There is an article released from Yale that states people with active frontal cortex are more likely to develop mental problems due to the fact that they are more prone to judging themselves critically. Which led me to the conclusion that while lobotomy had the completely wrong methodology, it had the right idea. Somewhat.

Then I came across the new healthcare reform bill, and I’m not entirely sure if this is Jesus or lobotomy.

First, the outline of the bill. The House and the Senate have yet to reconcile their differences, but the outline is the same. Here is a very very brief overview:

• You are now required to purchase a healthcare plan. The government does not care if you don’t make money at all or you are Bill Gates.
• If private health insurance is not affordable, the government has a version of its own. Obama says it’s significantly cheaper, but I don’t know if he knows what cheap means. I mean, come on, he’s not exactly from working class. Neither is his wife.
• The Congress projects the cost of this bill to be in the vicinity of $870 billion. When the said Congress brought Medicare into existence back in 1985, it was projected to be around $12 billion in 1990, inflation-adjusted. The actual cost was off by one digit. Greater.
• The IRS will be the health enforcer. Being so good at getting taxes from basically everybody (which I don’t mind), I’m pretty sure they’re going to enforce this bill with an iron fist. Which means fines until you get a qualifying health insurance, and possibly jail time (what?!).
• Necessary health-screenings may now not be covered. This would increase cancer screenings. (So what? They just die?)
• Rehospitalizations of sick and elderly are now out. They drain too much. Old people now are just left to hospice care. I guess you deserve death for being old in this country.
• Pregnant college students will get welfare benefits. While retarded people in twenties get money for not using protection, I guess old people get to pay for it and die off.

I’m sorry, but this just sounds like somebody had a huge plate of crazy for lunch. MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT INSURED ARE SO BECAUSE THEY CAN’T PAY FOR IT. Making it a national requirement to have health insurance then not providing it for free when you can’t afford it is just stupid. It doesn’t help that most people who sit in that building in Washington DC don’t have to worry about affording health insurances.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a democrat. I’m all for national health insurance… but this legislation is so incomplete this is like lobotomy. Good idea, but awful execution. But then again, communism was a great idea, and it never worked.

These kinds of major changes require careful planning from all angles; otherwise it’ll start fraying in half a century (like NHS). This sounds like whoever wrote the legislation just bunged it up together in a week. Not gonna work, babe. Implementing this bill might have been great if it was in 1997, but it’s 2010 and the economy’s in a slump ever since Lehman Brothers crashed through the ground.

So will this bill be Jesus or lobotomy? I’m not sure yet, but I’m leaning toward lobotomy. And like most great ideas that went terribly terribly wrong, communism and lobotomy are now defunct.