Opossum flu, the Media, and a Healthcare Bill

Once upon a time there was leadership of a country that was trying to shove a health care bill down its citizens' throats. The leadership called a meeting together with their media friends and discussed how this failing bill might come to fruition.

After the meeting was called to order, one of the leaders pointed out that the flaw in the bill was that the everyday person was not feeling the affects of having no health care insurance. After opening it up to the floor, one of the reporters stood and suggested that fear is what moves the hearts of men so maybe there was something that could be done along that line. "Yes", states the leader, "that would work. How do you propose we instill fear in the hearts of these citizens?" The reporter, very proud to be speaking directly to the leader of his great nation states, "Well, there are rumors that the opossum flu might become a pandemic...let's make it one. Let's insight panic so that all the citizens will line up for hours at clinics, doctors' offices, emergency rooms, and health departments for vaccinations and treatment. We in the media can hit hard how horrible this virus is and make a point of strongly covering stories involving people dying from the virus. This will make people who wouldn't otherwise go to their physician or emergency room panic and rush in for treatment." The leader, considering this idea then questions, "But how will that accomplish what we are hoping to accomplish?" The reporter, filled with pride at this point states, "Because the average person stays home when sick until they are better. By pushing them out and into the crowded emergency rooms and doctors offices and making them wait for hours, fear will be instilled in them, bringing home to them how inadequate our health care system is. After waiting for hours in an emergency room with hundreds of others waiting for treatment, they will be forced to say, 'there must be a better way'." Smiling the leader states, "Yes that will work, that might just work."

Somewhere in Newark, Ohio a mother of three, frightened when her youngest sneezes and coughs, scoops her children up and takes them to the local emergency room. She sits in fear with the other masked patients hoping and praying that her child doesn't have the opossum flu. As she waits she sees another story on the waiting room television of someone who has died from this dreadful virus. (Of course the media fails to mention the multi-system illness that plagued the patient prior to contracting the virus). As she waits in fear for three hours to be seen she thinks to herself, "Something needs to be done about health care...this is crazy."

And as she thinks this the leader of the country smiles, knowing that the mission has been accomplished and that health care reform is brought to the forefront of yet another citizen's mind. The end.