Recently during a brief hospital stay, I had the opportunity to hear a new silent majority finding its voice.
As the admissions nurse interspersed medical questions with chit-chat to put the patient at ease, our conversation drifted to the program on the bedside television — medical costs and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
I asked about medical costs at the hospital, and she mentioned that the expansion under way was being funded by some federal dollars but mostly by state and local money, apparently to the chagrin of federal agencies like Health and Human Services (HHS).
She observed that federal agencies were slowing the construction, adding to the cost, and obstructing space allocation with new regulations. From an apparently non-political person, her comments were instructive.
Another medical staffer popped in to say that my room was ready. With the winter season in full bloom, tourists were doubling and in some areas tripling the Florida population. I had asked for a private room, but with all the Canadians seeking U.S. medical services, I could expect a roommate.
Local doctors say that Canadians on legal visas increase patient levels each winter by up to 30 percent, and Canadians pay with cash eliminating the insurance paperwork morass — in stark contrast to those illegal immigrants receiving free medical care.
As luck would have it, I got a room to myself and soon had a political program on the TV. A medical nurse in her mid-30s came in with two young nurse’s aides. They were soon joined by two medical technicians who worked for a medical tech service that contracted with the hospital.
One of the technicians, in her early 20s, commented on the TV program, where the topic was jobs, and said she was lucky to have a job. She added that Obama misled college students in 2008, and now it’s no jobs, and they live at home, where they are supposed to be happy to remain on their parents’ healthcare insurance.
The truth is, she said, parents don’t want them at home or on their insurance policies.
I was taken aback, but the others didn’t seem fazed by her comments. The nurse’s aides agreed that they too were lucky to have a job. I looked at these young educated people and was dumbfounded by their complaints and subdued anger. I asked them what they meant.
The technician who started it said, “I am in debt up to my eyebrows for college. Obama promised change we can believe in. I and my classmates believed him. We were mistaken.”
One of the nurse’s aides chimed in, “She is spot on. I am doing the same — doing a job less than what I went to college for. I am glad to have this job — not what I expected, but it beats welfare.” The medical nurse motioned, indicating that she should cool it.
I added, “You are America’s future — college-educated and eager to help society. What is happening to our country? Why are you all not doing what you paid colleges to prepare you for?”
The second nurse’s aide said, “You don’t understand. Your generation had opportunities to get ahead. We are saddled with student loans and low-paying jobs. We voted for a man that made promises he knew he couldn’t keep. He is a creation of the money interests and owned by them — that is why Occupy Wall Street people are a joke. They are just a bunch of malcontents who can’t see that Obama is Wall Street.”
I suggested that better days were ahead and that Obama was a one-term president for many reasons, not the least being his hidden agenda of class division and warfare. When I added that Lincoln was right — you can’t fool all of the people all of the time — the five women laughed.
I told them of finding on the Internet a word new to me — Ineptocracy, a system of government where the least capable are elected to lead by the least capable of producing and where rewards go to those who do nothing but live by confiscating the wealth of the producers.
I said, “Ineptocracy is a fitting definition of the Obama administration and those who voted for him in 2008 and of those who will vote for him in 2012.”
One of the technicians concluded, “You are alright for a senior citizen.” They all laughed at that and wished me well. I wish them well and contend that they will, in William Faulkner’s words, “endure and prevail.”
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