November 12, 2009 - Leading
the Herd
I had the opportunity to attend the
monthly luncheon for seniors today at my church. My experience with
this type of demographic group is that in similar gatherings of elderly
Americans conversations inevitably turn to all things medical.
In no particular order the topics are usually declining health and costs
of health care.
Today one man sitting at my table (accompanied
by his wife) joined a discourse about rising costs of drugs and supplemental
insurance and then chose to speak out with regard to health care insurance
reform legislation. He emphatically stated out of the blue, “Oh well
as bad as it is I sure don’t want the government taking over health insurance!”
I was flabbergasted and immediately
asked if he and his wife were Medicare beneficiaries, and he replied that
indeed both he and his wife were enrolled with Medicare. I reminded
him that Medicare was government run and if he didn't like it he should
withdraw from coverage otherwise he was admitting to hypocrisy, stupidity
or both. He replied that he would be stupid to do that!
I responded by boldly saying it was not any more stupid than saying he
didn't want government run health care.
To turn the conversation away from his
demonstrated idiocy he began referring to continuing litany of untruths
such as “long waits” associated with Canadian single payer insurance coverage
and as exists in Great Britain and other EU countries. For
each assertion I challenged him to cite any actual known experiences he
might have that would support his contention. Of course he had none!
In every instance when the fallacy of
his other contentions was shown he quickly jumped to a fresh allegation
regarding the flaws in reform legislation. As each of those contrivances
were just as summarily thrust aside, you could easily smell his defeat.
In short I was certain that all of his
argumentation was easily derived from the many unsubstantiated claims promulgated
by at least the three wolves in sheep's clothing (“the Drugster”; “the
Beckster”; and “the O’Really”) as seen at the head of the herd above.
What is so pathetic is that the naïve
sheep in the herd spend no time looking for the legitimacy of the allegations
Instead they blindly follow these and other starboard based pundits and
buy in to the falseness masquerading as truth. I asked this guy if
he ever spent any time on his computer investigating the facts through
any form of a web search and of course he had not.
Our misfortune as a nation is that there
are far too many just like “Mr. No Government Health care”.
On any day portions of our citizenry are responding to the clarion call
of misguided media types that sound convincing as they hype a largely unchallenged
negative political view.
Scores of hapless sheep are being led
by these and other “Neocons” down a path to continued abuses by the big
insurance companies. That means that you and I dear reader, along
with other more erudite persons simply must push back at every opportunity.
Those of us that have a greater sense of the truth are obliged to challenge
their flawed viewpoint and attempt to steer them toward the truth.
