all the single ladies

So here’s the story, a kid goes to school with a cheese sandwich, the happy toddler starts to unwrap his delicious, two servings of dairy in each slice, meal, when the lunch police spot the contraband item, and take it away stating that it wasn’t “healthy enough.” What? Cheese not healthy enough? Maybe I’ve been listening to too much of that big dairy propaganda, but I thought cheese was rich in calcium, improved bone health, and something about antioxidants or freeing your radicals; and you know what, that’s not the point.

All I’m saying, when I went to school, I was lucky to have a cheese sandwich, normally I got a glass of red flavored kool-aid and a note from my mom saying that if I wasn’t such a little shit, she might love me enough to make me lunch. You know what, I made do with what I had, I would steal ketchup packets, put ketchup on my note, and eat it, while softly sobbing to myself alone in the corner.

You know what, if it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for my kids. I dare the school to step in and tell me that my kid’s lunch isn’t healthy enough, that the green spots on the bread mean it’s too old. You know what, you said you wanted green leafy vegetables, I gave you green spots, that’s like freakin’ penicillin or something.

All I’m saying if you don’t fight for your rights, you’ll loose them. Today, it’s a cheese sandwich, tomorrow they’ll have your kids eating locally grown organic tofu squares and pledging allegiance to a photo of Che Guevara. I’m so inspired that I wrote this poem…

“THEY CAME FIRST for the cheese sandwich,
and I didn’t speak up because I’m lactose intolerant.

THEN THEY CAME for the fries,
and I didn’t speak up because my doctor told me my triglyceride levels were higher than Amy Winehouse when she “fall down go boom.”

THEN THEY CAME for the white bread,
and I didn’t speak up because I really need to increase my fiber intake, I have a family history of colon cancer.

THEN THEY CAME for the red meat,
and by that time no one was left to speak up, because the whole nation had turned into granola eating yuppies.

THEN THEY FORCED us all into Obama’s socialist deathcamps where we all were all forced to have abortions and while reciting the Koran, and we all realized that Palin was right, and that somehow made it worse.”

I work at a hospital, so I get to hear people’s opinions on healthcare reform everyday. I watch the news, I read the articles, I’ve even skimmed some of the proposed legislation. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert, but I would say I’m about as qualified to have an opinion as anyone else; by which I mean, not qualified at all. That’s why I don’t write about this kind of thing, because everyone has diarrhea of the mouth, talking crap that they don’t understand at rapid speed and the last thing I want to do is add noise and confusion to the noise and confusion.

Let’s face it, the guy who wrote the book on the current democratic party strategy was a felon, and he wrote the book while in prison for bank-fraud. I don’t give a shit. As far as I’m concerned, he’s no more or less of a crook than anyone else in Washington, he just got caught. The interesting thing, all these people who have added and subtracted their parts to this bill, none of them are healthcare providers. We don’t have doctors writing this thing, in fact, we have lobbyists writing this thing, lobbyists for big insurances companies and pharmaceutical companies. Do we not see the conflict of interest here? Who is least qualified write this bill? Who has a vested interest in seeing that this bill ends up being nothing but a huge money funnel?

People are fucking stupid, the whole reason we needed this bill is because insurance companies suck, but right now, it looks likes this bill is going to make health insurance a mandatory legal requirement, with no public alternative for the insurance companies to compete with. What the hell is that? That’s like saying; “We’ve noticed that some people are injured by our sandpaper toilet tissue, so we’ve decided that all toilet paper should be made of sandpaper.”

This bill is going to be beyond worthless. What’s wrong with medical care in America? Three things,

1. Big pharmaceutical companies screwing the sick with 1000% profit margins,
2. Insurance companies fucking the consumer by dropping / denying coverage for anyone who actually gets sick,
3. Lawyers suing the shit out of anything that moves, driving up the cost of medical care and the cost of liability insurance.

This bill caters to all three of these groups, and does nothing for the doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers trying to save your ass.

Tort reform? Oh hell no, that would make too much sense. No one has the balls, no one wants to piss off the lawyers, they might get sued.

That’s the way it always works, that’s the way every piece of legislation always turns out, it might start out as a good idea, but every special interest group with money to throw at corrupt leaders gets their fingers in the pie. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Think about it, in America, we get screwed on almost everything. We pay too much for cellphone service (and yet, our speeds and coverage are spotty at best), we pay too much for Internet (and yet, we are pretty slow compared to other nations), we pay too much for TV (because there is no option for TV over Internet, and the cable/phone companies that provide our Internet like it that way), we pay too much for healthcare (more than twice as much as any other nation), we pay too much for education (but yet, we aren’t among the top 10 nations in education.)

This is why we can’t have nice things, because we turn everything into a fight between liberals and conservatives, but never address the real issue, that none of these people are qualified to write fortune cookies, much-less important legislation that impacts people’s lives, and they end up bowing to the wishes of special interest groups. This is why we can’t have nice things.