Healthcare Apology

I owe a big apology to all of my readers for my last post on healthcare: Free-Lunch Healthcare. Due to my egregious ignorance on all issues pertaining to healthcare, I made a huge blunder in that post. As a recap, I had critiqued a post from anti-Socialized Medicine guru Jim Campbell for his post entitled Health Care Vouchers: a Market-Based Approach that Would Cost Nothing.

After reading it, I was entirely confused as to how this could work and pointed out what I imagined to be biting criticisms of his post which rendered it entirely pointless. Rather than being some brilliant scheme to solve our healthcare woes, it almost seemed as if Campbell's free-lunch proposal was little more than a disinformation campaign designed only to undermine more respectable proposals which he opposes (ie, Socialized Medicine).

But as it turns out, when Campbell suggested that Health Care Vouchers were “a Market-Based Approach that Would Cost Nothing,” he wasn’t offering a plan. Rather, this was, as they say in the healthcare lexicon, mental masturbation of the highest order. Or to put it in laymen’s terms, he was talking out of his beer ass. But then again, I don’t know that Jim is a drinking man, so it’s quite possible he’s just like that normally.

And had I been more knowledgeable regarding healthcare issues, I would have known this. His post lacked the minimum level of details which were required to know if his “plan” was even remotely workable, and the few figures he provided were entirely nonsensical. And even based upon the low level of information he provided, it appeared on the surface that this voucher idea was completely absurd with little chance of gaining traction with either liberals or conservatives. His post seemed so bad, in fact, that I had somehow imagined that Jim had made a horrendous mistake by allowing anyone to read it.

But no. There was no mistake. Jim hasn't offered the slightest explanation or correction for what he wrote. Nor did he correct or clarify anything I wrote. As he wrote in his gentle rebuke:
"Hey: You have totally misrepresented everything on my page. I don't claim to have a plan, I'm looking for one since it seem we are going to have one forced upon us?"

So you see, I got it all wrong. When he wrote a 600-word post with the provocative title: "Health Care Vouchers: a Market-Based Approach that Would Cost Nothing", he wasn't actually suggesting that vouchers were a market-based approach that would cost nothing. He was just...well, by that he meant...or maybe....ok, I still don't get it. If he wasn't suggesting he had found a decent solution to our problem, I have no idea why he wrote what he did.

It's obvious I'm much too ignorant to understand anything he wrote. Or to know why he used meaningless numbers, or incomparable insurance plans, or why he had to attack Michael Moore. All this is just way over my head. I plead ignorance and will swear to never write another post on healthcare again. It's obvious I'm just no good at it.

So here's my concession speech: Jim Campbell, you have bested me. Sure, you never explained one thing I was wrong about or made a lick of sense, but I guess you never had to. Your thirty-four years as a clinical research liaison is clearly enough to reduce my arguments to a quivering mess. You sir, are truly a healthcare guru. And with your patented All Insults style of debate, I also proclaim you to be an argumentative genius extraordinaire. Well done!

In the future, I have decided to take Jim's sage advice and will now go to bed and suck my thumb. Who knows, maybe after a few years of this, I can be as brilliant a healthcare expert as Jim. One can always hope.


P.S. I would also like to thank Jim for not including the link to my post I had left in his comments section. God forbid one of his high level expert readers ever stumble upon that embarrassment I wrote. Thanks again, Jim!