Healthcare Debate Takes on Baby Talk

November 12, 2009 by Cathy Ribble  
Filed under: News

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Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) appeared on the House floor on Saturday with an adorable little baby named “Maddie” on his shoulder pitching his case against the healthcare reform bill which was later passed.

“This is Maddie.  Maddie likes America because we have freedom here and Maddie believes in patient choice healthcare.  She has come here to say she doesn’t want government to take over healthcare.  She wants to keep her plan,” Rep. Shadegg said.

“Maddie knows if this bill passes, she knows her mom’s health care will go away and won’t be around for five years.  If the bill passes then no more healthcare for her mom because it has to change.  Maddie wants patient choice.”

“She doesn’t want her mom’s premiums to go up.  She doesn’t want her mom’s taxes to go up by $730 billion, do you Maddie?”

“She wants America’s health insurance companies to have to compete with each other.  She believes in choices, but most of all she says, don’t tax me to pay for healthcare that you guys want.  If you want healthcare, pay for it yourself because it’s not fair to pass your healthcare bills on to me and my grandchildren,” said Rep. Shadegg.

This morning columnist and screenwriter Robert J. Elisberg mocked the Arizona congressman in Baby Talk Comes to Congress by taking the opposite position.  Elisberg thought about using a ventriloquist’s dummy, but recruited a real baby known as “Jo Jo” to give voice to his political concerns about the Republican party.

“Jo Jo wants me to tell you how upset he is about the Republicans trying to block healthcare.  He says that their actions are anathema to democracy (his words) and unpatriotic.  Further, baby Jo Jo wants me to say that he thinks Birthers are ‘poopies,’ Deathers are ’sad crustaceans’ and Tea Partyers ‘don’t have the sensibility of ’strained peas.’ All his words.”

Elisberg broadens Jo Jo’s discussion to send love to the people of New Orleans wiped out by Katrina and then asks the Republicans to quit saying, “NoNoNoNoNo” about everything because “You’re beginning to sound like me when I’m tired, hungry and getting cranky, and even I think I sound like a big baby then.”

I guess it is proven fact that sometimes the innocence, purity and hope for the future symbolized in a real live baby transcends what we are incapable of saying in other words.  Health care reform in America has become the great concern of all Americans it seems.  But have all the rhetoric and political battles forgotten what the real issue is?  Does anyone even remember what the original goal was?

As the health care reform battle continues in the U.S. Senate, can we get past the baby talk and do what is good for America — now and future, instead of playing politics?

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