Shannon Column: No end could justify this means

I know a guy at Gold’s Gym who has a minor sports hernia. He says the injury is like a poultry pop-up timer, the kind you see on frozen Thanksgiving turkeys.

A turkey’s timer pops out of the carcass when it’s done and announces it’s time to take the bird out of the oven. My friend says his hernia works the same way: when his intestine pops out of the
abdominal wall, he’s done and it’s time to leave the gym.

There’s no real pain associated with a hernia this small, but to prevent gym members from being startled by the sight of a human jack-in-the-box expelling his innards, he’s started wrapping up in an Ace
bandage. He’s found it slims and tightens without messy creams.

You’re probably thinking this poor man is just type of unfortunate victim who will be helped by benevolent President Obama’s health-care “reform” and wondering in which presidential news conference he
appeared.

But he doesn’t qualify as an official approved Obama victim. He’s not reduced to poking his parts back inside the abdominal wall because he spent $90/month on an iPhone instead of health insurance.
And he’s not pitiful because he got this hernia for no good reason and now heartless insurance companies won’t sell him insurance when he could really use it.

The guy’s paid for his own insurance for almost 30 years.

The deductable is the problem. Government bureaucrats mandate what insurance policies must cover so he’s paying for pregnancy coverage, pap smears, chiropractors, mammograms and a whole host
of maladies he will never have.

Even if an out-of-state insurance company offered him a great deal on insurance — pap smears and all — he couldn’t buy it because it’s illegal.

So he has a $5,000 deductable and a new Ace bandage every three months.

Outpatient surgery for a minor hernia won’t satisfy the deductible. So, like any price-conscious consumer, he called Prince William Hospital and Potomac Hospital to ask what this procedure cost and
they laughed.

Genuine health-care reform would give the patient more power and involve the free market. Hospitals and doctors would be required to post prices for comparison purposes and consumers could shop
across state lines for customized health insurance policies that fit their situation.

But incremental change is not what big government Democrats want. It’s not new cabinet department enough, it’s not European enough and it won’t sound good in a campaign commercial.

Long-term effects of legislation are petty details and not as important as the appearance of concern, empathy and action NOW. Obamacare is the biggest teddy bear at the roadside memorial. Its mere
presence among the balloons and the plastic flowers proves Democrats care and they care big!

Back when I was a Democrat and John Ensign was still faithful to his wife, I was the media consultant for his challenger. Ensign made an almost fatal mistake during a debate and admitted he doesn’t
read bills “because they are written in legal language.”

Well guess what? Thirteen years later Mrs. Ensign is seeing a marriage counselor, but Senators and Congressmen still don’t read the bills and they don’t write the bills either.

The more complicated the bill the more the ignorant officeholders need the staff to explain what it is and the more power it gives the staff. And if the legislation is really, really complicated the staffer can
cash in as a K street lobbyist after it passes.

Right now a common complaint regarding health insurance is its complexity. Obamacare’s socialized medicine will be Leviathan: colossal in size with all the individual government pathologies that make
dealing with the government so maddening. It will rival the tax code for complexity, opacity and sheer big government pettifoggery from day one.

And there won’t be the equivalent of TurboTax for Obamacare to insulate us from the complexity.

For patients, Obamacare will be like the FHA loan program designed to rehab and repair foreclosure homes for new owners. The Post had a touching story about a local family that ran into roadblock after
roadblock standing between them and a working toilet; including the petty bureaucrat who rejected their application because the homeowner used the word “sheetrock” instead of the
bureaucrat’s “drywall.”

The solution? The family paid a few thousand dollars to hire their own, personal FHA consultant to negotiate the bureaucracy so they could get the loan approved.

This family’s FHA consultant will be similar to the consultant you’ll be hiring to fight for your CAT scan after the compassionate National Obamacare Diagnostic Outreach Community Specialist
(NODOCS) assures you that a few thumps with a rubber hammer is all the diagnosis you really need.

Welcome to Obamacare. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Michael R. Shannon is owner of MANDATE: Message, Media & Public Relations, located in Woodbridge.