On "health reform"

A quick slippage can be traced from the 2008 US Presidential Election campaigns to now in the discourse on the allopathic healthcare system. At some point, any mention of the need for an "overhaul" became replaced by monotonous details of "reform." The metaphor of "revolution," on the other hand, barely got any play.

Soon after Obama's election, Gallup and other polls demonstrated that people were beginning to feel more comfortable about their ability to afford healthcare. The sense of corporal insecurity and dread of being abandoned in their senility was diminished by the simple fact that politicians were "finally taking healthcare reform seriously," meaning little more than that they were finally talking about it.

For some reason, interviewers and acquaintances think that I should have something particularly enlightening to say on the current debate. The people who are closest to me know that I am too intellectually pessimistic to respond with anything more than grumbles. Moreover, the people who are closest to me know that what is being touted as "reform," or even as "the public option," will do little to make easier our "bloody" struggles to ameliorate the gruesome realities faced by the indigent sick.

But my grumbling is just another shade of gray in the monochromatic swirl that is the debate on healthcare "reform."

A different, more radical pessimism is required, and for that purpose I will borrow from a friend:
"It's preposterous to think that someone should get paid to provide medical care -- 'Wait, you saved my life so you want me to pay you money???'"

Yeah, seriously: fuck you!