Last week former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop made his views on existing healthcare reforms known to our nation’s legislative 
leaders. His message to them was, be careful about the reforms they make and also urged that whatever they do, do not make a bill that forces doctors and medical students to perform abortions.
Koop, now 93 years of age, is currently a Senior Scholar at the C. Everett Institute at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The Granite State and DC are not exactly within walking distance, so Koop didn’t make the journey to Washington to try and deliver his message in person. Instead he wrote what he called a “beautifully typed letter a letter”. From their, the letter was going to an associate going the way of Washington.
The hand delivered letters were dropped off at the offices of all its intended recipients. But somewhere along the line, inside the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, C. Everett Koop’s “beautifully typed” missive was placed in an “out box”. What ensued was an unimagined comedy of errors.
The typed, hand delivered letter was placed in an unstamped envelope that had the name “C. Everett Koop” written in the upper left hand corner. When a member Senator Reid’s staff came across the letter in the “outbox” they became petrified by the possibilities. Good Gawd almighty, how did an unstamped letter from the former Reagan Administration Surgeon General get into the wrong box?——Oh my!
So with sharp, lightning fast instincts, the experienced bureaucrats in the Democrat Senate Majority Leader’s office called the police. With equally rapid speed they appeared on the scene of the crime. Staffers in Reid’s office were promptly evacuated and all others were urged to “stay away” as letter opening experts dressed in special anti-contamination suits secured the scary hand written envelope. Once opened, forensic experts were quickly called in to examine the threatening letter that was so ominously placed in Harry Reid’s out box .
According to the Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call, and hour later the array of medical examiners, spaced suited sleuths, armed officers, forensic analysts and professional letter openers “cleared” the offending letter.
Upon learning of the major disruption that Koop and his beautifully typed letter caused in the nation’s Capitol, he stated “I wasn’t aware that sending a hand-delivered was an offense” and added “I can’t believe all this nonsense”.
The incident actually teaches us some unintended lessons.
If a hand written envelope in the hand of bureaucrats could cause the hoopla, angst, and expense that this one did, all because a letter that should have been in an “inbox” was carelessly placed in an “outbox” by a well trained government employee, what do you think will happen if your 15 page application to the Health Choices Czar or Health Procedures Approval Czar has an error in it? What if you forget to dot that ‘I” or cross that “T”? What if you transposed the wrong code number for the wrong procedure and instead of getting that annoying pimple taken off your ass, the Health Care Procedures Approval Czar instructs their government surgeons to remove a kidney or perform a tracheotomy on your throat?
And when one of the bureaucrats handling your medical billing records, puts your payment for your recent heart valve surgery in the outbox instead of the inbox, what then? Will the Health Care Financial Assistance Czar put in a repossession order and have federal surgeons rip your heart out?
Face it folks, federal bureaucrats should not be running health care. They can’t even manage the papers they shuffle. If the government bureaucracy can’t handle a letter from 93 year old Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, do you really want them arranging your heart surgery?
Just ask C. Everett Koop and the staff of Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
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Comments: 19
Another thing we must remember in this debate, if ObamaCare passes-there is no do over. It will remain with us no matter how much it costs or how ineffective it will be. No government program ever seems to get stopped no matter what.
He DIED.
laugh away wacko, laugh away.
I'm awake (though I admit I plan to get some sleep within the next hour or so). And, more to the point, my mother is alive.
For the rest of you that would like to read the Roll Call's version of the story, that's the version that is not written with right wing venom included, here's the link. http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_53/news/40280-1.html
So, Toni, why don't you get out of that basement in your momma's house and get a job. Be a mensch instead of a lump.
It is incredibly amusing to share in the chaos surrounding the circumstances they can bring to bear. At the same time, it is sad, beyond words, knowing these buffoons are actually involved, in any way, with a health care plan for this country.
Smelli thinks that's a joke. His politics gives lip service to fiscal responsibility. Yet, when Senate office workers follow a reasonable course of action to limit a potential life threatening and very costly outcome, Smelligrimo does what he always does. He takes the low road, reports inaccurately and lies just to fill his ka ka ching bucket and attempt to smear the left. It's cowardly, yet exactly what we've come to expect from the pusillanimous Toni the Paper Tiger.
