That’s More Like It by Pat Conrad MD
And then…
Miss USA is getting her mind right, courtesy of the mob. After saying during her title-winning pageant answer that health care is a “privilege,” she was scorched for such a horrible slight to humankind. She has since clarified: “I am privileged to have health care and I do believe that it should be a right,” McCullough said on “Good Morning America,” adding, “I hope and pray moving forward that health care is a right for all worldwide.”
Now your talking girlfriend! That’s what Whoopi and Joy and the studio full of intellectuals at “The View” want to hear. Honestly, it wouldn’t hurt if you could go on “Live with Kelly and Ryan” and mention that you know, doctors do make an awful lot of money, and maybe they should…well, that comes with practice.
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We’ll know you have total commitment when Congress asks you to testify about the worsening health care crisis on which you will by then have been deemed an expert on the basis of your acceptably compassionate views.
The important thing is to never stop feeling, and never allow that rational nuclear chemistry-trained intellect of yours to interfere with giving the people, the important, beautiful people, what they need to hear. Don’t worry about Aetna bailing on ObamaCare, or the millions of families pushed to the margins because they voted for health care to be more of a right, or the 20 trillion debt and what a real economic collapse will look like when the hospitals can’t even get normal saline. Because if you do, that nasty little bug that Kahn put in your ear via Twitter will start chewing on your brain, and the screaming will return.
OFFS!!!!! It’s the Miss America pageant!!! Take a pill (hopefully a non-opiod generic)!! If SHE is the best target you can find for your Wrath, Khan, take a day off! call ur congressman! call ur senator! Call the new HHS sec’y!! write an op-ed to the NY Times! Let her stick to World Peace! she is in the PR business. Congrats, u scored a bullseye from the 5 ft. line. Surely there must have been someone more deserving and more qualified deserving of ur vitriole.
Health care is not a right. For some it is a privilege. But universal health care IS a desirable goal, albeit with many obstacles and the need for compromise. Reducing such a complex issue to sound bites at a beauty pageant is inane. This young woman needs to learn to think for herself. It will make her a better scientist.
It’s one of those arguments where you have to define terms and definitions before getting into it. To many, “health care is a right” has become a synonym for universal health coverage. The way things are looking that definition is going to persist since it’s widely used by politicians and the media.
It’s of course not a right in any kind of constitutional or traditional sense, and it sounds even stranger to those of us who provide health care. How can a service we provide be someone’s right? Obviously that would be an intrusion on our own rights.
But hey if you look in Webster’s the term “literally” has now come to also mean “virtually” through widespread misuse. “I could care less” has come to mean the same as “I couldn’t care less”. “Health care is a right” is going down the same path, adopting a commonly understood meaning that is technically incorrect.
‘When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.’
From 1984 by George Orwell