By The Cranky Housewife -
Let me start with a story. An interesting conversation was recently had between one of my friends and his doctor. You see, the hospital through which his doctor practices has this neat service that's being offered for its patients – sign up and receive a special code in the mail and with that code, the patient is able to access clinic-like doctor services online.
And my friend got to thinking… wow! What a great idea, huge time saver, really innovative. He would never again have to sit in a room full of hacking flu sufferers in order to get approval for refills on his basic maintenance medications. Very excited about this whole prospect of online health care and the future of medicine in our golden age of technology, my friend decided to apply for the service for himself and for his family.
So he signed himself up. He signed his children up. He was told that his wife would need to apply for the code on her own and so that was that. In a few days, he received a schlew of letters in the mail…seemingly with the magic codes that would unlock the medical Shangri-La of which had been prophesied.
He opened the first letter and found an access code for his new online account and this was, I'm to understand, a very happy moment for him. But if there's anything that we have come to know about the golden age of technology, nothing is ever quite as easy as we are initially led to believe…his happiness was short lived. He opened the remaining correspondence and found kindly worded rejection letters for each one of his children. Contrary to what he had been told by his doctor, none of them would be granted access to the online service. "What's up with that?" thought he.
His "What's up, doc" had a very simple answer. They were rejected because his children are over the age of twelve. If they had been eleven or younger, there would have been no issue but children between the ages of twelve and eighteen fall into a particularly separate category of patient. Neither adult nor child, his children's medical statuses fall not so much in Shangri-La but in Limbo.
My friend called the family pediatrician to try to understand the policy better. He was curious if there was a work around to the problem he was facing. But there was none because Limbo children have the legal right to and the doctors have the legal obligation to maintain medical privacy from parents or legal guardians. Parents, therefore, cannot apply for this new online service on behalf of their Limbo children because that would interfere with those patient/doctor confidentiality agreements that are in place, but the Limbo children are too young to apply for a code on their own because they are too young to understand whether their medical needs are maintenance-only issues or if they need to see a doctor in person.
Let's translate this information into progressive-speak for those of you who are bi-lingual. They are too young to determine whether they are experiencing hay fever versus the common cold but they are quite old enough to decide whether to use Plan B or opt for a D&C.
Now, I realize that the readers of Illinois Review are not learning anything new from my little story. You are all well-educated and conversant on the ins and outs of Obamacare. You know that your children have merely been remanded into your custody until a more suitable living situation can be found for them. You know that you have very limited parental authority regarding your children – that your command is to implement the State's directives for your children and in exchange for this great honor, you will transfer up to 50% of your income to the State so that others may benefit from its ever-expanding sage wisdom.
You also know that when you take your Limbo children to the doctor, you will be asked to leave the room so that those "sensitive teen-questions" can be asked to them…are they sexually active, have they ever been raped, do they ever feel depressed, do they ever feel like killing themselves, do their parents ever argue, is there alcohol in the house, does anyone smoke in the house, are there guns in the house, how many guns and where do their parents store them…right.
This is just a sample of the "sensitive teen-questions" that twelve to eighteen year old children should be discussing with their doctors and not their parents.
Tis true. I am but a lowly housewife, so I don't necessarily understand all the whys and wherefores of a government that is of the people, by the people and for the people so maybe you can explain to me why it is that no matter how gently or kindly or politely or peacefully the Left's agenda gets implemented, no matter how good, warm and fuzzy the intentions start out, their plans always degenerate into Nazi Germany.
Dr. Benjamin Carson spoke out about this very topic recently by stating, "There are people who would like to silence everybody and have everybody go along to get along, but that's not going to be very helpful for us in the long run, in terms of solving our problems. And somebody has to be courageous enough to actually stand up to, you know, the bullies."
Talk about courage. How about standing in front of the President of the United States and very publically and very boldly telling him that he's just flat out wrong about health care…and tax policy?
Wowsa. When's the last time you saw anyone do such a thing? I mean, really.
Per Wikipedia's account of Dr. Carson's bravery:
On February 7, 2013, Carson was the keynote speaker at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. Despite the fact that all speakers are told by organizers to steer clear of politics, Carson broke with the non-political tradition of the National Prayer Breakfast and directly criticized President Obama's policies on health care and taxation.
This is in no way a criticism, by the way - but who among us would have the courage to do what Dr. Carson did? I know a lot of us might talk a good game, but who would actually defy event organizers and speak truth to power at the National Prayer Breakfast without regard to possible reprisal? Oh – I suppose that if it were a president such as George Bush or Ronald Reagan, we all might feel differently because those were presidents who respected the constitutional protections surrounding political dissent. Those presidents understood that dialog requires not only speaking but also constructively listening.
Of course, courage only represents half of the equation when we look toward restoring liberty to this asphyxiating nation. The other half deals with making ourselves part of the solution in any way we can and that requires a proper setting. How wonderful that Dr. Carson had the presence of mind to recognize that he had both the courage and the forum.
I wonder if his actions might encourage GOP leadership to recognize their own personal and daily opportunity for courage and forum too? Or is that hoping for too much?
