Over the next week or so, presumably, we can expect to hear that prostate screenings can be pushed back to every 5 years over age 70, and colonoscopies…well, why not just get rid of those nasty things altogether?

Well baby visits for infants will be scaled back to a newborn check in the hospital (an outpatient stay, if possible) and a check-up on the first birthday.  After that, it’s see you when you need to get birth control pills or have an abortion if you’re a girl and, I guess, see you whenever if you’re a boy.  What about vaccinations, you’re thinking.  Well, since all the Lola Granola moms insist they have so much mercury in them that they do more harm than good, why not just dispense with them altogether?

Maybe if we get rid of all that costly, unnecessary diagnostic testing and preventative medicine, we’ll be able to afford nationalized health care after all.  I mean, if we’re all dead before we’re old enough to need nursing home care, paying for it will be a breeze.  Besides, think of the savings to Social Security.  Too bad W. didn’t think of something as beautifully simple as killing off all the old people when he tried so hard to reform Social Security.  Who needs death panels when we can just let everybody die of benign neglect?

Or maybe you think I’m being paranoid?  The New York Times does:

Arriving on the heels of hotly disputed guidelines calling for less use of mammography, the new recommendations might seem like part of a larger plan to slash cancer screening for women. But the timing was coincidental, said Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians’ group that developed the Pap smear guidelines. The group updates its advice regularly based on new medical information, and Dr. Iglesia said the latest recommendations had been in the works for several years, “long before the Obama health plan came into existence.”

She called the timing crazy, uncanny and “an unfortunate perfect storm,” adding, “There’s no political agenda with regard to these recommendations.”

Thank God.  It’s all just a big, incredible coincidence.  Don’t I feel silly.

California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man’s finger.

When I read the headline “Finger bitten off during California health protest,” I would have bet just about anything that the guy doing the biting was in favor of socialized medicine, and sure enough, I was right.  What are the odds?

Isn’t it interesting how it’s always leftists bemoaning the decline of civilized political discourse?  You know, the leftists who routinely call us redneck, fascist and retarded?  Can you imagine what the hue and cry would have been if it had been an opponent of socialized medicine who bit off the finger of a supporter?  As it was not, the response from the left has been more muted.  Ben Smith reports that MoveOn called the incident “regrettable.”  Confederate Yankee’s cleverly titled post — Yes We Can(nibal –  has a link to a Politics Daily story which actually reverses the parties to the incident, claiming that the conservative bit off the finger of the liberal.

In reactions from the right — I particularly liked Another Black Conservative’s post title:  Hungry for health care.  True to her name, Nice Deb doesn’t think Mark Steyn (or presumably anyone else) should be laughing about it. Malkin, Fausta a, The BlogProf, Red County and The Jawa Report also weigh in.

Not quite sure I get Wonkette’s sarcasm, calling the biter “MoveOn.org Librul Monster” — emphasizing, perhaps, just how dumb we Republicans are, I guess?  Maybe some of us can’t spell liberal, but at least most of us aren’t cannibals.  Then again, the MoveOn.org Librul didn’t actually consume the finger (it was reattached at the hospital) so I guess you can’t really call him a cannibal.  What, then?  Truly, words (even misspelled ones) fail in this case.

I’ve been trying to get this posted before someone else uses my title.  Riehl World View almost did, but not quite.  Speaking of titles, McCain gives Yes We Can(nnibal) the Blog Headline of the Day Week Decade award.  Definitely more than day or week, but I’ll have to give it a few years before I say decade.  As I wrote above, however, it’s awfully good.   I’d say finger lickin’ good, but Nice Deb might slap my wrist.

This doctor is lying to his patient in the hope he can terrorize her into killing her unborn child(ren). This doctor is doing something very, very unethical. Therefore, in my not at all humble opinion, you lie to him. Tell him whatever he wants to hear so he’ll implant the embryos. Chances are, you’ll only conceive one baby. Outside chance, twins. On the very, very rare chance that all three take and you conceive triplets, they are your children, and you tell him you’re not killing any of them and find another doctor to deliver them.

Good luck and God bless. If you ever come back to my blog, please let me know what happened.

Update: This reminds me of the women I’ve heard over the years tell me that their doctors told them that they had to have amniocentesis when they were pregnant. I had all four of my children at what the obstetrical profession calls “Advanced Maternal Age” (over 35). And I never once had an amnio. I told the doctor “no thanks” and that was that. Well, that was that for the first three pregnancies, anyway, because my doctor was a fellow Catholic who respected my willingness to forego the test. The fourth pregnancy was in a different city with a different doctor who was obviously uncomfortable with my refusing the test, but since I obviously knew my rights and was adamant, there was nothing he could do. Sadly, all too many patients do not know their rights. Doctors act as though their recommendations are mandates, and patients let themselves be bullied into procedures they don’t want.

Perhaps once we have socialized medicine, and the government’s in charge of everything, doctors really will be able to force their will on patients. At the moment, however, the patient is the customer, and the customer is always right. That’s the American way. It saddens me to no end that this is may not always be the case. Please, please, please, my fellow citizens and patients, do not let it happen.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera (as the King of Siam used to say).

Nobody’s called me a right wing nut job so far this time, or if they have, my editor removed the comments before I saw them. Someone did liken me to Marie Antoinette, however. Let’s just hope that once the leftists get their way on socialized medicine, gay marriage, salary caps for private companies and the rest of their agenda, they don’t try to bring back the guillotine.

Update: I’m usually much better with titles than this. Realized after the fact that this one should have been called “Let them eat green chile.”