The cure for cancer is on the moon.

Watching the usual Sunday morning press shows and saw Senator Arlen Specter promoting not his party switch but his CAN health initiative. (Hmmm, and in time for his upcoming re-election bid too.) But one thing he said in his latest commercial is something that I’ve thought all along:

Until we make finding the cure for whatever disease it is we have a national emergency on par with the effort to put a man on the moon, nothing will change. Americans always seem to need a kick in the ass to get going, but when they finally do, look the hell out.

Everything considered, his intentions are good; politicians always say the right thing. But the donate button on his site? Eh, ruins it. So, now not only do Americans get cancer, they get to donate to find a cure for it, then pay for the treatment on the other end. Nice. Instead, why not ask pharmaceutical companies to fund it all.

Nobody understands better than I do that pharma makes its money off treatments rather than cures. I’m guessing though if people pay billions annually for four-hour erections, they might just be willing to pay a little more for a pill that cured their cancer. A LOT more.

I also get that if nobody died, then pharma goes out of business, so why focus on a cure, right? Silly readers! They wouldn’t go out of business—they’d simply make the one-time cure so expensive you’d have no choice but to finance it through Pfizer Credit. Announcing Zero Down Days! That’s right.

No credit? No job? NO PROBLEM. We have many financing options to choose from: 10, 20, 30 even 50 year plans! Never happen? Yeah, you’re probably right. I mean, who would ever think of having a 30-year house mortgage or 72-month car loan, right?

But Arlen doesn’t stop there. He IS Mr. Healthcare, talking about access for all. Why is it any politician discussing the topic always says something to the effect “People should have access to the very same doctors a U.S. senator has access to.” Well, actually, we do now. That’s the problem though, because the real question should be: How do you pay for that access? (Pretty sure a donate button isn’t going to cover it.)

Then there’s the notion of prevention and cure. Eat healthy, work out and you still can get cancer. Gym memberships may cost far less than chemo treatments but people are generally too lazy to work out. They’d rather pay more for the cure, no?

(Until Blogger works out its server problems, full posts will be posted on main page here.)