9 Overlooked Stipulations in the Health Care Reform Bill
While preexisting conditions and required coverage have taken the main stage on the health care reform bill, many of the smaller changes hold just as much weight in the future of America’s health. These changes and additions have been largely ignored by mainstream media despite several billion dollars allocated to new preventative care initiatives.
Additionally, the bill includes some surprising fine print regulations. Most regulations won’t take effect immediately, but the sum of so many new laws and restrictions could cause major repercussions on our system over the next several years.
Finally, while the bill is certainly heavy on spending, there are several programs included to reduce overall health care costs, but such programs appear highly unorthodox on a first reading. The Worker Bees and I have combed through thousands of pages of minutiae to find nine lesser known stipulations, clauses, regulations, and programs in the new bill.
1. Emergency Lap-Band treatments covered under government-offered insurance plan.
Lap-Band surgery has been credited as a legitimate and necessary procedure in certain situations and will be covered entirely under state and government assisted plans. Because many pundits claim the procedure is unnecessary, the surgery will be reserved for patients who have already exhausted conventional forms of weight loss such as eating low fat foods and running on a treadmill.
2. Insurance documentation course to be added to elementary education.
To prepare youngsters for future medical decision making, all public elementary schools will be required to teach an insurance documentation course to fourth grade students. Children will learn how to read insurance jargon and how to navigate through red tape when denied treatment for the first time. Additionally, students will learn life-practical skills such as how to pressure a PCP into prescribing the most heavily advertised medications, and what to pack into an emergency kit in case of total medical system failure. The insurance course will replace elementary physical education.
3. Indigestible feces content in CAFO beef to be eradicated.
Due to recent public outcry over meat and poultry production standards which permit “acceptable” levels of feces in market meats, a new policy will reduce the allowable feces content in CAFO beef to 0% by the year 2014. While eliminating feces from CAFO-raised products is impossible, a 73 million dollar stipend has been awarded to Monsanto to genetically modify cows to produce nutrient dense, flavor-rich, digestible feces. Incorporating the genetically modified, safe cow waste into meat would completely bypass all feces restrictions. The digestible feces should hit fans by 2012.
4. Statins approved for general consumption, given the go-ahead as a food additive.
Many popular cholesterol-lowering medications have been approved for public mass consumption. Over the next three years, statins will be used as food additives to regulate foods that would otherwise raise cholesterol. Kraft already has plans for a Stat’n Mac’n Cheese. And Pfizer and Baskin-Robbins are currently working together to produce 31 statin-filled flavors of ice cream by 2011.
5. USDA Food Pyramid replaced with Food Trough.
Due to rising complaints about the archaic food groups included in the traditional USDA food pyramid, a new “food trough” has been designed to adequately reflect modern foods and eating habits. Rather than a pecking order of specific food groups, the trough appears as a swill of ingredients, traditional foods blended with chemically reduced corn byproducts. The imagery of the old “pyramid” diagram was confusing, often leading Americans to believe food was something to be climbed rather than something to stick one’s face in. Additionally, the new trough design allows for future food group discoveries and foods that do not easily lump into particular groups such as binding gums, preservatives, and hot pockets.
6. Bacon tax.
Working under the common knowledge that bacon is unhealthy, a twenty seven cent tax will be attached to each strip of bacon sold after May 18, 2010. The bacon tax could net over 14 billion dollars in the first five years, though 80% of that revenue will be set aside to bolster police and security forces for the impending May 19 bacon riots.
7. 42 Million dollars allotted to reduce the growing number of celebrity fad diets.
With over 70 outbreaks of celebrity fad diets in 2009 (up from 63 in 2008), Congress has implemented a series of regulations and initiatives to reduce the number of celebrity fad diets by as much as 40% by the year 2014. A fad diet hotline will be established for celebrities who have suffered from a recent bout of lemonade/cayenne fasting, and all new celebrities will be required to sign an “I will eat more than cabbage soup” pledge. Gwenyth Paltrow alone is being paid 2.3 million dollars to “eat normal” for a period of three years. And Kirstie Alley has been legally restricted from creating any more reality television shows.
