St. RiK: ObamaDontCare to Socialize The Blues

That screech you hear? It is not some 10-Percenter tooting his own political horn. It is a bona fide, if second-hand whistle-blower blowing on a grand scale. Presidential and Papal candidate St. RiK Santorum has taken up the banter that the Right-Right Reverend James Dobson waved at some lucky congregation recently.

Rev. Jimmy seems to have gotten a phone call from an undisclosed aide of Jesus warning of the impending Obama plan to nationalize an historic Capitalist business, the healthcare Blue Man Death & Denial Squads.

The Blue Man Death & Denial Squads, as everybody knows, are central to the business of tax-break subsidized, non-but-really-for-profit Blue Cross franchisees across America. Blue Cross may have trademarked the terms Blue Man and Death & Denial Squads, but they use the melancholy yet sympathetic sounding “the Blues” when handing down their sentences.

ObamaDontCare has found that spending money to actually treat pre-existing patients and old people with strokes sucks the big... a lot. President TB0's minions, therefor, devised a scheme to seize the entire The Blues structure. It will then force The Blues to review costs on Medicare and Medicaid patients to make damned sure that TB0 will not have to beg the X, Y and Z Generations and the 1% for more frakkin' cash for dubious life-savings. Assuming street-corpse removal costs do not increase too much, the Federal Deficit may once again plunge toward the trillion mark.

President TB0 has not responded to St. RiK or the Right-Right Rev. What, he'll admit more Socialism in an election year? Otherwise, he'd be stuck with a DENIAL. And how electable would that sound?

Still. It is coming. But before you get too upset with TB0's latest Marxist grab, figure this into the equation: The Blue Crosses would be left with no Blue Man Death & Denial Squads to dither about your mom's trephining or dad's stenting; they would simply reject all future insurance applications and pleas for treatment without opening an email or envelope; thus they would dramatically improve efficiency, reduce whimsy and drive non-profits ever higher.

Even Socialism has its Capitalist silver lining.

Care for Health or the Constitution. Pick Only One.

What's the legal difference between a rabbit and a Hare?  The rabbit goes into hiding but is not a Congressman embarrassing the whole state of Illinois.

Phil Hare is, for now, a Congressman from Illinois.  Phil doesn't care about the Constitution, which he thinks is the Declaration of Independence anyway.

To be fair (don't laugh), nobody can tell the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, except, maybe, that the latter has more catchy phrasing.  That's because Thomas Jefferson was in France applauding the guillotine during the drafting of the former.

And can anyone tell the difference between "former" and "latter"?

Phil probably can't, either, but he doesn't care.  He only health cares.  He couldn't care less about the Constitution.  He cares way more about people who die without health care than those who live without the Pursuit of Happiness (Oops!  The Declaration, again.)

Without being specific, Phil said he wants to make every person, probably including corporations, get health insurance by the end of the day.  Easter and the following Monday are really holidays, so they surely don't count.  Figure Tuesday.

Phil was baggered into making these comments by a Mr. Tea fan.  Phil did not have his Congressional Constitution For Dummies handy and who uses seven commas in a preamble these days?  Unfortunately, Phil didn't get any better when he had time to read the damn thing backwards and compare it to Jefferson's better quilled Declaration of Independence.

Everyone knows that it is the Constitutions Commerce Clause that gives the Feds the right to do pretty much whatever they want when money is involved.  And when is it not?

Under it, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 (just look at the commas!), Congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the States and with Indian tribes.  The latter should give Congress the right to get us in on all that gambling revenue the Indians think is all theirs (will they never learn?).  But it also has been held by the Supreme Court to give Congress the right, if not the brains, to meddle in just about anything.

Would Scaley, himself, even argue?  Much?  So, aside from him.

An example that comes first to mind:  You would think that your corner bar wouldn't involve commerce beyond the back alley which is regularly used in connection with the bar for related activities, which the bar owner has to clean up.  Historically, to, say, the 1990's, in most corner bars, you weren't welcome if you weren't "from here", which usually meant the Irish ward.  When the Constitution was written, taverns got both their corn products, beers and patrons locally.  Not now:  Patrons are encouraged by cities to come in from many places, from across State lines and from foreign countries, to get a Bud in your corner bar.  The Bud almost never comes from down the street from that corner, either, unless you are in St. Louis or Jacksonville.

In George Washington's day, health care was local, too.  Maybe, the leeches were imported, but they never traveled over state lines themselves.  Poking a hole in a malfunctioning skull or sawing off a limb with ugly freckles didn't require equipment from Germany.  Morphine hadn't been developed in--where else?--Germany by 1789.  Neither had the aspirin (Germany) or Tylenol (Germany again) that you get for $10 a pop at the hospital today.

Come on, Phil, it's the Commerce Clause.  Nothing in this country is local, not even the Mr. T fan club, whose members live to be on the very nationwide FOX Spews.  Interstate and international commerce!

What in your local hospital is made in your state. The CAT scan?  The hospital bed?  The static-free tile?  The executive jet for executive trips to satellite clinics in Italy?  Where did the very doctors come from?  Where did the nurses go, for that matter?  No self-respecting hospital uses in-state collection agencies to stress its patients into revenue-producing relapses.  Don't even mention the insurance companies.  One exception:  Blue Cross, which is franchised nationally, like McDonald's without the fries.

Okay.  Phil, you are now prepared to go out in public again.

Still, don't.

