Ain’t no cure for stupid, is there? Or sedition

 Today’s Facebook newsfeed is peppered with information about Biff Tannen’s nominating Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be Health and Human Services secretary. This nomination comes in the context of Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) promising to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and Medicare

Here’s what’s interesting about this that the mainstream, and the good outlets like ProPublica, haven’t picked up on: The American Hospital Association President and CEO Rick Pollack has come out in support of Price’s appointment, with a statement saying Price’s experience as an orthopedic surgeons will be an asset as health care becomes more patient centered. Pollock has spent his entire career as a lobbyist. I don’t suppose he knows the old joke about bone doctors: Strong as a bull and just as smart. And while that’s an unfair generalization for all orthopedists, it must apply to Price since he is a Republican and part of the evil sect set to destroy the health care system as we know it.

Remember on Nov. 18, fed up with holding my fire on hospital administrators, my post described the educational evolution leading to the spinectomy of an entire profession. It’s pretty clear that the AHA’s commitment to patient care is an empty phrase and the part of Pollack’s assertion about patient-centered care is a sick joke. But even better, the idiotic shortsightedness of the AHA’s policy-making is even sicker. Dismantling those insurance programs — and don’t for a minute call those programs socialized medicine because they are not — will cut off huge cash flows to hospitals, doctors and other providers. Supporting Tannen’s and the right-wing agenda will, and there is no other way to put it, folks, bite them on the ass. Good deal. They need it.

But the people of the United States don’t. Believe it or not, our national security is as dependent on a healthy and robust population in all age groups. To visit upon our nation a health care system designed to deny care to millions of citizens, with the rationale for doing so based on Josef Goebbels- type lies, provides evidence that Tannen’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia may be part of a treasonous and seditious plan for a nondemocratic country — ours.

And further, if the people of the U.S. are smart, and this election leaves that in doubt, they should rise up in anger over this plan. They won’t, of course, at least for now. The propaganda drums are beating too loudly. Here’s the question: Will we ever be smart enough to vote our own and not the plutocratic corporate interests?