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

[Richard Hayes]

On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:31 AM, Alberto Todeschini wrote:

> So you'll know that National Healthcare is a breeding ground for  
> terrorism?
>
> http://www.badscience.net/2009/08/national-healthcare-a-breeding-ground-for-terrorism/

Thanks for sharing that with us, Alberto. It's a pleasure to watch  
such a tightly reasoned presentation, with a total absence of formal  
or informal fallacies. It is surely one of the finest moments in Fox  
News's efforts to present us with fair and balanced commentary.

About thirty years ago, I was playing baseball in Toronto and got hit  
in the eye by a fast-moving ball (thrown at me by a student majoring  
in Islamic studies---my first experience with Muslim hostilities  
towards Buddhism). This was back in the days when eyeglasses were made  
of glass. No wimpy plastic lenses back then! Anyway, the baseball  
shattered the glass, and I wound up with several hundred slivers of  
glass in my eyeball. I was rushed to the nearest emergency room, where  
I spent about three hours in an operating room having glass pulled out  
of my eye. (I suppose it is my patriotic duty to report that I had to  
wait five days in the emergency room in this socialist hospital and  
witnessed the death by starvation of a dozen grandmothers who had  
suffered heart attacks several months earlier and were still waiting  
to be seen, but in fact I was seen immediately. On two other occasions  
when I was in a Canadian emergency room with an injury I was also seen  
immediately. The only time I have had to wait in an emergency room for  
several hours was in the United States, where I had to wait while the  
officials sorted out my health insurance and fussed over whether I had  
a proper referral.)

The surgeon who pulled the glass out of my eye in that socialistic  
Canadian hospital was a Sufi Muslim with an Arabic accent. As the Fox  
News piece you sent reveals, countries with government-run health-care  
systems have to import Muslim doctors, because Christian and Jewish  
doctors all move to America, where they can make more money in a free- 
enterprise system. And we mustn't forget that several terrorists have  
been Muslim medical doctors who spent all their spare time reading  
jihadist tracts on taxpayer money.

I never realized until I saw the video you alerted me to what a  
dangerous situation I was in, especially given that I told the surgeon  
that I was a Buddhist, albeit a fake one with no regard for Buddha- 
vacana. I consider myself damn lucky the Sufi doctor did not stick an  
ice pick in my eyeball and then blow up the operating theatre by  
detonating the explosive-filled vest he was no doubt wearing under his  
surgical gown.

Still two-eyed after all these years,
Richard