In Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch 22, the protagonist navigates through Orwellian bureaucracies and Kafkaesque scenarios to encounter absurd social insanities at once hilarious yet terrifying in their familiarity.
(Hilarious only in the sense that we laugh hardest when we feel the worst pain.)
I read the book the year it was published, when I was 14. It's stayed with me ever since as a template to interpret my increasingly absurd life.
In my fantasy, today was a day when I would walk the green fields of my youth. Instead, it was a day spent largely on the telephone with people who only go by their first names -- Robert, Julio, Mara, Michelle, Mia, and Hakim. They are all exceptionally nice people, able to express empathy as they explain to my why in every way that matters I am totally screwed.
If you are a person who opposes President Obama's efforts to reform our health insurance industry, please stop reading now. I really don't want you to find out how much I hate your guts.
After wasting virtually an entire day with all of these nice people, it appears that I may have secured my three minor children health and dental insurance going forward.
That's the good news.
As for me, an unemployed, older man in excellent health who has faithfully paid his insurance bills for some 40 years? Not a chance. Nobody wants to insure me. There are a thousand reasons, none of them true, meaningful, or relevant.
This is not a capitalist system; this is not a socialist system; this is an Orwellian system. And it has no place left for a person like me.
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