A Note from JaaJoe.com To Michelle Obama
- From: "mosesjgunner@xxxxxxxxx" <mosesjgunner@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:25:14 -0800 (PST)
From: http://JaaJoe.com
To: MICHELLE OBAMA
Subject: THE FUNNY SMELL IN THE ROOM COMES FROM YOU
It was twenty years ago, but since it happened during the birth of my
son, I remember it as though it was yesterday. "What is that smell?"
asked my wife. "It smells like someone pooped."
I looked at the nurse and she returned a dubious look which seemed to
indicate that she wanted me to explain the source of the smell. I
decided to ignore the question and the nurse's look. I was twenty-
seven years old, and nothing in my limited experience had given me the
skill set to deal with this awkward situation. I remember thinking
that surely somewhere in nursing school the nurse must have learned
how to deal with patients with involuntary defecations.
My wife became more persistent. "What is that awful smell?" Finally,
the nurse had no choice but to explain the situation. My wife had
received an epidural to eliminate the intense labor pains. The
epidural had eliminated all feeling in the pelvic area, and in the
process of attempting to push the baby out, she had unknowingly pushed
out a rather healthy-sized stool. The nurse explained that she was
just going to wait a few more minutes to verify that the bowels were
completely evacuated, and then she would clean things up and rid the
room of the smell. The patient's extreme embarrassment was not in the
least allayed by the nurse's assurances of such bowel movements being
a common occurrence in these situations.
I was reminded of this story when I listened to Michelle Obama's
speech given on the UCLA campus on February 5th. In her speech she
made the following statement: "Don't get sick in this country. Not
here. Americans are in debt not because they live frivolously, but
because someone got sick. And even with insurance, the deductibles and
premiums are so high that people are still putting medication
treatments on credit cards and they cannot get out from under." Mrs.
Obama has lifted her delicate nose to the air, sniffed, and has
proclaimed a stench in our healthcare system. Mrs. Obama, much like my
wife stating that "it smells like someone pooped," has stated the
obvious. We all know that our healthcare in this country is too
expensive.
Similarly, much as my wife did not realize that she was herself the
source of the smell, Mrs. Obama either does not realize or refuses to
admit that she, and people like her are major contributors to the over-
priced stench in our healthcare system.
In January of 2005 Barack Obama became a freshman United States
senator. In March of 2005 Mrs. Obama received a promotion at her place
of employment, the not-for-profit University of Chicago Hospitals.
Prior to the promotion, she was a hospital administrator earning
$121,910 annually. Her promotion provided her with a title -- Vice-
President for Community and External Affairs -- and a salary of
$316,962.
There is no coincidence here. There is absolutely no doubt that Mrs.
Obama received a salary increase of $195, 052 simply because her
husband had become a senator. If one denies the causal relationship
between the two events, then one has decided to allow their politics
to cloud their judgment. The position of Vice-President for Community
and External Affairs did not exist prior to the creation of the
position for Mrs. Obama, and now that Mrs. Obama has resigned from the
position in order to campaign for her husband, the hospital has not
seen the need to fill the open position. To suggest that Mrs. Obama's
work efforts had suddenly justified a weekly increase in pay of $3751
is ludicrous.
No one at the University of Chicago Hospitals was able to exactly
explain the duties of the person who holds the ambiguous title of Vice-
President for Community and External Affairs, but they all seemed to
agree that the duties had something to do with public relations. I
know that I lack sophistication and that my worldly knowledge is
somewhat limited, but I think that I speak for a great number of
average Joes who just cannot understand why a hospital would need to
pay a public relations person a salary of $316,962.
Perhaps of more importance is the disparity between the salary of Mrs.
Obama, PR-woman-extraordinaire, and the salary of the truly important
people that work in a hospital. The average salary for an
anesthesiologist in Chicago as of February 18th is $215,000. Are we to
believe that a public relations person is so important that she
deserves a salary that is over $100,000 greater than that of the
person that, through general anesthesia and of necessity, takes us
closer to death than we ever want to be and through practiced skill
always brings us back from the precipice?
The situation becomes even more grotesque. In justifying the $195,000
increase in Mrs. Obama's salary, University of Chicago Hospitals
spokesman John Easton told the Tribune that Mrs. Obama's salary is in
line with the salaries of the sixteen other vice presidents at the
hospital. Mr. Easton glibly admits that the University of Chicago
Hospitals had seventeen overpaid executives. If we take Mrs. Obama as
our benchmark, we can assume that each executive is overpaid in the
amount of at least $200,000. Some may accuse me of being overly
simplistic, but I am absolutely certain that the salaries of the
executives of the University of Chicago Hospitals could be immediately
reduced by $3.4 million and the hospital system would suffer
absolutely no adverse effects.
I think that we can all agree that our healthcare in the United States
has become too expensive. Many are quick to blame the big, highly
profitable drug companies and the ambulance-chasing lawyers, and
certainly the drug companies and the lawyers share some culpability.
But many of our healthcare dollars are spent overpaying bloated
administrative staffs in hospitals across the nation. Hospital
administrative positions are often awarded based on who a person knows
rather than what a person knows, and appointments to hospital
administrative positions are often political, as in the case of Mrs.
Obama.
Mrs. Obama noted in her speech that deductibles and insurance premiums
are too expensive and with that statement we can concur. But Mrs.
Obama ignores the fact that, until recently, her bloated salary was a
contributing factor to these high healthcare expenses. During the
coming months, Mrs. Obama will attempt to use her own stench to
convince us of the need for government-controlled universal
healthcare. We should resist any attempt by any of the candidates to
further insinuate government in our healthcare system and insist on
more employment accountability in a hospital system that is already
largely funded by taxpayer dollars.
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