8. Easy Cheese abolished.
In what is being hailed as one of the few non-partisan stipulations of the bill, Easy Cheese has been reclassified as a level 5 narcotic and will now only be available by prescription.
9. “No Child Left Behind” replaced with “No Child Left Unmedicated”.
Under the new plan, school nurses will be replaced with a system of self-serve procedures and medications available to elementary students based on classroom achievement. Students will be expected to use the knowledge gained from the earlier mentioned insurance documentation course to fill out all necessary application material for proper self-medication.
Tell everyone what you think about these stipulations in the comment board. Happy April 1st!
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
This post is going to heat up a lot of people. Obama is bankrupting this country. Off to Australia!
Come on man. Please admit you didn’t fall for this.
You had me for a first few…I was really gonna check the price of bacon next month!! Boo hiss!
Fuzzy
Ha! You were April Fooled!
Maybe I was…
But, a 27 cent bacon tax would not surprise me… no joke!
Who said Australia is any better. Not only is our new government also bankrupting Australia, but they are also currently trying to censor the internet even though 95% of the population is against it!
Please stop reading rightwing nut blogs. This health care bill is 100% for the common family.
“Please stop reading rightwing nut blogs.”
Exactly! Left wing nut blogs are *way* more entertaining.
And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you…
The orignial bill was authored by a former Wellpoint VP. An almost identical plan was proposed by AHIP in 2009 (guess who they represent?).
In other words, it’s a corporatist scheme, through and through.
Indeed! It’s very hard for me (a European) to understand whát problem some Americans have with a health insurance system for common people. Jeez!
“It’s very hard for me (a European) to understand…”
That’s why Europe is the home of a bunch of second-rate, has-been, Socialist-style nations that suffer from a serious case of power-envy when it comes to the USA…because you don’t understand. You can’t understand why we don’t embrace your Marx-lite political-economic world view, why we don’t want to be like you and give up more and more of our Liberty and Property to the State.
BTW, is that KoolAid you guys on the Continent are drinking sugar-free?
No need to move, Todd. It was an April Fool’s joke.
Australia has single-payer health insurance anyway.
They have private health insurance as well for people who don’t like waiting for procedures or dealing with the public health system.
And so will we. Geez.
Australia has universal health care and private health insurance for people who can afford “better care”. After Obama’s changes the US will have a health care system comparable to Australia’s in 1979.
The joys of living in Australia. Public health cover is excellent for anything standard, and then private cover (whice is affordable) is great for physio, dentistry, podiatry and all that fun stuff
“After Obama’s changes the US will have a health care system comparable to Australia’s in 1979.”
And mandatory.
Genius.
Ha! Unfortunately, even though I realized it was an April Fool’s joke, I was thinking that some folks in Congress would shift money to promote creation of digestible feces; why not? They spread money around for other cr@p all the time!!
LOL I know. “Digestible feces?” Isn’t that another name for what the government is already feeding us?
YAY!!! the abolition of Easy Cheeze. I will be participating in the Bacon Riots. Which of course will lead to Bacon Parties and the formation of the Bacon (political) Party…
I was getting worked up over this.. Then I realized April Fools!
Then I realized that it’s probably not that far off in the future…
Yep, I was totally hoodwinked until the last sentence in #3 – hoodwinked, and shocked/outraged. That’s when April Fools kicked in for me, too… nice one Mark/Bees!
I am still secretly still wishing that Obama is just a mean and cruel April Fools joke…
I’m not being secretive about it.
Bush started a couple of wars for no reason, reduced us to torture, continued handing the country over to corporations, bankrupting us, shredded the constitution and our rights, etc. But NOW you’re up in arms. Wow.
Haha i know, right? “Obama is going to bankrupt this country.” Umm… I think those three trillion dollars we owe China were lost on W’s watch…
The *nutjobs* are the ones on this blog who actually think there’s a difference between Bush/Obama and Republicrats/Democrans. Wake up people.
