March 18 2006

Well gang, this week we’re going to take a look at Health Care.
Let’s start with the Drug Industry. On TV, the drug companies tell us about a great new drug that will,oh let’s say, cure your sinus problems.
Except, that you may experience:
Excruciating head aches,
Partial blindness,
Heart arythmia,
Bleeding from the eyes,
Abdominal cramps,
An uncontrollable urge to evacuate your bowels,
And in some cases, death.
But with the exception of the occasional death, you sure as hell will breath better. So ask your Doctor if the stuff is right for you. Now, your doctor is the guy who jumps in his car and drives to your house at four o’clock in the morning when your four year old daughter has a temperature of one hundred four degrees.
No, that isn’t going to happen. You’re going to call an ambulance. And if you think that cabs are expensive, you better think again.
And when you get to the hospital, it might be one of a couple hundred that are Managed by the same management company, whose job it is to "first do no harm" and then make a profit.
And everything is ala cart. It starts with the aspirin, and goes on up to cat scans and ultrasound. And all the high dollar equipment along with it’s technicians operate on a billable hours system just like the lawyers do.
A couple of days in a hospital, and there goes a college education for one of your kids.
It’s getting to the point where members of our club go to a hospital for a simple gun shot wound or a common case of alcohol poisoning, and they wind up bankrupt, if they don’t have insurance. And there are lots of folks who can’t afford health insurance.
The health industry, as it is called these days, is just one of the things that Kinky Friedman is going to have to look at after we elect him governor.
The cost of beer is getting pretty high too, don’t you think?

Till next week
Helga Biermeister
Secretary