Ask Professor Classypants: Supreme Court Health Care Ruling Edition
Greetings, advice-seekers! Or should I say, “Greetings, freeloaders, looky-loos, and teases?”
Yes, you.
Professor Classypants, it seems, is plum out of letters. It can’t be my borderline abusive tone. I know you love the way I willfully ignore your questions and belittle your life challenges. And I know it’s not because you’re too busy getting your advice from your friends. No, there has to be another explanation as to why my inbox was empty this week. I lack the introspection and self-awareness for it to not be your fault.
I think that explanation is: you’re a little under the weather. And while it’s never any fun to have the sniffles in the summertime, it’s a particularly harrowing time to be sick in America. It’s 80 bajillion degrees Kelvin outside. Oh, and nine people you’ve never met are deciding how much access you [and your neighbors and their neighbors and a whole host of poor people] are going to have to health care.
It’s the Supreme Court. Could they not scrounge up a slightly smaller chair for Justice Ginsberg? One that doesn’t make her look like Edith Ann?
This may not be of concern to you if you were raised in a plastic bubble, have had one job for 52 years, and are Scrooge McDuck. But for most Americans, the prospect of broader access to health care being yanked away before we truly got to enjoy it… well, it gives them what WebMD would diagnose as “The Willies.”
This can both diagnose and give you The Willies if it’s been stored in your Dad’s attic and is brimming with silverfish. TRUTH.
None of us know what, exactly, the U.S. Supreme Court will hand down later this week. I mean, besides a big ass pile of black robes and an INXS Kick t-shirt or two. But after that, they’ll probably hand down a ruling or two on whether or not the government can mandate that you have health care (spurring, y’know, employers and companies and others to make sure you can). And whether the Supreme Court health care ruling upholds, upends, or modifies a sliver of what we’ve come to call “Obamacare,” the negative, ill-informed anti-Obamacare chatter across the country — and the failure to educate certain protesters that YESOHMYGAWDYOURMEDICAREWASALREADYRUNBYTHEGOVERNMENT — may have people worrying over costs, when to seek care, and when to reveal a medical condition.
And when to tell your doctor that you didn’t have a cat when you came in.
Since you were tooooooo sick to spend 45 freakin’ seconds writing me an email, I figure you are among the fretting ill Americans. So here is a quick guide to home health care in case Obamacare goes south (or your crazy uncle forwards you an email telling you it did).
This is what we call in the blogging biz “subliminal messaging.”
- Always self-diagnose… preferably using the same tool that keeps falsely reporting that the kid from Jerry Maguire OD’d.
- The burn treatment that never fails? Okay, so it’s more of a “DUDE! Buuuurrrrrrn!” treatment but it works: ”I’m rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” You could opt for “sticks and stones may break my bones” but, c’mon… we have the Polio vaccine [for] now. Get with the times.
- Don’t overspend on bandages. A little dirt, air, and water will do that gaping head wound just fine. Did I mention not to overspend on bandages because a little dirt, air, and water will do that gaping head wound just fine. Do you smell something?
- Take all the preventive advice that Jenny McCarthy has to offer. Or end up at the receiving end of Jim Carrey’s indiscriminate YouTube rant. Your call.
- Don’t ever go to the Emergency Room. Walk into a Max & Erma’s on half-price salad bar night and bleed all over the Make Your Own Sundae bar. You’ll get twice the attention at half the price and go out of this world just as your Mama and Daddy conceived you: hemorrhaging into a vat of maraschino cherries, sprinkled with walnuts while basic cable plays in the background.
If your cable is like my cable, it’s playing this or “How I Met Your Mother.”
- To paraphrase the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no arms.” It’s simple: the less you use your limbs, the less chance you will injure one. However, if you should forget and, say, get your arm chewed up in machinery while making those American cars political candidates are so keen on…
- Let nature take its course. Gangrenous limb? If you ignore it, it will shrivel up and fall off, setting you on your merry, wobbly way. At least that’s the way it works with hamsters. I hope.
- Fever, schmever. Use the time to create great art. Then convince independent film denizens that hours of footage of you walking into walls and vomiting into tins of fruit cocktail is festival-ready.
- Don’t believe the hype. There are very few maladies that you can’t walk off. Just look at all those people doing the Race for the Cure.
- Go back to college… with the money your grandma left you because the Supreme Court dicked with the prescription loophole in Medicaid. This one is a maybe. An aspirational tragedy if you will. I guess we’ll find out on Thursday!
Thanks, Grandma! See you in Hell! (Art by: Pastor Kenny)
Assuming you’re feeling up to snuff again next week and that the Supreme Court hasn’t left you un- or under-insured — and assuming you aren’t an undocumented immigrant (or just look like one because you don’t look “super Arizonian”) — I hope you’ll drop your old pal The Professor a line. I hope, for your sake, that you’re seeking advice and aren’t being held hostage in a doctor’s office in need of a payday loan.
*Cue Lee Greenwood*
Happy writing! Thanks for stopping by to live, love, and learn. Be sure to join us next week. And remember: Act Classy and you will be classy. Ish.
Have a question for Professor Classypants? Feel free to use our magical form that lets you enter information into rectangles. When you hit SUBMIT, the form sends electronic mail to Professor Classypants with your message. Great… now we’ve over-explained things.
About the Author
Molly Martin Professor Darla Von Classypants is actually Molly G. Martin. Because Ann Landers and Dear Abby and Dear Prudence haven't used real names in 67 years so why should she? And if you're thinking this reminds you of an old Dave Barry schtick: when you grow up and get your own blog, THEN you can have opinions.
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