SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Based on the audience reaction to the discussion of treating America’s ill and uninsured, which took place during Monday’s Tea Party sponsored debate, letting poor people die on the streets could be the solution to cutting taxes and lowering the deficit. Host Wolf Blitzer posed a hypothetical question to Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a doctor, asking how society should respond to a healthy 30-year-old man who decides against buying health insurance but then requires intensive care for six months after falling into a coma. As a Libertarian, Paul is a staunch limited-government advocate. He said the treatment of this patient should not be the government’s burden to bear alone: “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks.” But the rabid applause from the audience drowned Paul out before he could clarify his statement. Blitzer also interrupted and asked, “Are you saying that society should just let him die?” Several loud cheers of “yeah!” erupted from the crowd, followed by laughter. Most of the candidates later admitted to being taken aback by the response, but they defended the crowd’s “passionate” sentiments. On Tuesday, San Narciso’s own F. Chester Greene, a new dark horse candidate entering the race, explained, “I understand what they were really saying. That the best way to cut taxes is to cut out those drains on the system: in this case, the poor, uninsured and terminally ill. Especially immigrants. I see it as an opportunity to get creative with health care options. Unlike my peers, I have a plan.”
Candidates Consider Alternatives to “Dying on the Street Like a Dog” Proposal
Ron Paul openly disagreed with the audience’s calls to allow the uninsured to die on the streets like dogs, saying that legalizing alternative health care options could solve the problem. He argued that skyrocketing medical costs are the result of individuals refusing to take personal responsibility for their health care.
“We’re the party of life,” echoed Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose record breaking 234 executions supports this stance. “We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives. Here in Texas, we protect the lives of our citizens by making sure that anyone who comes here and causes trouble for them gets put down promptly, with extreme prejudice. We kill immigrants, we kill mentally disabled people who have no control over their compulsions, and our anti-abortion policies are the most life saving in the nation. No little girl can even consider an abortion without undergoing a rigorous and psychologically devastating class on what awaits them in Hell for murdering their precious little miracles. Plus, every little girl in the state is mandatorily vaccinated against STDs by Merck, so even if they’re raped, there ain’t no worries about carrying a diseased baby to term. So, again, no need for abortions.”
Also chiming in with Ron Paul was Herman Cain, who said that he agreed with his colleague about individuals needing to take more responsibility for their own salubrity, which would dramatically drive down health care costs.
“It’s about preventative maintenance,” Cain said. “The reason costs are so high is because people go to the hospital after it’s too late. If they took better care of themselves along the way, we wouldn’t have to perform so many expensive procedures. Eating right, that’s part of the problem. People think they need to eat unhealthy food because it’s cheap. Well, Godfather’s Pizza is also cheap, but it’s good for you. Got tomatoes, wheat, dairy, meat and probably some fruits and vegetables, depending on what you order. That’s nearly all the food groups for one low, low price.”
San Narciso Conservative Enters Fray with Bold New Ideas on Reform
Although the mainstream GOP candidates spent Tuesday afternoon trying to walk the fine line between supporting blood-thirsty Tea Party voters and proposing more humane options for taking care of uninsured Americans, local White House hopeful F. Chester Greene decided to “go big or go home.”
“Based on the reports issued today by the Census Bureau, poverty in America is at an all time high,” said Greene. “Forty-six million. It’s not likely to drop anytime soon. A lot of it’s taxes. Businesses can’t afford to hand out jobs with the soaring costs of doing business and meeting the, shall we say, Teutonic obligations of the president’s socialized health care mandates.”
Greene, like Perry and Cain, concurred with Ron Paul about preventing government from meddling in the lives and personal health of free Americans, but he also pointed out the logical fallacy of Paul’s argument.
“When push came to shove, Ron Paul fell down. First he said that uninsured people should take their own risks. But who comes and cleans their carcasses from the road, I wonder? You? Me? Yoyodyne or some other big corporation? No, the government. Well, we can’t afford to create a whole new federal department responsible for cleaning dead hobos off the street. That’s a tax hike, friends. But then Ron Paul also said he never turned anyone away from the hospital when he was a doctor, partly because the local churches helped fund the costs. That’s a fine, Christian thing to do, isn’t it? But our churches can’t survive this economic crisis any better than their flocks. Money’s tight. People can’t tithe. That’s why President Obama needs to put more capital into faith-based initiatives. That would do more for health reform than Obamacare.”
Greene also asserted that health care must remain a pay-to-play model. “If you’re dying of lung cancer, that means you had enough money to buy cigarettes. You wasted that money destroying your health instead of preserving it. Why should tax payers bail you out? No, we need to structure health care like credit cards. I propose a health card with fixed limits, based on credit worthiness. I’ve already discussed this concept with Discover Bank, a major lending institution. The bank is fully behind the idea. We’re tentatively branding the cards “Recover.” As your debt score improves, your available credit ceiling rises. If people have emergencies, they can put the cost of medical services on their Recover cards and pay them off at nominal interest rates over time. This process ensures that Americans receive medical attention while the care providers continue to make money off the interest. This keeps hospitals operating.”
For immigrants and homeless people without the means to obtain Recover cards, Greene proposed a radical system of triage.
“Triage is a common practice for doctors. By prioritizing the seriousness and urgency of a patient’s condition, doctors determine who to treat first. We can do the same.”
In Greene’s model, groups of chronically ill Americans without health insurance are sent into an amphitheater or coliseum of sorts, which is broadcast as a reality television program. There, they plead their cases to a governing delegation of health care company CEOs who judge the event. Contestants battle their diseases, obstacles, combat-based challenges, other contestants and even wild animals to prove that they are the most worthy to receive medical treatment. At the end of the gladiatorial competition, the panel of CEOs will give those contestants still standing a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote, ultimately deciding their fate.
“The PR is fantastic,” Greene effused. “For the revenue these companies can generate from advertisers, the cost of treating the winning contestants is easily justifiable. And, nothing comes out of the pockets of tax payers.”
(c) 2011. All stories are works of satire and parody. See disclaimers.