A few of these local conservative guys actually made some sense — sorta, or at first.(I refer to Trump’s slamming connected to his recent posting of photos of Minnesotan kindergartners allegedly wearing hijabs at a graduation, and a few regular guys chugging down at the local booze hall in a (possibly) less discriminatory way (beer goggled brain?) and thinking out loud (with low vocabulary) that they are what, just another name for khakis? (OK, that last part is fake news.) Spelled with the same number of letters and consonants, and using the same vowels, and I’ll give them that they got that correct, but maybe more fashionable they say, right? Oh well … I actually think many Muslim women are, am I allowed to say this, quite attractive looking when wearing them, but it should obviously by no means be mandatory. When referencing
beauty, I was talking about the hijabs, and not necessarily the khakis, although those will pass too, as women of all ethnicities have the potential to rock them. Just as long as you choose to wear something, to preserve modesty.)Anyway. Back to my main point …Case in point, or so he tried to make, that being the guy whose mother and another were treated for rare medical conditions and he extrapolated their situation onto two other broader ones as far as coverage eligibility, and another regular guy who I think if you really look at it, had the scenario basically backwards on oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Does that oil flow go both ways? And possibly lighthearted about Lightfoot, does it become The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald? As Gordon goes …Geez, this is commentary along the lines of what you’d expect from Afraid
to Shoot Strangers, the early ’90s metal song and its critical treatment of the first desert war, or portions of the more multifaceted Holy Wars/The Punishment Due.
But to start, the guy at the bar, who I talked to for the second time, described how his mom was in the ER and witnessed something that distressed him, as he described it. The woman didn’t have proper citizenship ID on her and still was given a certain degree of emergency medical treatment. It apparently was from a particularly kind medical provider who was sympathetic enough to bend the rules.
OK, I think this was an extraordinary exception that is rarely done — and maybe should be provided more. He concluded that it is a typical situation and when done so, often drains taxpayer money.
So we go to the horse’s mouth, so to speak, and not to examine his teeth. The big signs in all the treatment rooms at the Hudson Hospital here in Wisconsin say it clearly — that it’s the law that no one despite their immigration status should be denied certain kinds of care. But the rub here is that these are, as stated, limited to merely stabilizing the patient and if needed, referring them to another provider for further emergency care. If for example, you broke an arm as a Mexican on your roofing job, they are required to maybe put it in a sling for you, or otherwise cast it — and that is the extent of it. They are not required to provide followup care or more extensive treatment. Even if you can’t pay because your employer doesn’t provide squat.
I was in the ER twice for my Tourette Syndrome and both times the receptionist — always your first point of contact, not a nurse, much less a doctor — had barely asked you what your medical need is, before requesting to see your U.S. ID card and similar insurance information. If you think they’re going to automatically give an undocumented immigrant much specialized treatment on the spot, you are an idiot. So no, we are not giving any such people politically mandated, free medical care.
Then the guy took a last swig of his mixed drink and told me another story, about his mum. She also in the ER saw that such a person was given, in that rare instance by an empathetic nurse, medical care where she bent the rules. How dare they shell out money for such treatment, he implied. Again, I doubt that this is done regularly in the ER or you’d be termed a bleeding heart liberal and maybe even lose your practitioner license.Then the guy gave it a third shot. When he learned I had Tourette Syndrome and needed specialized care — which somebody obviously has to pay for — he said I didn’t really need it, that my condition can be cured with a simple pill.I just have a tapeworm, he suggested, and that is causing all my neurological tics and other medical woes. There is a cure hawked online for this and other such maladies, and they’re all taken care of in short order with a few swallows, and cheaply. Geez, since my TS like that of most people who have it encompasses my whole body, and if that’s the cause, my tapeworm must be several feet long! Better get a bigger dumpster in back of that ER.Now we’ll move on to someone who is seemingly an expert on naval matters, not medicine, who was through a driving service giving me discounted transportation by car, not ship, via a government grant. A regular and nice older guy, like the other one, he was telling me that U.S. gas prices should not be so high right now, but that someone or ones were speculating on oil prices and inflating them, thus rigging the cost structure for consumers. The U.S. still has plenty of gas reserves, he continued, so even though it never seems to end, liberals have no need to worry about the ongoing war and the Strait of Hormuz being closed to oil shipments coming here.Rather, it i
s the need of the U.S. to keep the strait closed so Iran does not have the ability to fuel its initiatives.Wait a minute, isn’t that backwards? Aren’t prices still going mostly up, even if they are jockeying around, and we have a hungry need for foreign oil? Aren’t we desperately trying to keep our
shipping lanes open?After all, the real reason we have waged war against both Iran and Venezuela is we just want their damned oil! And will kill to get it. Oil and blood is thicker than water.I guess you gotta listen to Fox News, and who knows, maybe a medical reporter will quote RFK Jr. as saying you can cure Tourette’s by chugging oil! If you can get insurance to cover the cost.