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

[jkirk]

Palin's so-called death-clause was in the regular health 'reform'
bill, far as I know it is not in the Single Payer bill.
JK


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carefully considered clause in a complex bill  being withdrawn.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
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