Foot in Mouth Disease

Animal activist groups are gearing up for a fight over President Obama’s health care plan. While elderly Americans worry about a decline in Medicare payments, and those with costly disabilities are concerned about the consequence of leveling costs (precluding coverage of expensive treatments for exotic disorders like Munschausen Syndrome by Proxy), animal activists are asking important questions about why government plans should not pay for fMRI’s for cats, and if rodents who are routinely exterminated will be given a fair deal in any plan extended to other mammals.

In other notes, the Obama health plan has also posed some serious philosophical concerns regarding in particular the issues of immortality and oblivion. Will government support cryogenic freezing that allows people to be suspended until a cure is found for their diseases? And will the health plan also cover the transmigration of souls. Let’s say you are born in New York, but you die, fall into oblivion, and then get reincarnated in New Rochelle. Does your coverage follow you?

These and similar questions were the subject of an animated town hall sponsored by the Eulenspiegel Society, a group traditionally known as a champion of consensual sadomasochism, and Right to Kill, a group that propounds the benefits of homicide for those who don’t have the courage to kill themselves. Representative Barney Frank appeared before the gathering to present the administration positions and to answer questions, but he excused himself soon after the Q & A began, explaining that, while he was happy to have been able to present some keys issues, he had plainly gone to the wrong address.