Not really sure just how much of this is true but it’s fascinating none the less and makes good arguments. I especially like the last part about how the chain of command goes way up beyond who we “see” as being in command, bush could just have been a lowly peon.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197&ei=0aOrS8aRB5Kc-AaD-73HBg&q=zeitgeist#
i agree with mountain beaver.
haha yeah mt beaver….bush and Clinton are butt buddies for Haiti now…rich people look after other rich people…there are only two parties. Rich and Normal to poor. Obama is just cutting out the middle class and finalizing the mess they started.
*sigh* the war in afghanistan had a pretty good reason; we didn’t torture, as that word has been understood for the last couple hundred years; the obama annual deficit will be as much as the debt he inherited; the constitution is still there and in full force.
stop polluting mark’s great website w/ bad information. plenty of places for you to vent your anti-bush spleen.
unless your post was an april fool’s post, to which I say – well played sir, well played.
Also agreeing with Mountain Beaver. And seriously, as easy as it is to blame our president for everything, give the Senate and Congress their fair share of it.
Congratulations, you have accurately described every President of the modern era.
Now go buy yourself a cookie.
cookies aren’t on the Primal Blueprint(tm) diet. you should change that to go buy yourself a coconut macaroon.
If that Republican ticket was in office- Nobody would have a job right now. Can’t wave a flag and lie to the public and think that will do any good.
Every President lies.
That’s how they convince you to think they are different from anyone else.
If you know anything about politics, you know that both parties are nearly identical.. How else do you think elections are so close? Because America is somehow divided completely in two EXACTLY? No.
On a side note.. Obama has failed to keep unemployment rates down, so I fail to see your point anyways. Actually he has failed on about every front so far.
This new tax will not stand. I regret that I have but one life to give for bacon!
Aye, I must agree. The government shall fall, for the common man shall not be overpowered with his overflowing rage, determination, and bacon-lust.
“Many popular cholesterol-lowering medications have been approved for public mass consumption. Over the next three years, statins will be used as food additives to regulate foods that would otherwise raise cholesterol. Kraft already has plans for a Stat’n Mac’n Cheese. And Pfizer and Baskin-Robbins are currently working together to produce 31 statin-filled flavors of ice cream by 2011.”
April Fools!
But, I wouldn’t be too shocked should such a thing come to pass…
Hey, there are MDs in the UK who want to add statins to the water supply.
LOL good one! I would rebel if there was ever a bacon tax!!!
A tax on “fatty foods” has been discussed for quite some time. Don’t be surprised that one day you’ll pay a tax on bacon and 70/30 or even 80/20 hamburger.
Ya had me going there for just a couple of minutes
Had me going until I got to #2. Then I skimmed to the bottom, looking for the April Fool disclaimer.
“The surgery will be reserved for patients who have already exhausted conventional forms of weight loss such as eating low fat foods and running on a treadmill.” Priceless!
This is already how it works in my health plan!
when i read the line about the bacon i was about to start rioting right here in my home office. I kinda doubted though that the government was actually going to try to educate our children that seemed a little out there even for them.
Ah!! You got me! I was getting all worked up over the audacity of such provisions being allowed..when I too realized it was April’s Fool.
The sad thing is how many people will read these and believe them.
The sadder thing is how many think these are all fantastic ideas that must be implemented as quickly as possible.
When you have Barak Obama as your president it is not sad when someone believes it.
Actually it is sad… because it makes you realize that Obama is truly “changing” America…
Todd, this was just a funny April fools joke. Let’s just concentrate on health and save our political feelings for other blogs.
Amen. One of the great things about MDA is the civility and lack of political “discussion.” There are a multitude of other sites for that. Let’s focus on what we have in common here . . .
Can we stop with the Obama hate for ONE %&^%$#* DAY PLEASE?! Your side lost. Sorry it was to a brown-skinned guy with a funny name. Put on your big boy underpants and deal with it.
And they can tax bacon all they want, I’ll be over here with my sausage.
Sure, but how about if we also stop with the “if you don’t like Obama’s policies it’s because he’s not white”?
