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The Political Situation at the County Fair

2009-08-20 · Hank · watch on YouTube · US politics & society · comedy performance

Answering John's giant-boar health-care video, Hank strains to match it with comic county-fair analogies for US politics (cap and trade, the Democratic Party as a big-headed llama, Cash for Clunkers as a demolition derby), then argues seriously that US health care's core problem is tying doctors' income to the treatments they recommend.

What is said

00:00:00 — Hank back from the fair sees John's boar/health-care video and feels he must match its analogy

  • ★★ Hank got home from the fair on Sunday with fair footage, then saw John's video comparing the world's largest boar to US health care and felt he had to match it. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Fair-politics analogies: motocross/cap and trade, chicken/politics, llama/Democratic Party, corn dog/Iraq, demolition derby/Cash for Clunkers

  • ★★ Hank jokingly likens the Democratic Party to a llama with a huge head and an atrophied body that acts only every four years and must get involved. (playful) — 00:00:53 · Republican Party
  • ★ Hank jokes that demolition derbies are the original Cash for Clunkers and would remove far more cars with a $4,500 prize to each winner. (joke) — 00:02:02

00:02:31 — Serious response: health care and the fair both make money off us; decouple doctors' income from patient care

  • ★★★ Hank says the biggest parallel between health care and the fair is that both try to make money off us; at the fair he can ask the price and decline. — 00:02:31
  • ★★★ Hank suggests tying money to a doctor's duty makes it hard to separate profit from best advice, since patients trust doctors and don't price-shop procedures. (hedged) — 00:03:00
  • ★★★ Hank calls this the real problem of US health care: doctors' responsibility to patients must be decoupled from the money they make from them. (hedged) — 00:03:00
  • ★★ Hank stresses the issue is extraordinarily complicated and that he is not saying doctors are only out to make money. — 00:03:00

00:03:30 — New Yorker article on US health-care costs recommended; closing pundit joke

  • ★★ Hank recommends a long New Yorker article linked in the sidebar on why US health spending is so large, hopes all Nerdfighters read it and wants to discuss it with John. (hedged) — 00:03:30 · Nerdfighteria

Humor (significant)

  • After the llama, Hank starts an Iraq analogy with a corn dog and has nothing to follow it. — 00:01:37 > «The situation in Iraq is totally like this corn dog because... Corn dog.»
  • The Democratic Party is a llama with a big head and atrophied body that only acts every four years. — 00:01:37 > «the frickin' Republican llama is going crazy with its huge body and its tiny head»
  • Hank proposes demolition derbies with $4,500 prizes instead of Cash for Clunkers, taking two dozen cars off the road each. — 00:02:02 > «And I guarantee you, none of those cars are ever going to drive again. Problem solved!»
  • After the serious part, Hank adds one more fair analogy. — 00:03:30 > «Political pundits are like fare rides, because just looking at them makes me want to puke.»

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