Mark Casey Online

April Fools!

April 1st is traditionally the day people play tricks on one another, most often involving making someone believe something to be true, when it isn’t. Google, for instance, always has a great gag on the first of the month — last year it was pretending to offer Gmail users the option of printing out their entire inbox and having it mailed to them; this year, it was pretending to let you send emails and date them as having been sent in the past.

But leave it to the company that does pretty much everything backwards, Wal-Mart, to get the spirit of this day backwards. Instead of playing a joke, they told former employee Debbie Shank, who received brain damage while working for the company, that she didn’t have to pay them their money back.

Originally, they had paid out $470,000 or so under their health care plan. Then Debbie won a settlement from the trucking company, and Wal-Mart tried to take their money back, which under her contract, they’re allowed to do. The judge ruled, however, that they could only have $275,000, because, well — that’s every last dime she had. That’s after the half million from Wal-Mart put together with the half million from the trucking company. For those of you who are good at math, that means two things:

1. Wal-Mart did not give her enough money to pay for her injuries in the first place.

2. Perhaps more importantly, the doctors in this country charged this woman more than six hundred thousand dollars to “repair” (read: stabilize) her brain.

I’m not sure which is more outrageous, but the only real meaning we should take from this story is the following: Wal-Mart’s decision was voluntary. They wanted their money back, and they took it. Then, people were outraged, and enough of us got shitty with them to make them change their mind. Never forget that. You don’t need a judge, you don’t need new laws. You just need democracy.

Wal-Mart is also changing their health care contracts to better allow for situations like Debbie Shanks.

I’m proud of you, America.

Tonight’s debate was an interesting one, particularly when it came to each candidate’s decisions regarding the “friendliness scale.” Before the debate, Hillary’s campaign and ads had been fairly negative, with Obama being positive. The debate seems to have played out in much the same way.

The biggest flap of the debate was centered on health care, with Hillary accusing Obama of “leaving out” 15 million Americans in his “universal” health care plan, and Obama shooting back that her plan did nothing to lower costs or to help people pay for insurance. (In fact, all it does is criminalize those people who, for whatever reason, choose not to purchase health insurance.)

The kicker is that most of those people don’t have insurance because they cannot afford it. Hillary would make those people criminals, and fine them for not buying something that they can’t afford, just like with car insurance. The only problem was that Obama didn’t use the operative word “criminalize,” because he’s trying to be nice — even though that’s precisely what Hillary wants to do.

Both candidates want you to believe that they’re just going to give you health care. That’s a problem. But the bigger problem is that Hillary wants to put you in jail if you don’t accept hers.