Defanging the Health Care Crisis

Dear Barack,

It’s time we solved the health care crisis, and it is a crisis. Costs are spinning out of control and putting a downward pressure on the economy. Were it not for the backbreaking costs of medical insurance, General Motors would be a thriving concern. However, GM is but the tip of the iceberg.

The bottom line is that medical costs are bankrupting the country and, if allowed to continue unchecked, could have an adverse effect on our defense spending.

Of course, the knee-jerk response to this crisis is single-payer health coverage, i.e., socialized medicine, an idea as naive as it is impractical when our first priority is bailing out Wall Street.

No, Barack, it’s time to think the big thoughts and get right to the root of the problem. The reason medical expenses are so high is that there’s too goddamn much health care. Too many people are going to the doctor for too many numb-nutted reasons, like fevers, rashes, tumors, aches, chest pains and shortness of breath, fainting, dementia, bodily discharges, bloody stools, paralysis and collapse.

The solution to this problem is simple: we cut medical expenses by eliminating health care altogether. No more annual checkups or running to the doctor every time something twinges. We simply have to put an end to the whole concept of preventive medicine. People should be discouraged from going to the doctor unless they’re at death’s door.

It’s bold! It’s radical! But, by God, it will work.

Let’s pause for a moment and do a cost-benefit analysis of the early detection of cancer. Think, for a moment, of the financial and emotional burden that is set into motion if cancer is detected early.

What follows is years of expensive treatment as the patient suffers through surgeries, radiation treatments and repeated bouts of chemo. The emotional strain on the patient and his family is terrible. Is he cured? Will the tumor reappear? Will it spread? These are the questions that torment them. All the while, medical expenses mount and shove them closer and closer to the brink of bankruptcy.

How much easier it would be if the patient were diagnoses when he was terminal and there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done for him. Instead of trauma, the patient and his family would be bathed in the comfort of certain death.

The patient would croak, and the family would be left financially sound.
The bottom line is that an excess of health care generates too much pain, and America will be a happier society once we are rid of it. That way, our resources can be directed to where they are needed the most: Wall Street and the Pentagon.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones