|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ____ _ _____ _ ____ | | | _ \ ___| |_ ___ _ __ | ___| _ _ __ | | __ | _ \ _ __ ___ ___ ___ | | | |_) / _ \ __/ _ \ '__| | |_ | | | | '_ \| |/ / | |_) | '__/ _ \/ __/ __| | | | __/ __/ || __/ | | _|| |_| | | | | < | __/| | | __/\__ \__ \ | | |_| \___|\__\___|_| |_| \__,_|_| |_|_|\_\ |_| |_| \___||___/___/ | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Vol 7 ********* Gratis | |============================================================================| SENATE GIVES HEALTH CARE A BIG FAT COLOSTOMY Washington (PETER FUNK PRESS) The US Senate's effort to implement health reform has ground down to a deadlock, and debate on the subject has ceased. Republican and Democratic Senators cannot come to agreement on anything about American health care with the exception of the Senate passing a bipartisan, nonbinding resolution which said, "Every American, if he or she lives long enough, will die .... well, pound our senatorial puds." The Senate resolution passed 93-2 with the two dissenting votes coming from Sen. Ted Kennedy (Dem.) and Sen. Jesse Helms (Rep.). This seemed like a strange alliance, since the two men usually stand on opposite sides of the political spectrum. For instance, Kennedy would look at a theoretical glass half filled with water and say, "This scotch and water is half empty; it doesn't have any scotch in it; whereas, Helms would look at the same theoretical glass of water and say, "Look at this! The NEA has funded another piece of anti-Christian piece of art." The five woman Senators abstained from the vote in protest to the words "pound our senatorial puds" in the resolution, although they said they would have voted for the resolution if the Senate had changed the objectionable words to something more gender neutral like wank our senatorial gadgets or canoodle our senatorial privates. Upon the passage of the Senate resolution, the debate over health care deteriorated into partisan bickering and soon members of the Senate stopped addressing each other during debates with complimentary terms such as: Will the fascinating, well-proportioned, dolce vita Senator from Rhode Island yield me some of his time so I can respond to his bucko-jockstrap but, nevertheless, obtuse argument, and will he give me a swig from that bottle of bourbon he carries around in his pocket? Why certainly I'll give the incredible, funky and superfly Senator from Minnesota some of my time. [Takes a swig from his flask of bourbon and then gives the flask to the Senator] And sure, take a pop of my hooch, my toothsome, goomba-muchacha from Minnesota. As the debate fell into bitter partisanship, Senators addressed each other in this manner: Will the ribald, grody, second story man from Rhode Island yield me some of his worthless, pecuniary time? It will give him the opportunity to swash down that bottle of limp wristed, weasel-piss inebriant he carries around in his back packet. No, I will not yield my time to the fourflushing, lounge lizard, abomination from Minnesota. How can I libate my libation when he is always leeching my hooch. Besides, I'd rather share my liquor with a rattlesnake than the bovine lump of mendacious monkeydom from Minnesota. When the Senate decorum broke down, the ratings of C-Span's televised segments of the US Senate climbed twelve billion percent. The major networks, alarmed at C-Span's success, preempted their prime time programming with televised proceedings of the Senate health debate and preceded each broadcast with major TV anchors like Peter Jennings, Ted Baxter, Tarzan, and Larry the Wonder Opossum making an announcement something as this: Tonight we will broadcast the Senate debate on health care and hopefully the partisan bickering will become so intense we will show you a Senator mowing down another Senator with an illegal assault weapon right on your screen LIVE!! But first this commercial message from Harry and Louise, that wonderful couple whom the insurance companies paid millions of dollars to hate the Clinton plan and to say how much they hate it on national television. What a deal they got. Most Americans already hate the Clinton plan, and they don't get a dime for it. That's the greatness of our American free enterprise system. The partisan bickering resulted from each party's approach to health care. The Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, formerly Mr. Peepers, support a comprehensive health plan for Americans with universal coverage. The Mitchell plan has a full range of health benefits such as preventive medicine, internal medicine, minor and major surgery, hair styling, manicures, and lawn services. To pay for the plan, the Democrats will put it on the federal government's Visa card. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, who has no reflection and whom Anne Rice recommended to play the part of Lestat in the upcoming film _Interview with a Vampire_, leads the Republican effort. The Dole plan relies on incentives, deregulation, and market forces. The central part of the plan consists of allowing Americans to sell or barter their organs, blood, bone marrow, brain tissue, etc, to pay for their health care. It also would give tax breaks to all Americans who don't become sick or die. However, the Dole plan has fewer benefits than the Mitchell plan. In the Dole plan, Americans will receive only two benefits: a lifetime supply of tongue depressants and a bedpan that one can wear also as a ten gallon hat. The Dole plan pays for the benefits through an organ inspection fee in which a meat inspector from the Department of Agriculture tests Americans' organs for such contaminants as salmonella. If the organs seem devoid of contamination, the meat inspectors approve them for transplantation by stamping "USDA approved" on them. By paying for the benefits in this way, the Republicans can say their plan has no tax increases. Proposals for a health care plan compromise look dim. Sen. Phil Gramm (Rep.) of Texas, who threatens secession if either the Dole plan or Mitchell plan passes, said either of the proposed plans in the Senate will ruin the American health system. "We have the greatest health care system in the world," says Gramm, " Why just a few years ago American doctors transplanted a baboon's heart in a man; in a few years they will be able to transplant a chicken's brain in a man, and I refuse to let a meddling Congress stifle such a breakthrough advancement like this in American health care." SPECIAL INTERESTS BLEED HEALTH CARE Jawbone (PETER FUNK PRESS) Many political experts believe special interests have killed major health care reform in the Senate. Their intense lobbying, peremptory whining, and incendiary groveling has immobilized the legislative body. The experts point to three groups as particularly effective. For instance, Lesbians Against Government Waste oppose the Mitchell plan. They insist the federal government cannot pay for the Mitchell plan, for due to the country's persistent budget deficit it has a bad credit rating, which puts a $50 credit limit on its Visa card. The Association of American Channelers Clairvoyants, and Ouija Board Repairmen has attacked the tax breaks in the Republican plan, for those who die lose their tax break, making the plan biased against dead people. Physicians for the Protection of Loot, Moolah, and Gravy. (PPLMG) doesn't like the deregulation aspects of the Dole plan. The organization says it will would allow average Americans to read government pamphlets and do brain surgery on themselves in their homes and get tax breaks. The PPMLG also hates the Mitchell plan because it has a 90 day money back guarantee on medical procedures, meaning if doctors don't cure an American completely, he or she will get a full refund even if inflicted with an incurable or unknown disease. If either plan passes, the PPLMG says it would put doctors out of business and they would go on welfare and eventually become homeless. To survive they then would need to stand on busy street corners, dressed in ragged lab coats with their medical equipment in shopping carts and accost people, give them physical exams without their permission then demand $95 in cash or credit card in payment. The PPLMG predicts some desperate doctors will go beyond just exams and start X-raying people and demanding money, and it does not want to speculate on what a homeless proctologist might do to people. =========================================================================== Entire contents Copyright (C) 1994 by Byron Lanning. All rights reserved. You cannot redistribute the _PETER FUNK PRESS_ without the permission of the author with exception that a single user may retrieve the _PETER FUNK PRESS_ from archives by anonymous FTP or through a Gopher and may send it to another single user through electronic mail other than an electronic mailing list such as Majordomo. Byron Lanning (swipe@well.sf.ca.us or blanning@crl.com) writes and electronically publishes the _PETER FUNK PRESS_. Inquiries and opinions welcome. _THE PETER FUNK PRESS_ appears approximately twice a month on the USENET newsgroups alt.zines, alt.journalism, and rec.humor; on The WELL in the conference Statements (stmt) topic 81 and in the Zines Conference (F5) on the ezine menu; on Compuserve in the EFF Sig, Zines from the Net and in the Cyber Forum in Cyberlit/Zines; on America Online in the PDA Forum (keyword PDA), Mac users choose the Ezine library button but PC users select "Palmtop Paperbacks" then select the "Ezine libraries" folder, from there Mac and PC users choose "Humor" then "Other humor." You also can collect it by anonymous FTP from crl.com in users/ro/blanning, at etext.archive.umich.edu, and on the The WELL gopher in the Online Zines directory. ===========================================================================