Socialist medicine keeps Dick alive

[BurtWorm]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-15/multiple-heart-attacks-how-dick-cheney-keeps-going/

...

Why on earth is anyone with this cardiac history still alive? Could it be some odd demonic possession or other explanation better suited for True Blood than for the medical textbooks?

Six years ago, the doctor and medical historian Howard Markel, writing in The Atlantic, assembled seven fancy cardiologists and discussed Anonymous Patient C’s medical history with them; all were surprised that he was still puttering along, and even more surprised to then be informed that he was at the time their vice president. Stated most simply, he should have died long, long ago. Most people with his heart, his weight and sedentary habits, his history of cigarette smoking and who knows what else already have heard the bell toll. But not Cheney—pointing out that, though useful to define national trends, population-based statistics are completely useless for predicting the fate of an individual. The extremely unlikely happens every day, all of the time: Just as it’s the rare person who wins the lottery, or is struck by lightning, or rolls snake eyes 50 times in a row, so too does a bad guy with a worse heart beat all the odds to stay alive.

Oil baron, draft dodger, professional paranoid, and all-around Blue Meanie, Cheney’s miraculous longevity is nothing so much as the happy product of the heavily tax-subsidized and regulated American health-care system, exhibit A in the argument for intrusive and overarching government programs to ensure the public’s health. Though the free-marketeers would argue the exact opposite—that the invention of such sci-fi devices as the LVAD are the product of unfettered capitalism—this completely ignores the reality of how such inventions are tested, monitored, and reviewed. Devices are studied in hospitals propped up by Medicaid and Medicare dollars organized by doctors funded by federal grants. Patient safety is assured by government bean-counters spread throughout windowless Washington offices via a process that is noticeable only when it fails—when, for example, a pacemaker is found to be defective, or a medication proves toxic.

Cheney is alive today despite a lifetime spent trying to deprive the needy of basic human rights such as health care. Yet his continued survival shows both the impotency of his attempts and the potency of the American health-care system, a lumbering bureaucracy no doubt, but one that blindly cares for big-hearted Joes as well as heartless Dicks.

[spanone]

1. he's been living off the government all his life...pathetic bastard

[Cirque du So-What]

2. Still sneering after all these years

Even without my reading glasses, I can see the Dick of Death sneering at us, courtesy of bionic enhancements. This isn't socialism; it's power & privilege on nasty, snarling display.

[NightWatcher]

3. "for now". Please edit op to say "keeps the dick alive for now"

Everyone knows the facts have a liberal bias.

You're 100% right

[4lbs]

4. Oh. I thought this was a stranger than fiction story, but it's just about Cheney.

Although...

[4lbs]

5. dupe..

dupe.