Healthcare 101: Merry Christmas Mr. Hitchens

Hi,

Wow. In case you’re one of those pinko-commie-lazy-pants liberals who think socialized medicine is the answer to your pathetic little life problems, let me take a minute to tell you how great it is to be one of the hard working Americans who enjoys the true benefits of privatized healthcare! You see, after four days of not being able to decide if I would rather A. Jump off the BK Bridge or B. Amputate my intestines, I decided to get off my _____ and finally sit down to get some kind of a check up examination thing to find out what’s going on in my stomach. Should be simple enough since, as I said, I am one of the people who earns my keep and pays my health insurance premium and this is gonna be great because I’m sure I’ll get seen right away by the for profit Doctor who is there to serve me because that’s what I am going to be directly paying him for. Oh man, the free market is so awesome! So now I just got off the phone with a lovely young woman we’ll call “Jessica” who upon answering the phone exclaimed in the well worn joviality becoming of all career receptionists, “Hello! Doctor’s office, this is Jessica speaking, how may I help you today?” So I says to the woman we’re calling “Jessica”, Hi “Jessica”, my name is Matt and I have to get a doctor because I have insurance now and because I have a stomach pain and I need a check up examination thing and … what’s that? Oh, my date of birth is Februaty 12, 19 … seventy … something or other. My last name is spelled B as in boy - A - S - I - L - E. I always say B as in boy because sometimes people think I am saying P as in periwinkle which is of course why I earn so much money doing voice overs. I also gave Jessica my health insurance card number and phone number so she could call me back. Then, just like that, we were all ready to make my appointment. “Jessica” said, “Let’s see here Mr. Basile (which is what I get called since being born in 19 seventy something or other became so long ago) it looks like the next available appointment is on January 9th. Is 5pm okay for you?” I said “Hmmmmm, well, lemme look” and then I opened up my iCal while I thought about how many more days I was gonna have to decide if I would rather A. Jump off the BK Bridge or B. Amputate my intestines and upon seeing that there was nothing on my schedule that day I continued “yeah, I mean, okay if that’s the closest date you have, I mean I guess that’s just cuz of the holidays and stuff huh, well okay yeah, I mean that sounds great, I’ll look forward to seeing Dr. Sloan at five on January 9th.” Anyway, I’m sorry to bore you with this. I just wanted to point out how great it is not to have to wait multiple weeks to see a doctor when you really work hard and embrace being so awesome at profiteering.

Speaking of awesome. One can assume that Christopher Hitchens is no longer being awesome. Unless of course he was totally wrong. I guess I’ll probably never know. Or will I? Damn! Life is confusing sometimes. Anyway, I watched the very poorly produced video below this morning and couldn’t help but wonder what the young woman who introduces Mr. Hitchens thinks whenever she watches herself introduce Mr. Hitchens which I can only assume she does from time to time …

In unrelated news, I read the article that this part of this sentence links too last night. I won’t say “you should too” because that would assume that I know things you do not or that I feel in some manner superior to you, which in fact I do but it would be considered impolite to say so, thus I will fein humility and offer some sheepish platitudinal such as “Hey everyone, here’s something I read and maybe you’ll think it’s interesting too, but if you don’t hey that’s cool because I don’t wanna offend anyone out of fear that you might not donate to my next Kickstarter Campaign.”

And speaking of shameless self promotion, tonight I’ll be playing with Mother Feather. We go on past your bed time, so I guess you’ll miss out. But hey, you never liked getting your face melted anyway. In case you were wondering though, there are some very sensitive and thoughtful singer songwriters playing before us, so maybe you’ll come down to Rockwood anyway and have a nice hot mug of Chamomile Tea with a dash of Buckwheat honey in it. Mmmmm, doesn’t that sound great on a nice cool December evening?

Okay. I’m gonna go now. And yes, I am in a really bad mood.

Mwah!

M