Wombstyles of the Rich and Famous, Sexy Handmaids, Insurance, and Insulin

“Don’t listen to him, man.  The insulin, it made him crazy.” – Con-Air

How do you tell the number of Kardashian women in a room?  Add the eyebrows and mustaches and divide by two.

Health care is important to people – both as individuals (Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough), Readers Write: Early Retirement, Health Care, Canada, and Averting A Ben Affleck Marathon) and to Americans as a group.  It has become so critical that I think that its current level of mismanagement will sink the country within 15 years (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck), or (more likely) lead to a drastic reduction in overall care for the people who don’t live like The Rich and Famous.  But I have popcorn, I’ll probably have the weekend free, and it should be pretty fun to watch, so why not enjoy?

What led to this observation?

Kanye West and Whatever Kardashian have three kids, which surprised me – I always thought that the Kardashians reproduced like a virus – infecting their host cell and then making it explode with millions of copies of Kardashians that go on to infect other cells.  I guess not, and even my second guess – reproduction through egg-laying was wrong.  Kardashians reproduce just like a normal human does.

Or, maybe not?

I found out about the West/Kardashian reproductive habits not because I follow them on the news or have a link to their Amazon® Echoâ„¢ – my Amazon© Echo® eavesdropping is generally limited to listening in on Tom Hanks – he’s much more interesting than you might imagine.  No, the West/Kardashian pregnancy was front and center on Google News Wednesday morning and they won’t allow me to install a Kardashian blocker on my work computer.

Thankfully the world will be blessed with what it needs most, an additional celebrity child.   This birth, however, will be special.  Whatever Kardashian is not using her own womb, but is renting one for her baby.  There will be tons of tests, probably a minimum ACT® score, and payment for services rendered.  I’m sure it will all be wonderfully legal.

Different people celebrate differently.

Furthermore, this is the second child of the West/Kardashian hive that will be born via surrogate.  Now, Internet, I did open up and read an article about this, all for you.  You really must appreciate the sacrifices I make, this was worse than many horror novels I’ve read.  Whatever Kardashian told a thoroughly gruesome description of a previous birth complete with details that I would not tell to a priest during confession, were I Catholic.  Heck, I remember when I was younger and would go to confession just to brag, but this Kardashian story wasn’t bragging, it was gagging.  I do NOT recommend that you read about it if you’re at all squeamish.  Let me rephrase – I don’t recommend you read it at all.

I can understand the desire for more children.  I understand she alleges that her doctor says she shouldn’t carry another one.  But when Whatever told the scandal sheet entertainment magazine that she really found it convenient to outsource the breastfeeding of her child, I was as stunned as a kitten in a quantum physics class.  Here is the class divide in America – a princess grown woman deciding to hire a commoner another grown woman to create and nurse her offspring.  Maybe I wasn’t too far off with the whole virus analogy.  Heck, they could even hire a surrogate father to help the surrogate mother raise the kid.

I looked up what this would cost, and it’s probably at least a quarter-million dollars to have a surrogate deliver your kid in California, but that’s probably the entry level cost.  I’m willing to bet that the Kardashian/West family has a great number of requirements, like having the surrogate mother eat the Royal Kardashian Jelly while she’s pregnant so it smells like a Kardashian when it’s born and therefore won’t be eaten by the other Kardashians at birth.  I even imagine they pay her to live with them for up to another year to nurse the child, and likewise restrict her diet and activities.

I’m sure this is how Margaret envisioned the costume.

The Handmaid’s Tale was a novel from the 1980’s by Margaret Atwood.  In it, Atwood raises the ever so certain prospect that evil Christians were going to institute a Christian theocracy and force women to wear red outfits and have babies for powerful men.  I suppose this has parallels the popular allure that zombies have for kids, but for liberal women, but it amuses me the situation has come to pass as an actual Hollywood scheme and nobody seems to mind.

I have a lot of sympathy for childless couples who resort to surrogate mothers for one reason or another, and (really) are generally supportive of new babies being brought into the world – babies are our future, unless the robots take over, in which case I welcome our new robot leaders (who can look this up in my blogging history, and then they will know I always wanted them to take over).  Also, the surrogate market appears to be (kind of) based on the free market – how much will you pay for another woman to bear your children?  I’m also willing to bet that free market competition has brought the prices of surrogate mothers down over the years, especially at that clinic at the unmarked door behind the Dairy Queen® in Encino.  Whether or not bringing a fourth child into this world via surrogacy is ethical, well, that’s beyond this post.

But what isn’t beyond this post is that the medical system is still broken.  Basic procedures and medicine (like insulin, or Epi-Pens®) have increased in prices drastically, even though cost of production has dropped.  Somehow, the market has completely failed.  Humalog™ (a form of insulin made from elf tears) was $21 a bottle back in 1995.  It’s now $225 a bottle.  That’s 1071% in 20 years.  Based on that growth rate, in 2037 it’ll cost $2,400 a bottle.  At some point it will become cheaper to kidnap elves and chain them in your basement for their precious insulin tears.

I think the solution is a drastic one:  make prescription drug coverage via insurance illegal.  Once the market takes over, prescription drug prices really will come down.  The alternative?  Make importing prescription drugs into the United States legal.  In Canada, a vial of Humalog® is $50.  The price discrepancy isn’t the free market at work – it’s a controlled market where Congress™ and the FDA© have managed to create billions in additional profit for drug makers.  At your expense.

Medicine is broken.  Burn it down.

I do find it odd that the Kardashians met their latest surrogate at an unmarked door behind a Dairy Queen® near the Taco Bell© in Encino (okay, I do listen to their Amazon® Echo™).  I would have thought they would have had better insurance than that.  Nah.  I’m sure it’s legit.