February 23, 2010

Chaparral Ice (in Northcross Mall)

Being a grateful beneficiary of the finest health care system in the world, you probably have no fear when it comes to sports-related injuries. If you should sprain an ankle, dislocate a collarbone, or suffer serious head trauma, you can rest assured that the insurance company of your employer’s choosing will be right there to provide you with premium health care services … as long as the emergency room or doctor’s office you visit is “in network” (sometimes mistaken as a synonym for “incompetent” or “inexperienced”) and your injury isn’t the result of some pre-existing congenital condition excluded in the fine print of your policy. If you’re not sure, don’t worry; your doctor will run you through a barrage of expensive diagnostic tests – not because they were necessarily warranted by your condition but because your insurance covers them and they are probably required by the doctor’s malpractice insurance to protect against any potential lawsuits. As long as everyone has insurance, no harm, no foul, eh? It’s not like it’s real money. It’s just insurance. Of course, in the end you will have to pony up some real cash, but that $35 co-pay and $1,500 deductible is a small price to pay for the finest health care in the world. Plus, as a door prize, you’ll probably get several unnecessary prescriptions for addictive pain medications – or at the very least a baggie of sample meds provided to you gratis by your doctor. Consider it a gift from your friends in the American pharmaceutical industry, an industry so thoughtful it is willing to buy drugs for people who can’t afford brand-name prescriptions. Yes, that might seem like a transparent ploy to keep the outraged uninsured from rioting in the streets and Congress from enacting meaningful health care reform, but at least it’s something. Besides, even a broke junkie is worth more to an insurance company than a healthy straight edge. High cholesterol? Why give up fondue, bacon-wrapped shrimp, and chili-cheese fries when you can just pop a pill for it? Diabetes? There are pills for that too – as many as there are pharmaceutical companies – so don’t feel like you need to use common sense and willpower to manage your condition. You can also get drugs for depression, hypertension, insomnia, listlessness – you name it. If you can communicate it, you can medicate it. If you have good insurance but don’t have a living will, you might not even need to communicate it. Clearly, the keys to maintaining the finest health care system in the world are expensive insurance and a huge variety of brand-name drugs. That means Americans need to have the resolve to put the interests of huge corporations ahead of individual citizens, otherwise we might as well live in a communist state like France, Britain, or the red menace to the north, Canada. Health care? They can’t even make decent snow. If history has proven anything, it’s that governments are completely ineffectual – the less the better. We certainly can’t afford to let government run our health care system. After the colossal failure of Medicare (a completely ineffectual health care program Congress hasn’t found the courage to mercy kill over the past 45 years), who could trust Uncle Sam to step up his game? Certainly not Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, or Abbott Labs. You probably won’t get Aetna, Humana, or UnitedHealth to sign off on that either. Good thing, because government run health care would be like a death sentence … mainly for the aforementioned, but corporations are people too. The Supreme Court just said so. Really, insurance corporations and pharmaceutical companies are just people taking care of people. Don’t worry, they’ve got your back … even if it breaks trying to pay them. Feel free to go out and live a healthy, active life, and if that doesn’t work out, there will surely be a drug (or a cocktail thereof) to help you feel better. If you’re looking for a fun activity, how about dodgeball? On ice? Yes, it’s an awesome idea … especially for spectators. You’ve been looking for a way to burn up that deductible anyway, right? Here’s an exciting opportunity to decimate in one fell swoop … or one swooping fall. This Saturday at 9pm at Chaparral Ice on Anderson Lane, the folks from Hill Country Outdoors are hosting a dodgeball game on ice. Two sides pelt each other with balls until one person is left standing. That person’s name? Winner.