A reform on the U.S. McHealth system
December 2009 |
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After hours of research on the internet, I established that there is an awful lot of porn out there. After nearly going blind I eventually logged on to Wikipedia and did a bit of reading up on the subject of American healthcare and came away knowing little more than I already did: That the average American individual is very large.
From what I’ve been able to ascertain, America is the only wealthy, industrialised nation on the planet that doesn’t have a general health care system, although the country spends more on health care than any other as a result of the average person weighing the same as a killer whale. The debate over the health care reform seems to centre around people’s right to be given such care, ease of access to it, fairness, sustainability, and quality. But it seems to me there are other factors that are playing a larger role in the debate; namely the American people.
Firstly, there are two extremes of people in America. You are either extremely fat or extremely skinny. Believe it or not there are actually skinny people in America and they all seem to live in California, presumably because they rollerblade everywhere and are made of plastic. The fat ones make up the rest of the country’s population.
One of the problems is surely that the skinny, healthy people don’t want to be footing the bill for the majority of fat people who are going to be benefiting most from a national health service due to the fact that they’ll be the ones having the heart attacks. I can sympathise with this because I object to the fact that I’ve never really made use of my compulsory national insurance contributions but I’m well aware that I’m paying for the obese, chain-smoking, drug taking people of this country who are wasting precious resources in our hospitals.
Then there is the subject of fairness. As far as I understand, in America they currently have health insurance. Basically if you can afford insurance then you will get treated. If you don’t then you will either be told to leave the hospital and die quietly somewhere or you will have to pay your medical expenses out of your own pocket.
The other issue is surely the problem of people taking advantage of such a service. We all know that American people are fundamentally ugly which is why they all have plastic surgery. For every person who is hideously deformed in a freak accident and genuinely needs cosmetic surgery, there will be those who will claim their ugliness is a result of a medical condition and they must undergo liposuction and implants to get rid of their fat flaps and pig face.
Then of course we have the age old problem of Americans suing everybody. It’s common knowledge that America’s economy is primarily dependent on lawyers. Now, a reform to the health system isn’t going to change that but the private law firms who specialise in health insurance will probably sue somebody because they will be losing business. More people will be able to benefit from health care which will give them more opportunity to sue a doctor when they accidentally sew their new fake boobs to their face.
The debate stalled in congress because the politicians couldn’t agree with each other and some of the American people were also getting in on the action and trying to shoot people, which is the other thing we all know the Americans are good at. President Obama bin Laden laid down his ground rules which basically centred around tougher regulations for insurers, making health insurance mandatory and offering subsidies for the less well-off – that is the select few who haven’t earned a living by suing people.
During several typically well rehearsed speeches written by his entourage, he suggested lots of nice sounding things like tax credits to small businesses who offer insurance to obese workers, better help for old obese people, preventative action against insurers denying coverage to children with pre-existing obesity, prohibiting treatment based on salary of obese people, better all round help for the uninsured obese person and banning insurance companies from dropping people from coverage when their obesity gets to such a level that they can’t move any more.
It all sounds jolly lovely and all that but I’d like to put my European perspective on it and suggest that the powers that be should be looking more closely at the most likely root cause of health issues in the States. McDonalds.
We all know that Americans like their burgers. This is evident by the horizontal dimensional aspect of the average Yank. So what I propose is that, instead of a health care reform, they should have a McDonalds reform. I recommend reducing the Big Mac to a low-carb Little Mac, a McFlurry with a McFruit Salad and the Egg McMuffin with a low-fat McYoghurt. French Fries (or chips to the rest of the world) will be replaced by sticks of celery and the traditional Coca-Cola will be replaced by spring water or freshly squeezed orange juice. The drive-thru will of course be banned so people will have to walk into the restaurant to order their food, thereby getting at least some exercise.
I estimate this will reduce obesity by 56% and heart disease by a further 48%. This will mean less need for a health care system altogether because people will be generally fitter and healthier. Of course, we all know that going into a McDonalds and ordering a salad would be like walking into a brothel and asking for a hug so this idea may need a bit more tweaking before being implemented. Then again, the bigger issue is that most Americans will not take too kindly to not being able to stuff their fat faces with cheese burgers and will resort to suing somebody.
