Going to the Dogs

Hours ago, Rush "Pass the illegal Oxycontin" Limbaugh was comparing the proposed national health care plan to health care for . . . (wait for it) . . . his friend's new puppy.  "There's no federal dog healthcare plan out there, and it's working just fine."  Mt. Rush explained that his friend had a variety of options for kenneling her pooch, at a varying level of service, and that's just like our current system and what's wrong with that, thank you very much!  The private sector offers a range of low-end to high-end health care options, as do dog boarding facilities.  Dog-owners are free to choose any level of care they desire.  The dogs are fine without nationalized dog "wellness" care.

"Whenever you hear -- whenever you hear a liberal promise government help that'll give you universal care, better care at lower cost, whenever you hear that, just sit back, and you know what your response ought to be? Arf, arf, arf -- bark like your dog does, because your dog has it without the government being involved," Limbaugh explained to his pack of rabid ditto-heads, who all panted eagerly in agreement.  Wow -- there's a slogan for our current system -- "American-style Health Care, it's Good Enough for Fido, it's Good Enough for All of Us!"

Rush is so far off in his own narcotic-fueled private Idaho he does not realize the difference between taking Bowser to the kennel and saying: "Would you please keep him overnight, give him a bath, and check his teeth . . . " and going to the doctor and saying: "Would you please look at this lump in my breast . . . " 

How much Lipitor must he take to counteract his all-Crisco diet?  But I digress . . .

Back in the real world where normal people (many of them pet owners) live and work, the cost of health care is likely to continue to escalate if something is not done to put on the brakes.  After all, insurance companies will naturally want to raise premiums and cut benefits and Big Pharma will continue to charge 100, 200, or 300 times the production cost for medicine that we need to survive.  It just follows the laws of physics -- if nothing stops them, there is no limit to their expansion.  The American Medical Association (AMA) needs to get with the program and realize this fact.

Obama spoke to the AMA today and reiterated his strong support for a single-payer plan:

If you don't like your health coverage or don't have any insurance, you will have a chance to take part in what we're calling a Health Insurance Exchange. ... And one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that [will] force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest . . .The public option is not your enemy, it is your friend, I believe.

The public option is the enemy to NeoCons and their friends in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries who like the system of have and have-nots, just so long as they're lucky enough to be at the top of the heap.  Meanwhile, millions of struggling, working-class families can only pray they don't get sick and miss work, or that their kids don't develop asthma and need pricey inhalers, or that they can take their heart medication every other day and won't have an attack.

And, that's sick.