New York City and New Jersey
September 18, 2001
* A letter containing anthrax is postmarked from Trenton, New Jersey to Tom Brokaw.
* A secretary in the New Jersey governor's office received a FedEx package containing a stamped letter addressed to Tom Brokaw. She put it in the mail. As of October 16, it is unknown if that was the letter containing anthrax.
September 25
* Erin O'Connor, an NBC Nightly News employee, 38, an assistant to Tom Brokaw, opens a letter postmarked from Trenton containing a brown granular substance. The letter was addressed with crude handwritten block letters, with no return address. She is the mother of a toddler and wife of an NYPD police officer.
September 28
* The 7 month old son of a female producer for ABC News: World News Tonight with Peter Jennings is brought to ABC News headquarters on West 66th Street to visit his mother for approximately one hour. He is brought to the company cafeteria, the World News Tonight news room on the second floor and a birthday party for an ABC News producer on the 3rd floor where stories are edited for the broadcast.
* o O'Connor develops a low-grade fever and a rash on her collarbone.
September 29
* The infant's left arm swells from shoulder to finger tips and a small silver dollar sized ulcer weeping a yellow liquid appears on the underside of the arm above the elbow. The mother suspects an infected spider bite.
October 1
* The child is admitted to New York University Medical Center.
* O'Connor begins receiving Cipro.
* A 20-something female CBS News aide, who handles mail for Dan Rather in an office next to his, came into work with a bear-claw sized gash on her left cheek. She is allergic to algae.
October 2
* The CBS News aide goes to the doctor after the gash begins to bleed short bursts of blood every 5 min.
October 4
* The CBS News aide's doctor prescribes penicillin, and the swelling slowly subsides.
October 10
* A skin biopsy is taken from O'Connor and sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
October 12
* A case of anthrax is reported in New York City. O'Connor is reported to have cutaneous anthrax. Another letter from St. Petersburg contained a white powder which tested negative for anthrax. The third floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, where the employee works, is sealed by authorities. The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation.
October 14
* A police officer and two lab technicians who handled the letter were found to have been exposed to anthrax. The officer and one of the lab technicians tested positive for anthrax in their nasal passages; the other technician had anthrax on the face. None were found to be infected.
October 15
* In the evening: Tests done by the CDC confirm that the baby had anthrax. New York City officials and David Westin, president of ABC News announce that the 7-month-old baby of an ABC World News Tonight producer contracted cutaneous anthrax.
October 16
* It is reported that the anthrax bacteria sent to NBC is of the same strain as that found in Boca Raton. Furthermore, the letters sent to Tom Brokaw at NBC and the letter sent to Tom Daschle's office in Washington reportedly show similarities in handwriting.
October 17
* Anthrax is found in the New York City office of Governor George Pataki. Reportedly the anthrax was found in a room used by his State Police security detail that is not open to the public. Pataki closes his offices and begins taking Cipro in response, which many health experts and journalistic commentators call irresponsible overkill.
* Federal health officials state that the NBC anthrax is the same strain as the American Media anthrax.
October 18
* In the morning: Andrew Heyward, CBS News president, announces that a female employee of CBS News who handles mail, contracted cutaneous anthrax.
* Giuliani announced that 350 samples from the NBC offices were tested negative for anthrax, giving a total of approximately 850 negative tests so far. 59 of 70 samples from ABC were tested negative; the rest are pending. Later numbers from the same day: 1100 results, all negative from 1304 taken from NBC employees.
* New Jersey acting governor Donald DiFrancesco announced that a Hamilton Township postal worker tested positive for cutaneous anthrax.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2001_anthrax_attacks_in_New_York_and_New_Jersey"
Infected women and children are of no concern to Toni the Paper Tiger. The only cowardly act in this time line is performed by REPUBLICAN George Pataki who demands that he be given Cipro even though he has no signs of contracting anthrax.
"And when one of the bureaucrats handling your medical billing records, puts your payment for your recent heart valve surgery in the outbox instead of the inbox, what then? Will the Health Care Financial Assistance Czar put in a repossession order and have federal surgeons rip your heart out?"