Clark4Prez

This is the tough part of the health care issue. Anybody can say “everybody should have health care” but how do we pay for it? I don’t have a staff to crunch the numbers for me, but I have some ideas. They may seem a bit harsh or cruel but we can’t have everything.

First, I believe that the President should have the power of the “line item veto”. I’m sure I could find a lot of fat to trim away from the hog that is government. One of the first things I would stop would be government funding of medical research. We have a population with an ever increasing life expectancy. We can’t take care of our elderly the way we should as it is now. Besides, if researchers stumbled upon a cure for say, cancer, would the average American without health care be able to pay for it. No. So why bother. Lets get health care first, then if there is anything left over we’ll see about research. I would also grant Dr. Jack Kevorkian a full pardon and legalize doctor assisted suicide. It is all about quality and not quantity. It would be similar to the movie “Soylent Green” but we wouldn’t be making food supplements from the corpses.

Another thing that really bothers me that I would fix is drug company advertising. I would make it illegal for drug companies to advertise anywhere but in trade magazines and individual mailings to doctors. Why do I need to know about the latest pill for toenail fungus? I don’t, the drug manufacturers want me to know so I watch for the earliest symptom and go running to my doctor to beg for the new pill. The same for restless leg syndrome, itchy watery eyes, runny nose, e.d., herpes outbreak and…. I think you see where this is going. How many people even knew there was such a thing as restless leg syndrome before they had a medicine to treat it?

I realize parts of this may seem disturbing, but facing our own mortality is always disturbing.

Thanks