Daily Archives: December 19, 2009

Critical Care

That’s the name of a Star Trek: Voyager episode first aired November 1, 2000, right before the election.

It was recently rerun on Spike TV and it’s quite interesting in this day and age.

The Doctor’s Holographic Emitter that allows him to interact outside the sickbay or holodeck is stolen and sold to the administrator of an alien hospital. The Doctor is activated on Level Red, a dark, crowded level with many patients and few doctors. Many of these patients are dying for want of medication, but The Allocator – a computer program that decides who gets what – found that the Red Patient’s TC (treatment coefficient) was too low.

The Doctor did what he could for the patients on Level Red, so well that The Allocator reassigned him to Level Blue, where the TC per patient was much higher (Government workers vs laborers) and the doctor/patient ratio was one to one. These patients were more valuable don’t you know.

The Level Blue patients were being given a medication to slow arterial aging. Totally unnecessary to their health, was just supposed to help extend the life of the Level Blue patient. Kind of like a Botox injection for purely cosmetic reasons versus a Botox injection that would kill a tumor and save a life. Only there’s only so many injections and The Allocator has decided that the Level Blue people are more worthy than the Level Red people.

Of course the Doctor steals some of the medication from Level Blue and brings it to Level Red to treat the patients there and the hospital administrator comes down to chew him out. The doctor infects the Administrator with the disease so as to blackmail him into getting medication for those who really need it on Level Red.

This is where we are headed people. Because the government won’t be able to fund full health care for everyone, the government will have to find its own version of “The Allocator” that will use some kind of extremely complicated formula to determine who gets the necessary surgeries and who gets to take an aspirin, who gets medication and who will just have to do without.

Christmas Song of the Day

Mary Did You Know?

Mary, did you know?

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
That your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you’ve delivered
Will soon deliver you

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?
Did you know
That your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby
You’ve kissed the face of God

Mary, did you know?
The blind will see
The deaf will hear
The dead will live again
The lame will leap
The dumb will speak
The praises of the lamb

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know
That your baby boy is heaven’s perfect lamb?
This sleeping child you’re holding
Is the great I AM

(buddy greene, mark lowry)

mm-5