By Alexandra Petri
The Washington Post
Be of good cheer!
The GOP is the party of health care! The Justice Department is asking an appeals court to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act, but don’t worry, the GOP is going to be “the Party of Great HealthCare,” and it is going to replace what currently exists (a health-care system) with something even better: the void; oblivion; the rush of wings of an enormous eagle departing, never to return!
In place of the Affordable Care Act, you will have the words “Get Well Soon” written on the back of a McDonald’s wrapper. In place of the Affordable Care Act, your doctor will just read you a long list of reasons he, personally, would prefer that you never had an abortion, although you went in because of a disturbing growth on your left foot and he is a dermatologist. In place of the Affordable Care Act, you will have a picture taken of you and placed in a yearbook; far better than preserving your body, a fragile and useless vessel that will inevitably decay.
Who needs the Affordable Care Act when, somewhere, there is the smile in the eyes of a child? Who needs care when you can see the sight of fresh spring leaves? Why, to recollect a line from Walt Whitman as you bite down firmly on a piece of wood; surely that is as good as medicaments!
In place of the Affordable Care Act, your body will be carefully gerrymandered so that even if you lose a lung, the rest of it will keep going. If that doesn’t work, the provinces of your body that revolt will not be counted. Your liver does not represent the will of the real parts of the body, and no feedback from it is going to be permitted. This will work, probably. If not, to distract you while it inevitably decays, there is going to be a big parade to celebrate Donald J. Trump!
Your health care may be gone, but in lieu of it; well, close your eyes and imagine the best health care ever. Then continue to imagine for the rest of your life that you are receiving it.
It is not that there is only no plan for health care. There is also no plan to address climate change, which, in its way, is a plan to address health care. This way, by the time your body starts to disintegrate, you will not notice, because you will be buffeted by strong winds as you try to swim away from an enraged polar bear.
Similarly, we are doing our best to deposit Stephen Moore on the Federal Reserve Board so that the fact that you cannot afford insulin in particular will be obscured by the fact that you cannot afford anything in general.
It will maybe be not so good if the Affordable Care Act is replaced with nothing, but when the slogan “repeal and replace” was first making the rounds, nobody specified that it had to be replaced with something. This whole “with something” nonsense is really throwing a wrench into things, and I am not so sure about it. Are we sure nothing is not better?
This is much better, because once something exists, it will contain problems. The second anyone proposes a plan, enthusiasts of airplane travel come forward and say the plan is bad for airplane travel and, furthermore, is mean to cows. Whereas if you simply replace something with nothing, who can object?
That is what will become of the whole universe, eventually, and in a sense, you could say nothing is the best plan of all. This is why the solution to everything is to say no to anything anyone proposes. To be the party of no is, in a deeper, larger sense, to be the party of great health care! All health care that exists is a flawed version of the ideal health care that exists only in the voter’s mind. (This also works when debating Medicare-for-all.)
Anyway, we’re seeing now that some people are, just for fun, getting rid of vaccines, which we assume is a sign that health is no longer something people desire? This is a relief. Not because our only plan was a sticky note with “PLAN GOES HERE” written on it, but for some other reason.
No, we definitely had a plan. Really, nothing to worry about.
Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter @petridishes.
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