Euphemisms put a smiley face on
distasteful things. When I started my veterinary
service in 1989, I searched for favorable words to
explain the cost of traveling into the country to
treat a critter; an expense clients historically
resisted. “Out call” is emotionless, while “mileage”
sounds too much like a penalty. In a moment of sheer
brilliance, I coined the phrase “ambulatory
service.” My logic was the term gives the impression
you are screaming down the road with flashing lights
and blaring sirens, so clients are receiving
something of value. It was the smartest thing I had
ever done…until I met Art.
Art was a seasoned Arab horse breeder and a new
client who asked me to come out and castrate five,
two-year-old colts. Art’s eighty or so years had
slowed him, but he had the five colts haltered when
I raced into his driveway. I went to work and within
an hour I had ten testicles in my bucket and five
horses in various stages of recovery. As the last
pony staggered to his feet, I handed Art the bill
and he wrote me a check. Because of the volume of
surgeries at one stop, I did not charge for
“ambulatory service”.
One month later, Art called me out to treat a horse
with a wire cut. We casually visited as I sutured
the leg wound when Art remarked, “Come down to the
barn and see my new stud colt from California.” Once
finished, I gathered my equipment and followed him
to the barn.
There were just a couple small windows dimly
lighting the stall, so Art stepped in to lead the
horse into the daylight. Years ago, Art was probably
stout enough to physically subdue any colt, but
today the stud outweighed him six to one. The
stallion began nervously loping around the stall as
Art stepped to the center. “He doesn’t want to be
caught,” Art mumbled and he stretched to snag the
stud’s halter. In a split-second, the fractious
colt, stopped, spun and kicked Art square in the
face, dropping him like a rock.
I was certain Art was dead and as I fumbled to open
the stall gate, he moaned and sat upright. Art
crawled around on his hands and knees searching
through the sawdust for his dentures while I tried
to hustle him out the gate before the colt did kill
him. Within a couple seconds, Art found his teeth,
crawled out of the stall and slowly struggled to his
feet. In the daylight, I saw his lip was split clear
to his nose, so I said, “Let’s go to the hospital.”
He resisted at first, but upon inspecting his face
in the rear view mirror of my pickup, he agreed. On
the trip to Billings, Art was fretting about the
cost of new dentures, which I took as good news
regarding his mental function. I called Art’s wife
and explained what happened, so she met us at the
hospital. With Art in good hands, I drove back to my
clinic, invoiced Art for treating the horse with the
wire cut and thought nothing further about the
accident.
Months passed and the bill remained unpaid, so my
staff began sending the series of friendly
collection letters. One day, a check appeared in the
mail along with a scathing letter from Mrs. Art.
Confused, I placed her letter on my desk, forgot
about it and never heard from them again. Three
years later, while shuffling papers around my desk
(something I now do every year), I re-discovered the
letter. I read it again and with fresh eyes, her
point hit me like a gulp of sour milk—my euphemism
had gone rogue. Unlike his first invoice, Art’s bill
for suturing the wire cut contained the “ambulatory
service” charge. Over the three years the letter was
buried on my desk, both Art and his wife thought I
charged an extra fee—ambulatory service—to run him
to the hospital. By this time I had passed the point
of no return and this brings me to my point:
Politicians also craft euphemisms to cultivate
favorable perceptions, so never accept their terms
at face value.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)
is the euphemism for Obamacare. Recent polling data
indicates a majority of doctors think patient care
will suffer under PPACA, plus President Obama now
projects it will cost $110 billion more over the
next decade than originally proposed. (As the
president’s pledge to cut the deficit in half over
four years, actually resulted in doubling it, we
must assume a similar four-fold increase in the true
cost of “free healthcare”.)
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
ironically protects no one and is cost prohibitive.
In exchange for most of the money in your wallet,
you will surrender your health decisions to the
Internal Revenue Service (another euphemism). Do not
rely on federal politicians to correct this
unconstitutional abomination; the Tenth Amendment
acknowledges your state legislature has the power to
nullify PPACA. In the 2011 Montana Legislative
Session multiple bills to block PPACA made it to the
governor’s desk where he vetoed them. This issue
makes your vote in 2012 the biggest in our nation’s
history. If you do not understand the devastating
effect PPACA will have on our great American
experiment in freedom, please stand down and let
those of us who do slay this dragon. If PPACA is
fully implemented, our generation becomes the one
who failed to guard the watchtower of liberty handed
down by our founders.
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