Jeff Goldblum (Michael): Amazing tradition. They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can’t come.
There are lots of reasons I read Hemlock every day. Now visiting the US, he’s penned another one:
Hemlocks assemble in the clan’s Appalachian residence. Matriarch Lucy is sadly no longer with us, but new arrivals have turned up since the last filial piety tour, one of whom needs baptizing – with the most inappropriate and least qualified godfather specially flown in all the way from Hong Kong.
Anointment of the cherub complete, and devout family members happy, the gathering proceeds with food, drink and talk of health care reform, which is emerging as the greatest threat to the liberty of the American people since King George III asked subjects wanting protection from French and Indians to cough up a few bucks for it. Put briefly… The US spends over four times as much of its GDP on health care as Singapore, yet ends up with worse life expectancy and infant mortality. The costs of health care are expanding far faster than the economy – even when the economy was growing – and are becoming a serious drag on competitiveness for companies and nation. The winners from this system are health insurers and providers of needless medical procedures. The declining proportion of people whose employers can provide good coverage have few complaints, but are too scared of exposure to health care costs to change jobs. Everyone else, including the taxpayer, loses. Cancer or a heart attack can wipe out many people’s life savings.
President Barack Obama’s proposed reforms will improve things for most people and make no real difference for those already well-covered – but will pull the plug on the tax-subsidized over-charging that makes certain vested interests rich and accounts for the far higher level of health care spending in the US. It is not surprising that the vested interests are fighting back. What is fascinating is the way opposition has broken out among swathes of the population who have everything to gain from the diversion of health funding from waste to more accessible coverage. The vested interests raised the alarm about ‘socialization’ and ‘rationing’ but might as well not have bothered. Magnificently bad losers among the Republican camp, still frothing at the mouth over the victory of the good-looking and smarter-than-they-are uppity Negro in November, have declared that Obama’s reforms will mean compulsory euthanasia for everyone’s grandmothers and the establishment of a Soviet state over the entire hemisphere. Next thing, hordes of impressionable folk who build replicas of Noah’s Ark on hillsides as a hobby turn up at Town Hall Meetings on health care with their guns, burning UN flags and denouncing Obama as a Godless baby-eating Nazi Commie.
Older Hemlocks, indulging in barbecued, freshly killed goat, conclude that with so many useful and gullible idiots supporting their cause, insurers and for-profit health care providers remain a good investment. Health insurers and providers of unnecessary medical procedures are to the US what the property cartel is to the Big Lychee – a parasite that costs the general populace wealth and quality of life. The difference is that Hong Kong’s dimmest and poorest wouldn’t take to the streets threatening to shoot the Chief Executive if the Government decided to reform the land and real estate system. As for the hysterical trailer-dwellers denouncing affordable health coverage, we can only look forward to their painful, lingering demise from a pre-existing condition with some amusement.