Mooing of a Judas Cow

Recently, Michael Moore’s free wheeling “Sickko” lit up movie theater screens across the nation, and John Edwards raised a few eyebrows when he campaigned on health care reform during the YouToo forum. Both men, championing the needy, originated from working class families: Moore from the Midwest rustbelt; Edwards from a southern family that struggled to make ends meet.
Both men are despised by big and small businesses alike: Moore, their chubby gadfly, for holding their feet to a celluloid fire; Edwards, a crusading lawyer, for holding them accountable in the only way possible in our capitalist system—big legal settlements.
Opponents of government run health care, those who have excellent health insurance, those with the wherewithal to find care anywhere, those who bought into the Judas Cow mooing that a government run health care system will reduce the quality of treatment and create waiting lines without end, vehemently oppose Moore and Edwards. They try to dismiss Michael Moore as a fat loony, exaggerating the dire consequence of the present overweight system. These detractors fail to mention that the current system is almost dead last among industrialized countries in caring for its citizens, close to the top in infant mortality and shorter life expectancy, because no prenatual or preventive care exists for the uninsured. The current system, totted as the best in the world, is at the top in money spent per citizen, even after throwing 46 million uninsured citizens into the pot, and at the bottom in accessibility.
Unlike Moore, with John Edwards, an ex U.S. Senator and Vice-presidential candidate, detractors run into difficulty trying to dismiss him as a bleeding heart, big spending liberal air head, so try to paint him as hypocrite, a man enjoying wealth while condemning the rich. John Edwards would make a fine president, if he can overcome the political slurs that big businesses’ contributions will put on the airwaves.
Both Moore and Edwards cried for a national health care plan, citing the European or Canadian model, lambasting health care insurance companies, HMOs, drug manufacturers, and indirectly hospitals and doctors, for their greedy, underhanded methods. Of course, the aforementioned opportunists--TICKS better describes them--are reaping disgusting profits, while denying medical coverage and pricing health insurance out of the reach of one-fifth of the population. A self serving label gets murky when applied to hospital executives and doctors who seemingly make no effort to keep medical costs down, whose benevolent output often does not justify their extravagant incomes.
Currently, no well meaning celebrity or crusading politician can dislodge these blood sucking ticks from the American public, in order to put in a single payer medical system; our only hope is that the ticks will get their fill and fall away. Unfortunately, for you and I, that is not going to happen. We might as well wish for politicians at all levels, in a comradely gesture, to give up the substantial health care coverage they enjoy while paying none of our back breaking cost. We might as well wish the drug companies would cease to fight like the two headed Dogs of Hell when Americans want to fill their prescriptions at a lower cost like they did until our government shut down the Canadian pipeline. An optimist, high on altruism, could wish that insurance companies and HMOs would stop bribing Congress to keep the status quo. While we are wishing into the wind, let us hope the federal authorities will stop harassing the medical marijuana providers.
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