Tears for NAMA

When I arrived home from work today it was to find my daughter crying. Crying a veritable Danube of unrestrained grief through her shaking fingers.
"What's wrong sweetheart? What happened?" I asked, rushing to her side.
"It's NAMA daddy," she wept, "It's too big a burden for me to bear."
Drawing her close upon my knee I held her and whispered that it would be ok.
"In the great scheme of things, we can carry NAMA. You and me together. But it's not NAMA that worries me..."
My daughter looks up at me through her wounded, teary eyes. "Is it bogeymen that worry you daddy?"
"Worse!" I solemnly reply "It's that craven wretch Mary Harney and her spastic, miasmic child - the HSE."
"The HSE?"
"Yes my love. The HSE, that convenient and elaborate screen, erected to mask the feckless laziness, monstrous negligence and gross incompetence of so many of those who operate behind it. The HSE is a scapegoat for the towering greed of consultant doctors, a smokescreen for the misappropriation of funds by shiftless, monolithic unions, a letoff for the thousands of superfluous parasites who staff its administration sectors and its legions of mismanagers who have never done a job right."
"It's sounds horrible daddy!"
"It is my love, it is. And it's about to explode in all our faces but this too we can carry."
"But how daddy, how?"
"Don't worry love, daddy has a plan!"

My plan is this:
As the only tenet of corporate social responsibility that appears to have stuck to any degree in these more straightened times is the mantra "Reuse, Recycle." I feel that it is time we brought this principle to bear upon our reeling health sector. Our doctors can't be expected to work for a reasonable level of remuneration if they are to continue living in their castles and pallisades and treating the infected vermin in A&E with condescending disdain and we can't privatise all health care as this would be an open admission by our legislator's of their callous disregard for the people of this country so instead, let us "Reuse, Recycle"! Clearly we're not going to make anywhere near the savings we need through the recycling of medical waste (illegal but previously attempted) or children's organs (illegal but previously attempted) so instead let us concentrate on our human resources. We have, right in front of us, a very real collateral in our struggle to keep this flagging health sector alive. In fact, as we were so often told in school, the answer is in the question.

Why does the health service exist? To treat, aid and heal the infirm.
How do we reuse and recycle the resources? By putting the patients to good use.

What, I ask you, is the point in healing someone if they are not going to improve their lot or the lot of society in general? It would be akin to polishing your silverware just to throw it in the bin. So let's create a system and, for argument's sake, name it 'Deferred Compensation'. Under the terms of this system those with the greatest access to medical services and the highest projected potential for income generation (ie Children) shall be expected to begin repaying in kind for all treatments received in childhood, upon the commencement of their eighteenth year. The genius of this system is not that it puts the onus of financial culpability upon those most responsible for the drain on resources but the method of Payment In Kind. In this way, bedblockers such as premature babies, cancer patients, those with degenerative nerological disorders, major physical disablilities, basically all the expensive people, can be microchipped upon the commencement of their treatments with a view to harvesting them for the public good once they come of age. Those that don't go on to become high-earners, capable of a straight fiscal settlement of their tariff, can be found suitable positions in the public sector or as organ donors or volunteers for medical experiment etc. A state run management agency would be set up to ensure maximum returns to the exchequer from these human resources. Some possibilities that spring to mind would be placing autistic savants with accountancy firms or financial services companies; allowing consultant doctors to use former patients as house servants and having the cost deducted from their gross, pre-tax salary. (Actually, this could be a particularly enticing offer as perhaps a doctor may have liked the look of a patient of theirs but, oops, they're a bit on the young side, it's not quite legal - never mind, they can just put in a request through the state run management agency and as soon as the resource hits 18, bango, it's sexy time).

The Irish government has already demonstrated that it has no qualms whatsoever about lumping the bill for its own unbridled negligence and stupidity and the despicable greed and extravagance of the world's wealthiest financial speculators upon generations of this nation's children so why not just ask them to shoulder a little more.

Having explained all this to my daughter I realised that further molly-coddling wasn't going to do her any favours and that she'd be better off just 'manning-up' and taking shit like NAMA on the chin. With that in mind, I unceremoniously dumped her upon the floor, stood on her little fingers and told her to stop snivelling and get me a fucking beer from the fridge before I treat her like her momma.