The Wizard of Oz Was a Fake

“The Wizard of Oz” is instructive when it comes to understanding the manufactured controversy over health care reform. In that quintessential American tale, a blowhard con man dupes an entire community into believing he has power by projecting a fake image of himself inside his Emerald City castle. Working from behind the curtain, he convinces the ignorant and frightened denizens that he is the “Great and Powerful Oz,” master of the world.

Sending Dorothy and her pals on a wild goose chase for the witch’s broom buys him time, but eventually he is exposed for being a humbug, a cheap traveling medicine salesman, a person who could not stand working a forty-hour week.

In today’s America, the Emerald City is the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and their spokesmen, who foster fear through viral emails and slickly-produced television commercials, are sons and daughters of the Great and Powerful Oz. These modern, traveling con artists have roused the rabble to believe the wicked witch of Washington is out to get them. The rumors of euthanasia plots, denied medical care, and inept government control over patient care are akin to the smoke and mirrors the Wizard of Oz used to keep himself in power.

It would be nice if the Americans who fear health care reform would take a peek behind the curtain and see who is creating the illusions that drive the current national hysteria: advertising firms paid by medical insurance companies, legislators (Democratic and Republican) who profit handsomely from pandering to fear, and monopolistic media giants such as CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and MSNBC, who sell pain medication in ads that run between fake “news” reports about the Great Health Care Panic.

Every winter we can count on two things in the U.S.: screening of “The Wizard of Oz” during the holidays, and breathless local news anchors blathering about the latest weather event. Now, in an extra special production, brought to you by the dollars you paid to your medical insurance company, we have the bonus summer health care “Wizard of Oz” which continues to skywrite “Surrender Dorothy” above us while millions still can’t afford to see a doctor.

Here’s a thought, health care protestors of America; close your eyes, click your heels together three times, and say, “There’s no place like home.” Then go there and read up on what the actual legislation says. You’ll find that there is no euthanasia bogeyman behind the curtain- just a bunch of money-hungry lobbyists, drug companies, and insurance giants trying to keep you too scared to think straight. You might be one of the lucky ones who has adequate medical coverage, but millions of the rest of us are not in Kansas anymore.