A PAGE RIPPED FROM THE AUSTERITY PLAYERS PLAYBOOK: Small Government is always more efficient than large government because its cheaper. Picture this: An elderly man returning from his 3 am visit to the bathroom falls to the floor writhing in chest pain. He cries out to his sleeping wife, Help me! Im having a heart attack! She reaches for the phone at bedside, and calls 911. She is met with a recording instead of a person (the levy had failed several times and the service had to reduce staff drastically). The friendly, disinterested voice responds with Select from the following options. Our menu has changed. Press 1 if its a fire, 2 if its to report a crime in progress, press 3 if this is a medical emergency... 3, a medical emergency. Please hold while I transfer your call. Your waiting time is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes... His wife frantically puts the phone on speaker, rushes to the medicine cabinet for an aspirin and some water, stumbles back to her dying husband who needs CPR. After 45 minutes, the exhausted wife is relieved to hear Medic One has been notified, but will be delayed for an hour due to staff reductions and 5 calls ahead of hers. (This levy too has failed numerous times and services drastically cut back due to Austerity.) Finally, the Medic One arrives and two exhausted EMTs arrive and struggle to get him down the steps, out the door and into the ambulance. They try to rush him to Virginia Mason Hospital from SeaTac on I-5, but the traffic is backed up for miles due to accidents and too few State Patrol and Emergency Vehicles to clear the accidents quickly. (Austerity again forced drastic cuts.) Finally, by weaving in and out of alternate routes, the ambulance reaches the entrance to the Emergence Room, the patient still managing to remain alive, and is wheeled into the hallway crowded with waiting patients. Austerity measures had drastically cut the number of doctors and nurses to deal with emergencies. Huge amounts were saved on medical costs that were shunted off to private insurance company billionaire CEOs who graciously shared some of the loot with stockholders. I could go on and on about what happened next. If he had survived, he would have waited hours for a bedpan...etc. Fortunately, he died peacefully on the gurney waiting for treatment. Needlessly.Due to the Austerity Death Panels of Private Insurance Companies trying to cut costs in order to enrich themselves. Obamacare could have made all this suffering unnecessary, even saved lives! So small government because its cheaper is not ever the best government. Greed is the killer Good Government must be efficient and accountable to taxpayers for how tax dollars are spent, but it needs to be large enough to provide for the needs of citizens. Just ask that mans wife! I rate the assumptions based on Austerity as utterly false.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 16:27:55 +0000
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