Quit smearing anyone who disagrees with your politics as a racist.
Did you ever request to stop the Bush hate, too?
I know this post is a joke, but item #4 (statins) doesn’t even seem that far off. The following article showed up in my RSS reader from Scientific American *yesterday*:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=static-over-statins
Hilarious! I got to the “food trough” before it hit me. Scarily, the first four weren’t all that unbelievable. And sign me up for the “Bacon Party” right now.
Lured you in.
Mark – it’s been awhile since you pulled our leg, but this is a good one for sure!
I especially like this one: “73 million dollar stipend has been awarded to Monsanto to genetically modify cows to produce nutrient dense, flavor-rich, digestible feces.”
I think the item in #2, replacing physical ed with the insurance documentation course, was a pretty good clue…
Considering some of the things our gov’t has done, that one didn’t shock me :/
I didn’t realize it was a joke till, the USDA trough.
I have no doubt they would brain-wash replace Phys Ed with indoctrination. I mean look at ‘nutrition’ classes. Where you get to learn that fat is evil and whole wheat is a ‘good source of fiber.”
I think we’ve pretty much already arrived at #9. Of course, a bacon tax would definitely result in a VFF-clad Grok march on Washington! LOL
I’m so glad I live in Canada, no bacon tax here.
Just every other form of tax imaginable.
And a strong economy, excellent public health care, and a government that even though Conservative is more open minded than many Democrats. Taxes work when the public actually benefits from them.
Yes, I am Canadian.
All said with a smile of course! I just re-read that and it ‘sounds’ rather un-neighbourly! I was trying to channel the beer commercial there at the end…somehow it doesn’t translate
Mark,
Now that you sent my jaw to the floor, how do you plan on picking it up tomorrow?
I DONE GONE DID TOO MUCH EEZY CHEEZE I CANT DO THIS ALONE!
I was getting mad at the bacon tax!
Bacon tax? Us primals are gonna have to go underground.
haha!! I nearly bought it…
I liked the “nutrient dense, flavor-rich, digestible feces” part
I would definately need to join the Bacon Riots!
I’m a moron, I believe it until Easy Cheese.
lmao @ bacon tax. That would be every primal follower’s worst nightmare! Pretty sure I’d be bankrupt in a day or two.
I had to read the part on educating 4th graders twice before I was certain LOL. And then only because it was “replace physical education with”!
Though I DO rather wish schools would teach a class on real-life skills – like making a budget, planning a dinner party, understanding the mortgage process, and other basic legal/financial stuff that you come across later, writing a business plan, etc. Just a few that come to mind, there are plenty more that I am ensuring my kids know at age-appropriate levels!
I think a “real life skills” course would be a GREAT idea as well! You could combine it with the mandatory typing class. (Are those still necessary? Or do kids just pop out of the womb knowing how to type?)
I always look back fondly at my typing class back in 1989. It was the most useful class I took for sure.
As far as kids already knowing how to type when they pop out, I’m not sure about that, but I am convinced they know to text though!
This is one of the current problems in our society. We feel that it is up to someone else (government, daycare, friends) to teach our children the skills they need to succeed. Please people teach your kids what they need to know and don’t leave it up to the school or government.
Indeed, I am one of those “literal” people so I didn’t realize till the food trough part either. I know a lot people are hurting right now, example:GM has cut all of it’s retired blue collars health care… in turn, ruined many people who depend on medications, while no health care is fine for people who are younger and hopefully healthier. The older population is a much worse boat. I hope in the long run this bill will aid all people, but change is rough on a small or big scale. I love the recipes this site offers and wanted to say AWESOME job. ^_^
real-life skills
Isn’t that what home-ec used to be? And of course they can’t replace phys-ed with anything. That implies that most schools still have phys-ed.
I was disappointed when I first read this as I was expecting some kind of April Fools post. Once they started talking about fourth graders pressing a primary care physician into getting their way though, I became dubious, and by the bacon tax I was convinced. Such a measure would’ve provoked a serious response.