"A Modest Proposal On Healthcare"

We are told that skyrocketing health care costs are sinking our economy. I offer here a suggestion that could, at least slightly, lower those costs.

You know those monitoring machines people get hooked up to in hospitals – the machine beeps repeatedly and you’re alive, an extended “Eeeeeeee” and you’re dead? Those machines have to be expensive, don’t you think?

Well here’s my suggestion. What if you got rid of those high-priced monitoring machines, and replaced them with harmonicas? Hold on. Just listen.

You place a harmonica into every seriously ill patient’s mouth. The patient breathes directly through the harmonica, and as a result of the sounds that come out, we’d be able to know whether or not they were still alive.

A nurse walks by a hospital room, they stop and they listen. If they hear the rhythmic whine of the harmonica, the second note pitched slightly higher than the first – “Ah-hah…Ah-hah…Ah-hah…Ah-hah” – then they know that all is well. No “Ah-hah” and it’s “Code Red.” (You should hear me do that harmonica sound. I’m really good at it.)

Nothing could be more natural. It’s already how harmonicas function. On some notes, you breathe in, and on others, you breathe out. I say, let’s put this natural function to work saving lives.

I see no “down side” to this proposal. When one guy dies, you just wash off the harmonica, and stick it in another guy’s mouth.

A radical proposal? People will try to convince you it is. Which people? The “monitoring machine” lobby for one. But we need to stand up to them and get serious about health care costs.

There’s no question, those harmonicas would save us a whole lot of money.