MY NINTH LETTER TO JON CARROLL


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I haven't written a letter to Jon Carroll in a while. I haven't kept up with his column much, either. But I happened to start reading again lately and he wrote a column that I couldn't resist responding to. His reply follows my letter:


Subject: Indications and Contradictions

Dear Jon,

hey Hey HEY!

In an article about how business dumps on customers because they can, you have to dump on St. Louis just because you can. Well, I'm here to tell you I'm mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!

Jon, we had our little email fling, and I decided to just let go, to let bygones be bygones, to move on and get on with my life. But no, you just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you. You had to go and put down St. Louis as a lite rock town. Well pal, I've lived in your precious Bay area, and I've lived in St. Louis, and let me say that St. Louis has never inflicted the likes of Journey on an unsuspecting world. And when it comes to radio stations, nobody, not even Dennis Erectus on the KOME spot, beats KSHE in it's prime. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it!

And another thing (as long as I'm all riled up), you just don't get the whole HMO thing, do you. Why is it that business is responsible for your medical care? Your employer doesn't tell you what kind of house to live in, what kind of food to eat, doesn't have to satisfy your wife, in short is not responsible for any other aspect of your life besides the 40 hours you put in on the premises. Yet somehow they got stuck with taking care of your health care, and we express great surprise that he who pays the piper calls the tune. They want out from under, and who can blame them. So they invent the HMO whose only goal in life is to transfer the anger and blame from the business you work for to themselves. If your employer was responsible to provide you with all your meals, you think they would hire Julia Child and tell her to make whatever you asked for, or hire ARA, Canteen or Mariott for an average cost of 50 cents a meal? You don't like HMO healthcare? You're not supposed to. Let's end this idiocy of business paid for healthcare.

Ahh, I feel better.

Kevin Murphy


And Mr. Carroll's reply, which I can only explain in the context of his rapidly responding to broad types in attempt to keep up with the flood of email:
You can feel even better knowing that 40 million Amkericans have no healthcare at all.



I say I don't like the system we have, and Mr. Carroll takes me to task for being right. I guess I just don't understand such tricky modern questions.


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This page last updated 8 June 1999

© Contents copyright Kevin Murphy 1999. All rights reserved.