As a devout Pastafarian, I have a deep and abiding respect for pirates.* They are the equivalent of my saints.
The quintessential marker of a true pirate, of course, is the eye-patch. It denotes piquant life experience and the hard-won acquisition of wisdom. The pirate with the eye patch has crossed through profound gateways of courage, combat discipline and self-knowing.
Accordingly, I was outraged to learn that my insurance plan covers corneal transplants. Corneal transplantation, also known as corneal grafting, is a surgical procedure where a damaged or diseased cornea is replaced by donated corneal tissue (the graft) in its entirety (penetrating keratoplasty) or in part (lamellar keratoplasty).
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
You may have thought the recent brouhaha in Washington was just about contraception, but there’s a whole broader universe of blasphemous coverage being forced upon faithful Jeffersonian Americans like myself.
Look, in my sect of my religion, losing an eye is one of the most sacred religious experiences a human can have.
Note: I stick to the true teachings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the FSM – my co-religionists call ourselves the Fundamentalist church of the FSM, or the FFSM - drawing for canon on sacred texts engraved in tablets I found buried in the field behind my house, revealed to me by the angel Ignoramusi. There are thousands of us – and not all of them are just voices in my head, regardless of what my neighbor George may tell you.
(George, by the way, belongs to some crazy religion where they get together and eat bread and drink wine and pretend that they’re eating the body and drinking the blood of some ancient dead martyr. Cuckoo!)
Moreover, thousands of new members will flock to my church – mostly corporate executives – when they learn more about our doctrines. FFSM may well provide a tangible financial benefit in the marketplace of ideas - always promising to the growth of a new sect (More details below).
Anyway, imagine my distress when I learned that the meddling of Kenyan socialists is profoundly threatening to challenge my sacred belief in the profound dignity of eye loss.
Moreover, I have learned that my insurance also covers other types of transplants – heart, kidney, liver.
These also profoundly offend my religious sensibilities. First, they remind me painfully of corneal transplants. Second, if the great spaghetti monster in the sky chooses to render somebody’s liver into dysfunctional pulp, its only honorable to get the message; to accept the judgment.
Of course the average organ transplant does cost several hundred thousand dollars – before considering follow-on care and medications - and as an employer with a small business group rate, I’d just as soon not have to pay for that kind of thing.
But that has nothing to do with my deep objections to these blasphemous procedures, on religious grounds.
It is on religious grounds, by the way, that I also profoundly oppose coronary bypasses, cancer therapy, and diabetes treatments. Also a lot of other stuff that is just too painful to enumerate here.
I suppose its fine if the executive health plan covers these kinds of thing (my company, like a great many firms offers several “tiers” of health plans to employees). The senior guys have earned the right to decide for themselves.
But to have the government force me – by mandate – to provide coverage for these procedures atrocities to all of my employees…
This is the sort of thing that drives (fellow) moral leaders like Rick Santorum and the founding fathers to vomit.
Luckily, the Republicans are working hard to pass legislation – the Blunt Amendment- that would provide me and my firm with a religious exemption to this odious mandate. I wouldn’t have to cover treatments and procedures that went against my deep and fanatical faith.
Although the Blunt amendment failed last week, when the Republican retake the Senate (and so far, SuperPac bombardment, which will disproportionately favor Republicans in November, has a track record of moving races by 15 points in a matter of weeks), they should have ample opportunity to push it through.
I mean, sure Democrats could filibuster, but I’m sure the GOP will be able to round up 8-10 pragmatic Dems willing to horse trade this measure of freedom – the Blunt Amendment - for, say, rights to name an airport after Eleanor Roosevelt and a gentleman’s agreement to raise the minimum wage by $.05 an hour in 2050.
At least I hope Republicans will be able to protect my freedom, thusly.
Because, with the savings to my health plan from honoring my religious beliefs, I can have the firm send a few million incremental dollars to appropriate SuperPacs for the next cycle - and maybe even forestall outsourcing the IT department to India for another couple years.
* Note: my deep and abiding respect for pirates does not explicitly extend to Mitt Romney – the business activities that built his vast wealth technically make him more of a vampire than a pirate.