[319] in Humor
HUMOR: Dave - Getting Serious About Health Care
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon Jun 13 16:16:15 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 94 16:12:33 -0400
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Cc:
Getting Serious About Health Care
by Dave Barry
6/12/94
> Today I want to bring you up-to-date on national health
>care. I happen to know quite a bit about this because I had lunch
>recently with Hillary Rodham Clinton, although she was probably
>unaware of this fact, because the room also contained several
>thousand newspaper executives belonging to the Newspaper
>Association of America (motto: "Keeping You Accurately
>Informebkljsdfxc"). It was one of those mass banquet luncheons
>where squadrons of waiters come swooping out of the kitchen
>carrying trays stacked high with plates protected by steel covers,
>which they whisk off at your table to reveal, to your astonishment
>and delight: chicken.
> The reason you always get chicken at these affairs is the
>Federal Interstate Chicken Transport System (FICTS), which was
>built during the Eisenhower administration to ensure that the
>nation would still be able to hold banquet luncheons after a
>nuclear war. All major hotels are connected via a vast underground
>network of pneumatic tubes to huge chicken factories in Delaware
>and Arkansas, where thousands of chicken parts per second
>(c.p.p.s.) are fed into the tubes under extremely high pressure.
>These parts sometimes travel thousands of miles before blasting
>out into hotel kitchens all over the nation, where workers
>frantically convert them into banquet meals to make room for new
>incoming chicken, which arrives constantly. (There is no way to
>stop it; this is a federal program.) Each year hundreds of kitchen
>workers are injured by chicken breasts traveling at upward of 400
>miles per hour. This is yet another reason why we need to be
>concerned about health care.
> So I was so eager to hear Mrs. Clinton's speech before the
>American Newspaper Association luncheon. It was great. She kept
>the crowd in stitches with a series of hilarious health-care
>jokes, such as the one about the guy who goes to see the doctor
>because he keeps finding turtles in his undershorts.
> No, I am kidding. Mrs. Clinton did not tell jokes. I have
>heard funeral speeches with a higher humor content. Mrs. Clinton
>is VERY serious about health care. She knows TONS of facts about
>it. I can tell she's the kind of person who, in sixth grade, had
>her Science Fair project done early, and it featured elaborate,
>neatly lettered color diagrams and a meticulously executed
>experiment involving test tubes and petri dishes, clearly
>demonstrating some complex scientific thing involving enzymes;
>whereas people like me showed up with last-minute projects
>featuring Dixie cups and a hastily scribbled cardboard sign with a
>title like "THREE KINDS OF DIRT."
> So I tried to pay close attention as Mrs. Clinton
>discussed the administration's health-care plan. I would say she's
>in favor of it. I'm afraid I can't offer much more detail, because
>health care is one of those issues -- another one is the bond
>market -- that my brain refuses to think about.
> "PAY ATTENTION!" I'd tell my brain. "The First Lady is
>explaining health care!" But my brain would drift off, pursuing
>its own interests, trying to remember the words to the Beach Boys'
>1963 song, "Our Car Club," which never gets played on the radio,
>and for good reason. Mrs. Clinton would be talking about the
>administrative expenses of Medicare, and my brain would be
>singing:
> "We'll have the roughest and the toughest initiation we
>can find ..."
> Then Mrs. Clinton would be talking about the inequities of
>drug pricing, and my brain would be singing:
> "And if you wanna be a member, we'll really put you
>through the grind!"
> It's a good thing I'm not in charge of national health
>care. I can't understand my own medical bills. Last spring my son
>suffered some injuries requiring medical treatment, and ever since
>I've been receiving incomprehensible bills from dozens of random
>medical computers. I'm pretty sure that I'm now paying for medical
>care given to people injured in the Hindenburg disaster. There's
>no way to tell, because the bills all look like this:
> "With reference to the above referenced account, your 73
>percent deductible differential has not been satisfied with
>respect to your accrual parameter, and therefore you are obligated
>to remit $357.16 no make that $521.67 here are some more random
>amounts $756.12, $726.56 and $3,928,958.12 bear in mind that we
>would enjoy nothing more than seeing your pale skinny body in
>prison."
> This is a true story: A while back, out of the blue, I
>started receiving threatening letters from a collection agency
>representing a hospital, demanding $101.76. So I sent the agency a
>check. Last week, on the SAME DAY, I received (a) a letter from
>the collection agency returning my check, with a note stating that
>I did not owe the money; and (b) a NEW threatening letter from the
>same agency, demanding $101.76. I'm thinking that the only way out
>of this might be the Federal Witness Protection Program.
> Of course I'm sure medical care will become much simpler
>and more efficient once it's being handled by the federal
>government (motto: "We Are Not Authorized To Tell You Our
>Motto"). I'm hoping that Mrs. Clinton and the Congress work out
>some kind of plan soon, and I'm hoping that it covers routine
>doctor visits. Because I need to see somebody about these turtles.
>
>(C) 1994 THE MIAMI HERALD
>DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
