Health Care: Televised Death Panels/Get Between Me and My Doctor!

HOWARD MEGDAL: Sarah Palin is to be congratulated for coming up with the idea of Death Panels. While many within her party are content to be the Party of No, and many on the Democratic side unclear about how to pay for health care, Palin’s revolutionary Death Panels are not only the most cost-effective way to pay for universal health care- they’re likely to be the television event of the century, every single week.

Now, much like President Obama, I don’t want to be locked into a final version of the Televised Death Panels to Pay for Health Care For All Act of 2009. There are those who believe the best way to maximize revenue will be a Pay-Per-View model.

This is a reasonable perspective. After all, the largest pay-per-view audience of all time, for an Oscar de la Hoya/Floyd Mayweather fight, was 2.4 million people. Keep in mind, de la Hoya and Mayweather aren’t even heavyweights. Furthermore, Death Panels won’t face the innumerable difficulties determining which of the belts truly represents the title of best boxer in a particular weight class. Only the government plan will be strategically executing people. (That’s the inherent advantage the government option has over private insurers, of course.)

2.4 million people buying Death Panels, weekly, at $99.95 a pop, would generate $239,880,000 per week for the government, or $12,473,760,000 per year. And obviously, that’s just a part of the revenue stream. That doesn’t include sponsorship opportunities, ticket sales, and best of all, the useless riffraff whose health care the government won’t have to pay for.

But the American Idol Death Panel model is also a potential cash cow for the American people. As of April 2006, a 30-second spot on American Idol’s finale went for $1.3 million. However, it is fair to say with the higher stakes, each American Idol Death Panels would have far more than the roughly 30 million viewers tuned into the Idol finale; after all, this could be a “finale” for lots of people. (This would make for intriguing ad copy to pop up during FOX NFL Sunday).

Figure conservatively that the government ownership of the airwaves can help to guarantee all networks will broadcast the Death Panels, with no repeats. (By making a government-created program, you’d also be saving the ludicrous sums of money paid to Simon Cowell.) A 30-second spot would conservatively be worth 20 times the spots on an idol finale; in other words, $26 million. With 15 minutes of advertising per hour, 30 minutes for a weekly two-hour show, American Idol Death Panels would be worth $1,560,000,000 per week, or $81,120,000,000. Again, with additional merchandising and toy rights, minus the health care costs of those executed by the Panel, and universal health care solves both the long-term medical/moral quandary faced by the country and the decade-long decline in NBC’s Must See TV Thursday lineup.

I guess it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Sarah Palin, a woman so committed to egalitarian redistribution of wealth that she sent every Alaskan $1,200 apiece from the Alaska oil revenue surplus, has solved the country’s most intractable policy problem with an innovative, Socialist-ideal solution. As we head into a 2012 election in which Palin, not Obama, will be able to run on bringing universal health care to all reasonably useful Americans, the biggest problem facing the country may well be: between the debates and the Death Panels, how will everything fit on my Tivo?

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: Remember the good old days, when you didn’t need a ‘referral’ to pick up a ‘prescription’ at the local CVS? When the cure for myriad ills was no further than a trip to the root cellar or the apothecary for some tooth powder or a jar of leeches? Trust me; those were the best of times. If anyone from that era were still alive today, we might learn a thing or two from them.

I’m telling you, the Doctorization of America has been our downfall. Seeking the advice of a trained medical professional for every minor illness and injury is the knee-jerk response of weak, liberal America, and it’s made us all soft. Sustain a head injury during football practice? Throat closing up? Shin bone poking through your jeans? All anyone can ever say is, “Go see a doctor.” How about “Be a man”? When I was eleven, I got a two-foot splinter in my thigh while climbing a tree. Did my parents take me in to see a pediatric specialist or a plastic surgeon? Hell no. They took me in to see a pair of fireplace tongs and a mug of Jack Daniels. Most kids today are allergic to wheat gluten and peanut butter. Back then if your kid was allergic to something, you made him eat a whole plate of it at dinner just for having a smart mouth and an oversensitive immune system. Now, we bake them special cakes and have “Nut-Free” school zones. I wish they’d make this country a nut-free zone. All you sissy whiners would have to leave town. Then the rest of us could pave the streets with peanut brittle and amber waves of wheat gluten.

Now your latest liberal wheeze is that “the healthcare system is broken” and “we need to find a way to ensure adequate medical coverage for more Americans at a reasonable price”. Hogwash. The healthcare system is broken because it exists! Our first mistake was when doctors stopped treating both horses AND people. Back in my day the surgeon would come around the farm once a year or so. (Imagine, a doctor making house calls!) He would treat your knock-kneed mule, deliver your baby, castrate your pig and charge you two dollars. There would be no mention of ‘co-payments’ or ‘pain management’. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

I long for the day when Americans wake up and realize that the power to cure themselves used to be in their own hands—and it can be again. Feeling depressed? Try a rest cure! Move to the countryside and take in the bracing sea air. Suffering from dropsy, the grippe, gout or leprosy? Walk it off. Or let some blood. Or try a travelling salesman’s tonic. Good for what ails you! If you’re lucky, it might have a little cocaine in it, for pep!

Just the simple fact that we’re arguing over things like ‘end of life care’ shows how far we’ve fallen. ‘End of life care’ used to mean closing a man’s eyes after his horse threw him off a bridge at the ripe old age of thirty-nine, or pulling a blanket up over a young woman who died in childbirth. Now we’re dealing with doddering seniors who are well into their nineties. In my day they would have died long ago—falling off a ladder while re-thatching their roofs or choking on a chicken bone they were too senile to strain out of the soup—and good riddance! It’s the end of your life—who cares? THAT should be the name of that policy.

Well, I’m sick of it. But unlike most of you, I’m treating my sickness myself—with a dose of cod liver oil washed down with a tall glass of Buck Up. Take two pills and shut the hell up in the morning, America.

Tags: allergies, apothecary, Barack Obama, Buck Up, cocaine, cost control, health care, Sarah Palin, wheat gluten

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.