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Presidency

Free Viagra

NLT is not being spammed: In light of the president's recent health insurance coverage edict, I propose that the President require insurance corporations to make Viagra free for all males over the age of __ (subject to compromise). My man-date poses no free exercise of religion problems (the Church approves of the drug, and not of the alleged compromise). True, it might lead to grandpappy Newt and Bob Dole making up, and re-excite Chris Matthews. But this is how bureaucracy can help strengthen the family. (Not that it would be available only to married men.)

Don't go wobbly on us, Barack. Use the mighty powers you wielded for free contraceptives on behalf of free Viagra. We Medicare-constrained geezers are watching you! Will you grant us a dream older than Aristophanes, and fulfill the Economic Bill of Rights our only greater President only wished for?

Categories > Presidency

Discussions - 5 Comments

If the federal government's job is to ensure women are free to engage in sexual activities without biology interfering, why shouldn't they do the same for men?

I think they found medical experts who said that access to this form of insurance helped reduce medical costs long term for women. So this was somewhat in the "nudge" school of CBA. A lot of folks without say vision insurance, don't get yearly glasses, a lot of folks without dental insurance, don't go to the dentist on a regular basis. Doing these things might be proactive steps, with good value. It is true I think that this insurance isn't the sort we typically think of when we think of the need for insurance, i.e. the need to handle an emergency or an unforseen possibility. But the doctors said that if women were comming in more often they would be able to discover problems earlier.

Are doctors most concerned about our health, or most concerned with ginning up business? Typically I give the nod and bennefit of the doubt to the medical community. There is a powerful cultural sense of respect for doctors, so that is part of the Pathos and policy justification Obama taps into.

But while Ken Thomas is trying his hand at the Onion. I could certainly see Pfizer hiring an economist to gin up the CBA, some doctors and medical agencies to sign unto it, and an advocate who read the Bard out loud and thus had the Pathos to articulate a bevy of policy justifications, touching upon all the elements of Aristotle's rhetoric...Equal Protection, with a straight face? It pays to be shameless so perhaps the day will come.

All jokes aside about the Freedom from Fear, it seems plausible to me that the greatest male fear is underperfomance/adequacy in the bedroom. A great fear of many women might be pregnancy.(quite a few men as well) I live by the notion that there is always a lot that can be learned from our elder statesmen, and if there is one quality they share in common it must be brazeness.

Neither Newt nor Dole seem to have many hangups with shame. They speak articulately enough as spokesmen, and they know that if they can get elected everyone will rush to suck them off as true conservatives. (how did Dole get nominated?)

Not that it is fair to hit Romney over the head for the sins of Dole, but he might not stand a chance if folks go to the polls thinking of themselves as enablers...On the other hand an actual proposal that healthcare law cover Viagra articulated as pro-family/pro-birth rate policy seems more Santorumish...

And least I leave someone out, remmember that Ron Paul was a Doctor who pretends to be an economist, and serves as a legistlator, and it is the social capital we put in doctors, manipulated by economists and articulated by lawyers that got us into this trouble!

Close the ranks! All politicians are narcistic, shameless wordsmiths, and the american preocupation with this "authentic" conservative is like a woman's complaint that there are no nice guys. Nice guys get left behind in Iowa strawpolls or stuck in the friend category.

This Servant Santorum Surge, is like a giant tidal wave of history, revenge of the nerd style in a conspiracy to let nice guys win (as opposed to guys who give folks the pink slip), all of it is probably related to a new years resolution to be more principled.

Just as Santorum was right to point out that Romney's money and advantage in the primaries won't exist in the general, Romney needs to point out that that this pre-occupation with "principle" is simply a fleeting new years resolution that will burn itself out before the general election, and that even if it does not, whoever is elected president will have to deal with congress, which is basically like negotiating with the most demonic lawyers EVER, even and especially if the republicans win both houses, and that in any case at least with him there is no betrayal because Wall Street taught him how to sell you out, and if you don't like it you can vote for Obama who will sell out the progressive side, and that there is a great deal to be said in favor of selling out, and that most of it was said by Huck Finn, but that no one knew it on account of liberals who took it out of libraries on account of the fact that it made use of the word nigger, and this was a violation of principle liberals didn't want to compromise on, on account of waking up after a new years with a pounding headache and a desire to do justice and all that jazz, and that in addition to this he can't figure out what the populist bitching is about because a good deal of guys who wake up in the new year would be glad the woman had access to birth contol unless they wanted to be changing a diaper come November.

A Modest Proposal

While I support this critical contribution to reproductive health, I fear it does not far enough (though presumably it will go long enough).

Of what use to me is this boon if I have no one to share it with? Is not this a denial of a fundamental right? The government needs to provide me--subsidize me--*procure* for me--in my efforts to have good reproductive health. (And I have come to recently understand that Presidents can be *very* good indeed in the art of *procurement* for their friends (or can have their state troopers do it for them) so I don't see what the issue would be)

I cannot see why President Obama cannot get to work on this right away. Is America going to be the land where a man does not have everytning handed to him? Are we going to be a land of...ye gods... Virtue? Perish the thought. No, men of America, we must fight for this, and fight hard, as hard as the Viagra has made us. The Progressives wish to make us more like France, and we should let them, but it will take government action and a furnished mistress or two to get us there. So let us not delay.

"An unknown car in every driveway and a chick doing it hot!" We can accept no less.

Well, when you're essentially paying for cradle-to-grave welfare for "the poor" then, yes, preventing the birth of an unproductive welfare recipient's additional child would be more cost effective than potentially paying for his housing, food, clothing, and medical care for the rest of his life.

However, attacking the issue from a cost effectiveness angle isn't going to persuade me when I don't think the government should be supporting the vast majority of the people it supports. Paying for neither birth control, contraceptives, et al, nor subsidizing indigent, single motherhood would be the most cost effective approach, and push, rather than nudge, individuals away from socially parasitic behavior.

Planned Parenthood, financed by American Taxpayers, hands out contraceptives and condoms like Costco hands out free food samples, so yes Ken I agree that they should be forced to cover men's reproductive rights and hand out free viagra...

After all - PP handing out free contraceptives and condoms helps to drum up the abortion business, so I would assume that handing out free viagra would increase their abortion revenues also.

There is a win/win situation here for Planned Parenthood - the more contraceptives, condoms and viagra, the more abortions and the more money they make.

Whoever said that progressives/liberals are not rich, money making capitalists was a liar. I bet that George Soros will get in on the action if handing out free viagra creates more abortions and more profit for Planned Parenthood. George - just a capitalists in disguise.

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