[Buddha-l] Health care plans, as envisionsed by Buddhists

[Richard Hayes]

On Aug 15, 2009, at 8:35 AM, Joanna Kirkpatrick wrote:

> Thus have I heard (on NPR I think it was) that House Rep. Dennis
> Kucinich introduced an amendment to the current pending bill,
> ... that would make Single Payer an option for individual states ...

Well, I watch Fox News, because it is fair an balanced. A panel of  
pundits this morning was giving our favorite half-baked Alaskan, Sarah  
Palin, credit for the withdrawal of the clause in the pending bill  
that would have made it possible for patients to be reimbursed for  
consultations with their doctors over the point at which they would  
draw the line over further medical treatments. By calling these  
consultations "death panels" in a Facebook message and creating a huge  
firestorm with these two words, said the Fox pundits, Sarah was able  
to do what no one else, even those bulky men with shaved heads and  
swastika tattoos and placards saying "Kill the president," was able to  
do. So suddenly Fox News is applauding the powers not only of Sarah  
the Moosedresser, but also of Facebook. It turns out Facebook is an  
effective medium for political discourse (although it pales in  
comparison with Twitter). Apparently "effective political discourse"  
means finding a two-word phrase that can eventually result in a  
carefully considered clause in a complex bill  being withdrawn. (This  
raises the interesting political question: is "bullshit" one word or  
two? But I digress.) So now, instead of a doctor and her patient  
sitting down together and deciding when the patient would like to stop  
prolonging unnecessarily life with treatments, an insurance company  
employee can make the decision for the patient by pointing out that  
the insurance company will not pay for the treatments anyway, because  
the patient is alive, and life is a preexisting condition for  
requiring medical care.

> In the current climate of temporizing with the loud but lame
> opposition (why I have no idea--makes no sense at all), however,
> I wonder how long this amendment will survive.

Given that Dennis Kucinich's amendment is not Buddha-vacana, I think  
we'll have to rule that Kucinich is not a Buddhist at all. As much as  
I admire the man and his political views, it is my duty to point out  
that he is in error when he claims that he is a Buddhist. It is time  
to pull the plug on his amendment so it can die a natural death.  
(Incidentally, for what it's worth, dying of arsenic poisoning and  
being eaten alive by sharks are both natural deaths.)

Richard, amateur inquisitor