Idaho Secedes from Union

Not totally, but where it hurts.  Idaho loudly enacted a statute that ensures that its militia-crazed citizens will be forever free from Federal attempts to ram healthcare down their raw throats.  The Gem-State citizenry shall not be made to pay fines or suffer threats of penalties.

Wow.  TBO and his Near-Socialist faction in Congress are in for it now.  No point in passing what they, behind closed Democrat doors, call "The Limbaugh Memorial Costa Rican Healthcare Act."

Those folks in Idaho won't go for it and they have their whole big state behind them.  True, Idaho only has a million and a half people in it, but there may be twenty million guns, many from Memphis, Tennessee.  Those are no-nonsense people who named their State Trout the "Cutthroat".  And where your state has an aviary, Idaho has the World Center for Birds of Prey.

And Idaho-born Sarah Palin got some sort of degree there.

No.  Idaho.

Let those Democrats pass a hundred the Healthcare threats and mandates they want.  Idaho will remain a free state and maybe hoard its potatoes, trout and lentils, the production of which tops all other states.  TBO could send his troops to surround Idaho, if he ever gets them back from Muslim territory, but Idaho will eat damned well, thank you all very much.

When, if, they get sick, Idahoans can choose their own healthcare without bureaucratic intervention.  Militia medics are always around to treat their fellow Idahoans, even while holding off the Federal siege.  It may be rough, frontier medicine, but it will keep Idahoans free.

Sure it might hurt more than in Manhattan, but here, just bite down on this piece of rawhide.

And, one last thing, Mr. Hawaii, does your sissy, lei-about island paradise even have a State Raptor?

It's Healthcare Yet Again and It's Huge

I didn't bring it up, The Big O did.  He didn't say anything substantive about it, just that he hasn't given up on those two incompatible bills waiting in Congress for Big Brown to get seated and, then, to stop talking.  TBO and the Congressional bills will force Universal Healthcare Insurance Coverage by 2030 or a year after the melting of the Himalayan Glaciers, whichever is later.

Those bills, I believe, will require that you buy health insurance from Blue Cross or some other insurance company, unless you are a CEO, a union welder or a direct descendant of a Congressman.

The bills don't do any of the things that TBO had promised when he and that other guy really had to make serious promises, but the bills sound like they do.  One great thing, I believe both bills, allow only one precondition--honest, only one--insurance companies can use to bar you from getting that nice $600 a month policy.

One precondition:  Being born with Original Sin.

Sound tough?  Yeah, well, let 'em prove you were...

I'll be damned.  I just read both bills cover-to-cover and it looks like we have to prove we weren't.

So, if Congress' idea of Universal Healthcare won't cut it, what is TBO to do with all us uninsured and now pretty much uninsurable?

As usual, I think I have the answer.  Create a Healthcare Universal Group Endowment, an independent Federal Entity (a word we use when we don't know what something is), like the Post Office, but with no pretense of offering services.  HUGE would then hire all the uninsured to work for it for $100 a month, tax free.  Wait, don't scoff just yet.  Give them Senator-level health care insurance, too.  (Except illegals and their children, who probably make more than $100 dollars a month already.  The children, I mean.  They can still go to any nearby ER.)

One last thing:  You join up with HUGE or you go to jail in Kansas.

What would someone like me do at HUGE?  Wait on the beach by my cell phone in case I get a call ordering me into Public Service.  Whatever that is.  Oh, I forgot, being a Senator is Public Service.  I can do that and without a Blackberry playing K-Street stripper videos during TBO speeches.

I suppose I could negotiate with our local hospital or clinic for better prices for all us HUGE employees.  Or hammer the Medicine Shop up the street down to Walmart drug prices.  I'd do both for $100 nano-bucks (definition coming tomorrow)!

To be completely truthful (this once), I didn't come up with this alone.  A faithful reader of this blog suggested just moving everyone to Massachusetts and use their Commonwealth Operation Massachusetts Merciful Insurance Endowment universal healthcare system.  That is a great idea and COMMIE works great, only Boston is too expensive a place to live already. So I tweaked her modest idea a little into my HUGE concept.

It was pretty tough, actually.  I had to arbitrarily reverse the order of "Healthcare" and "Universal".  And what is an "Endowment"?

Still, HUGE goes COMMIE one better by using Federal Prison as encouragement to participate.  It is surely government at its best.  And, paraphrasing Mrs. TBO, For the first time, I am proud to be a soon-to-be-insured American.

Health Care Reform Reformed (or edited)

The Health Reform Plan is supposed to put into place, immediately, a high-risk pool for those, like me, with pre-existing conditions that no honest Capitalists would ever, ever insure. I don't blame them. In my Greed-is-Good-for-You-and-Me days, I wouldn't have insured any part of me either. Only a Socialist would even suggest something so potentially unprofitable.

My sincere hope is that Walmart will continue to expand its in-produce-aisle clinics. There you can at least be seen by a pleasant 80-year old greeter and get Aloe leaves for cuts and burns; cauterization by Cuisinart over-heating toaster ovens for amputations; and leeches for everything else. You do have to buy your own saw, but they are handy in the hardware section.

I can't blame Congress. Congressman and Senators don't pay for health care, it just shows up at the door as a newspaper used to. They probably figure that anyone who contributes to a campaign gets the same treatment.

When Walmart adds a $100 Thallium stress test, with a free balloon (as in angioplasty), I'll cheerfully put my gurney in that checkout line.