Baby Boomers and Healthcare...

The current battle over Healthcare directly springs from Boomer selfishness; the Baby Boomers are, without a doubt, the most health-obsessed people in the history of mankind. They have brought us the jogging craze, the aerobics craze, the macrobiotic and organic diets, steroid abuse, vitamin abuse, herbal remedies, the healing power of crystals, holistic medicine, Yoga and Pilates. They believe they have the right to live forever.

They expect to live forever, perpetually young, and free of every minor complaint. You'll notice that all of the ultra-expensive-but-marginally-effective drug advertising these days is aimed specifically at Baby Boomers, and their lifestyle of convenience: once-a-month osteoporosis treatments (because they're too busy to devote 18 seconds a day to taking a pill with a glass of water), erectile dysfunction medications that swear you can get a boner on a schedule (because it pays to have that 36-hour zone of boner-on-a-moment's-notice piece of mind), miracle cures for leaky bladders, overgrown prostates, pattern baldness, vaginal dryness, graying and thinning hair, and made-up "diseases" like Chronic Dry Eye (take your fucking contacts out and wear glasses once in a while, you vain motherfucker!) and Restless Leg Syndrome (do they get up and walk away of their own volition? How about you get off your recliner and go take a walk?). All pushed by exquisitely-tanned-and-well-preserved-through-extensive-plastic-surgery Baby-Boomer actors, who seem to portray the ideal retirement life centered around recreating the 60's -- only with mountain bikes and spandex shorts-- where eternal youth is measured in orgasms,or merely the ability to fuck at all. And of course, they expect it all to come at someone else's expense.

Because being a Baby Boomer means never having to answer for anything, even taking care of your own health. They try to avoid the consequences of Old Age with the same fervor their parents devoted to fighting the scourge of Nazism. Consequences (from anything) are for other people, and in this case, so are the bills. Oh, and if they don't get what they want, why, they'll have nothing but medically-extended years to do nothing at all --- except vote....for people like Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry. People who think like they do, because they are the same people.

Not that the last crop of politicos was any better. George W. Bush's idea of "reforming" medicare was to add the "Prescription Drug Plan", a $1-trillion dollar waste, that was negotiated into existence by Boomers, will almost exclusively be abused by Boomers, and paid for by non-Boomers forever.

The battle over who gets this "healthcare" is typically framed in terms of Citizens-vs-Illegal Aliens, Unions-vs-Private Sector, Black-vs-White, and to a certain extent, all of that is true: the democratic party would like to give even yet more "free" shit to a new demographic (Hispanics) which will replace the old, disappearing demographics of blacks who haven't realized that the fight for Civil Rights was won 40 years ago, and Union Labor. However, the real battle lines are being drawn between those with pre-and-post 1965-birth dates.

Because it is the pre-1965 folks who will receive all the benefits, and all the post-19665 folks who will pay for it (I have chosen 1965 arbitrarily, but it seems as reasonable a starting point as any). That, above all else, is probably why that promise to see everything on C-Span has been broken; because if we saw what was truly going on, we would see a bunch of Baby Boomers conspiring to reserve the privilege taxpayer-funded of medical care all to themselves. Because they're the ones who will have to retire soon, in greater numbers than ever before seen in history, and do so with portfolios that have been destroyed by the economic collapses of recent years (collapses engineered by other Baby Boomers, naturally). All the major players in this drama, Pelosi, Reid, Landrieu, Nelson, Schumer, Bayh, Dorgan, Dodd, Frank, and even Martha Coakley (although she's too dumb to realize it) are all Baby Boomers themselves. There's not a person under 40 in that smoky, political backroom, I'll bet.

I was reminded of all this this morning because first thing, I turned on my television, and I was assaulted, again, by the image of half-a-dozen-aging-hippy-garage-banders singing a paean to the virtues of the erection, and the little pill that brought it to them, but which has 72 other side effects and restrictions which would probably kill a brontosaur under normal conditions.

It's only a short leap from paying for hip replacements and heart valves, to a demand that Government start paying for aphrodisiacs, breast and penile implants, maybe even labioplasty, for octogenarians, just so they can try all those new-fangled-and-totally-free parts out.