Last week the house voted to repeal Obamacare... again. This marks the 31st time that they have voted to repeal, defund, or otherwise try to hamper the PPACA, even though they have known that such efforts would go nowhere with Democrats controlling the Senate and the Presidency. In response to this less-than-momentous occasion, my supervisors here at the New America Foundation wrote a piece for the Atlantic detailing real, meaningful reforms that could have been enacted instead of the 31 "symbolic" votes. Those are great, but I've compiled a more comprehensive list of things that I think would really improve the health of both Congress and the American people:
- Sell the audio from all 31 repeal attempts as an over-the-counter insomnia cure.
- Create "Fast Food Health Savings Accounts": Every time you buy fast food, your credit card transfers $2 into an HSA to pay for your future diabetes treatment.
- Build a new exhibit in the Newseum: "Florets v. Freedom: Broccoli as Propaganda in American Life."
- Collect all the taxpayer money that would've been spent on these “symbolic votes” and associated debates, and buy insurance for 4500 families.
- Create a new weekly C-SPAN show called "Mandate: Delicious." Each show will consist of the reading of USDA-approved healthful recipies.
- Replace all the desks in the House with standing desks.
- Replace all the chairs in the Senate with yoga balls.
- Take the House on a field trip to a primary care doctor's office.
- Hold a Congressional Scavenger Hunt. The first Congressperson to bring back the following wins:
- An underpaid primary care doctor,
- A grossly overpaid specialist,
- A person who is uninsured by choice,
- A legible prescription,
- Credible evidence of "death panels."
- Bonus points to anyone who manages to get a primary care appointment without mentioning that they're insured.
- Get corporate sponsorship for major surgeries: “Well, Jim, you’ve got an artery that’s almost completely blocked. I recommend an immediate McDouble Bypass!”
- Compile a cookbook of heart-healthy broccoli recipes and start a CSPAN cooking show where Justice Scalia and George H.W. Bush demonstrate them.
- Have the two parties compete against each other in a special election-year season of "The Biggest Loser."
- Require all sodas in the Congressional cafeteria to be served in Dixie cups.
- Change the national salad from Jell-O salad to “anything containing actual vegetables, and comprised of no more than 50% by weight of ranch dressing.”
- Candy salad is not salad.
- Meat salad is definitely not salad.
- See if members of Congress are fitter than a fifth grader: Require all Members of Congress to perform the Presidential Fitness Challenge. Anyone who doesn't pass will be held in contempt.
- Get exercise by changing the House rules: Allow bills to be passed by calling for a dodgeball vote, where the last member standing gets to decide whether a bill goes on to the Senate.
- Commission a CDC report on whether broccoli consumption has gone down among conservatives since Obamacare passed.
- Establish a National Speed Limit for hot dog consumption of no more than fifty-five hot dogs per hour.
- Buy "Twinkie sniffing dogs" for the TSA.
- Form a committee to study the long-term effects of spray tan, chaired by Speaker Boehner.
- “Vaccinate” against obesity and related problems by making gastric bypass surgery part of the childhood vaccine schedule.
- Forget “a chicken in every pot.” Pass the "Wii the People" bill, putting a Wii Fit in every American home by 2014.
- Block grant Congressional health insurance. Stop giving Representatives federal health insurance; instead, increase their salaries by $8000 and let them choose their own plan in the individual market!
- Exclude any gathering involving a "You Bring It, We Fry It" truck from the Assembly Clause of the First Amendment.
- Enact a broccoli mandate (er, I mean, tax...?), just to see if it would work.
- Clarify to school lunch programs that pizza and ketchup are not, in fact, vegetables.
- Put WMATA in charge of the nation’s moving walkways and escalators. We'll all be taking the stairs within a week.
- Blame China.
- Just give up: Paula Deen 2012!
(Many thanks to Spencer Hall and Joe Barnett for their immense help in generating ideas for real reform.)
