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THE POLITICS OF BLACKNESS: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing |
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Written by BARBARA HOWARD
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 Recently, I had the great opportunity to spend some quality time with
our healthcare system. While I had wonderful care for the three days I
spent at Jackson North Medical Center in North Miami Beach, I couldn’t
help but wonder: What if this had happened after Obama’s healthcare
reform had taken place?
At my age, under this wonderful plan of his, I would have been left to
my own devices. Our new and improved president – the first, the last
and the only black to be president in this century, the HNIC of the
free world, has devised a plan to socialize medicine.
First, his National Coordinator of Health Information Technology will mandate that all my (and yours) medical records be converted into electronic data. Problem: If hackers can get into your bank files, what do you think they could do to your medical files? Second problem: Who do you think pays for this? Why, we do, of course.
Oh, he put some money into the budget for the conversion, but it won’t be enough. I’ve participated in conversions before, and those who plan it never know the true costs. Third problem: Once the conversion is completed, the federal government will have access to all, I repeat, all your medical information and secrets. How about your drug or alcohol treatments, your abortions, your STDs? Of course, your doctor will be penalized if he/she doesn’t comply.
Then, after all your records are computerized and accessed by the federal government, the new Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research will review your doctors’ recommendations for treatment and medications, and decide if they are “appropriate and cost-effective.’’
And, guess what? Obama allocated more money in his Economic Stimulus Bill to fund these initiatives than the funding for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, combined.
This council, made up of bureaucrats, could have easily decided that I was too old to have all the medical attention the hospital gave me, and there would have been nothing I could do about it. And, if I didn’t agree, I would be called all kinds of names, including the one comedienne Janeane Garofalo called those of us who are black and Republican – “pathological and suffering from Stockholm syndrome.”
In case you don’t know what Stockholm syndrome means, it’s when kidnap victims become sympathetic to their captors. And in this case, those “captors” are “racists” who “hate that a black guy is in the White House,” according to Miss Garofalo in her interview with MSNBC host Keith Olbermann.
The show has been defined by Noel Sheppard in NewsBusters as “one of the most vile, hate-filled attacks on average American citizens ever conveyed on national television.”
I dare say that Miss Garofalo knows little or nothing about black folk and definitely not black Republicans. But she speaks as if she does, which is a dangerous thing.
That’s what happens when someone has a little knowledge, but thinks they have a lot. Like Garofalo, Obama knows little or nothing about how to “fix” the best health care system in the world.
If it were not the best, then people from all over the world would not be coming here for treatment. And Jackson Memorial Hospital (along with the Jackson hospital system) is known for having some of the best health experts in the world. My experience there proves its reputation to be true.
But our new president, “the one we’ve been waiting for,” thinks he knows more than everybody, including all 43 presidents before him. Yet he has not run any type of organization – ever. Not a city, not a county, not a state, not a small company, not a large corporation, not an educational institution, not a non-profit organization, not even a governmental agency.
But our lives are in his hands. And if he doesn’t change his philosophy of big government running all our businesses, including our healthcare system, we will all be in big trouble.
He may be a smart man, but having a Harvard Law School education does not prepare him to run the largest government in the world. As my mother used to say, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Barbara Howard is president of Barbara Howard & Associates and the Florida state chair for C.O.R.E. (the Congress of Racial Equality).
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