The Ban on Health Care Act
March 16, 2000 Minutes from United States Senate Floor. Senator: Ima Itiat, from Darcages, Herwecom addressing the floor.
Good afternoon fellow colleagues, esteemed gentlemen, and ladies. I come to you in dire circumstance . . . (dramatic pause). . . . We have before us an enormous conspiracy. A pestilence has crossed our great country, an evil so despicable that it threatens to shake the foundations of our nation. I only wish that I did not have to see such a wrong within my lifetime; but, as a patriot, as a representative of the people of the United States, I cannot turn away from my responsibility. The truth must be told.
What makes this particular wrong so heinous, so insidious, is that it appears to be committed by those whom we have trusted the most. And I am certain that all of you will feel as I do: betrayed . . . angry! And most of all, you will not believe. But the evidence is clear, and it is my unfortunate task to present it. The facts will speak, and your conclusions will be the same as mine: Health care is evil. It is out of control. And it must be stopped.
Yes, damn it, I mean health care! Not managed care . . . all of health care. We need to stop anyone from taking care of anyone else. Doctors must be run out of business. Hospitals must be shut down, nursing homes turned into bookstores. Pharmaceutical companies should be demolished, and not a single Band-Aid should be produced in this country until we know how to do it.
Now please.... Please! Compose yourselves. Ladies. . . . Gentlemen. . . . Please! I know how drastic this may seem. But when you are privy to the evidence that I have uncovered, when I speak to you on things of which I am an authority, you will be persuaded.
My office has been conducting several intensive, covert, imaginative, consecutive, reach-out studies for the last several year.1 These studies have focused on the efficacy of health care in this nation, and the results are truly amazing. For it appears clear to me that we have very little rationale for the health care decisions we make; and furthermore, when a health care decision is made, it usually is in contradiction to the overwhelming evidence that health care does more harm than good.
For example, this office conducted a study in which we looked at 10,000 individuals who reported to emergency rooms. We divided this group based on a single characteristic only: whether or not they were admitted to the hospital. We then followed each of these subgroups and examined their outcomes.
Well! I am sure you will be shocked to hear that the individuals who were admitted to the hospital actually did far worse than those who were told to go home. There were 10 times as many deaths in the hospital group. Now, we performed several analyses of variance and got our p value to be around 0.000001. This lets us state for certain that there was a definite difference in the two groups that was not due to chance. So we can without a doubt be certain of one thing: people who enter a hospital do far worse than those who do not. Why, then, do we continue to admit people? When can we stop the insanity?
I think your own experiences will justify these studies. For myself, I remember when my grandmother went into the ER with what was called “myocardial ischemia.” She was placed into the hospital. Let me tell you, she fared far worse than my daughter, who went into the ER for a bruised knee and, thank God, was not admitted to the hospital.
Another study performed at Bullshoot University demonstrated that if we follow patients throughout their lifetime, there is, in fact, no statistical difference in the endpoints of those who receive health care,2 and those who do not. In other words, receiving health care had absolutely no effect on the end result in individuals.
I ask you: How can we continue to finance these institutions, these free-wheeling charlatans? There is no evidence for what they are doing. Let me share with you several rather recent episodes of my personal experiences with health care.
Just last year, I was injured in an automobile accident. The physicians in the ER were going to x-ray my thorax because a few of my ribs were sore. I asked them, “Is there any evidence that this x-ray will benefit and not hurt me.”
To which the physician curtly replied, “Absolutely, x-rays have been demonstrated to be effective in motor vehicle accidents with symptoms such as yours.”
He obviously wasn’t expecting someone as familiar with the literature as myself. I snapped back, “Those studies were done in Europe sir, with European cars. I was struck by a Japanese car, for God’s sake. And I can say for certain, there are no studies demonstrating the efficacy of x-rays in 43-year-old, balding, obnoxious congressmen struck from behind by Japanese cars. So please, take your voodoo elsewhere!”
My unfortunate wife also had a near brush with health care. She recently received a deep, nasty cut from a kitchen knife. She thought she might need some stitches and antibiotics but I told her the truth.
“Honey, there has never been much evidence as to how antibiotics affect women like you. They’re really not sure how those things behave in 40-year-old, premenopausal women with bad hair days. They might kill you.”
Unfortunately, her condition worsened. But I can only imagine what might have happened if I had taken her to the hospital. Oh, the horror!
So it is clear. Lend me your ears. I come not to save health care, but to bury it! This monster . . . this beast . . . this plague upon our masses . . . must . . . MUST I SAY . . . be stopped! I am encouraging my fellow congressmen to utilize the new statistics, the new dawn of scrutiny, to implement programs for the new millennium. The future is here. Listen to some of the new ideas that are coming to my home state and hopefully yours as well.
First, 80% of drunk-drivers are currently driving their own cars when they get into accidents. My state is currently seeking to activate legislation that encourages bars to give their drunken customers someone else’s keys before they leave. We are also considering making them drive with their feet, because foot drivers appear to be involved in so few accidents. While the evidence is not yet in, we hope to decrease drunk-driving accidents at least in half with this legislation.
A second point: Are you aware that 99.9% of homicide victims are not wearing sombreros when they are killed? We are currently seeking to enact mandatory sombrero wearing in high-risk neighborhoods.
Last, and most importantly. And this is important! The real secret killer that no one wants you to know about: FOOD! YES, FOOD! Forget about drugs, which are involved in at most two-thirds of crimes, 99% of criminals had eaten within 24 hours of committing a crime, and over 80% of people eat within 24 hours of dying. This says to me we need to start closing down grocery stores and restaurants in high crime areas and stop patients who are at risk from eating anything.
Now these are just a few of my ideas, a few of the great strides that we have made. And we will move further. Without the weighty burden of insight and understanding, we now can move more rapidly to implement programs that are proven to work by statistics, even though we may not have any idea why! With evidence-based politics, we will soon be able to more effectively run our country, even in areas that we don’t know anything about. The ban on health care is just the first step. Soon to follow: the ban on education, the ban on charity, and the ban on Christmas. I can tell you, things are gonna change. Now that we have been given the tools of evaluation, we can finally start to get rid of some of the things that don’t hold up when put to the test of evidence.
Thank you, my esteemed colleagues.
1No animals, small children, or trapeze artists were harmed in the conduction of these studies. 2For this study, endpoints were considered to be death or immortality.
John Grace Class of ‘00 Second Place, Prose |