but your unswerving ability to defend the sociopaths on the right is disturbing, but it does jive with the “Fox Transmission”.

Imagine that.

But, on a lighter note, a big hat-tip for your last posts, Crank.  Funny shit.  I actually have a related Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Blucher story (which is much more important than fixing healthcare).  When I was Eurailing across Europe some years back, I ended up on a tour of some château in Bruges, Belgium.  As it turns out, our stuffy tour guide was Flemish and anytime someone said Bruges (which the French pronounce Brouge), he, being all Flemishly nationalistic, would correct them with the proper Flemish pronunciation (Brook-uh).  So every time someone said Brouge, he would say Brook-uh.

And, of course, I would say “NEeHeheheeehee”.

So the Americans on the tour thought I was hysterical and everyone else just thought I was an obnoxious asshole.  As it turns out, they were both right.