Mad Atoms

My grade school friends and I spent many a bus ride playing Mad Libs.  Because I want to share my favorite childhood game, and also because I am lazy, I gave sections of President Obama’s recent Congressional Address on healthcare to a group of local third graders in Mad Libs form. Here’s the goofy fun they came up with after filling in the blanks…

Madame Scary Face, Vice President Loud Mouth, jackasses of Congress, and the American people: Tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is a huge pain in my ass - and that is the issue of health care.  Everyone understands the extraordinary shitstorm placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one STD or extreme kitesurfing accident away from bankruptcy.  

One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn't reported a hangnail that he didn't even know about. Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of The Mondays.

There are commies on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a hockey-based system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private polar bear market and have the government provide maple syrup for everyone.

On the right, there are callous millionaires who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave poor people to perform triple bypasses on their own. Well the time for bitching is over. The time for bullshit has passed. 

Here are the details that every American needs to get through their thick skulls about this plan: Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me fucking say this again:  nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.  

Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you birth control because of a pre-existing ugliness. As soon as I wiggle my nose like in Bewitched, it will be against the law for insurance companies to laugh at you when you get sick or hide all their medicine when you need it most. 

If you get shitcanned or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a pyramid scheme, you will be able to get coverage.

We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange - a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will do a bunch of stuff nobody really understands.

I realize that many old people have shit their pants with fear about reform. Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bullshit claims spread by Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly whose only agenda is to sell ad space at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by scumbag cable talk show hosts, but scumbag politicians, that we plan to set up panels of Cajun chefs with the power to charbroil senior citizens.

My health care proposal has also been attacked by paranoid hillbillies who oppose reform as a "government takeover" of the entire hemisphere.  So let me set the record straight. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is double coupon days and Lincoln’s Birthday Blowout sales. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by greedy companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by squirrels.  I will not stand by while right-wingers use scare tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.

If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will bitch slap you. And I will not accept sitting around with our thumbs up our asses as a solution. Not this time. Not now. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God insure the United States of America.