Dr. Christsakes took a yawning breath and pushed the oars deeper into the Stygian river. Sticks and stones can break my bones, he thought, but death panels won't hurt my business. His rivercraft to the other side was full of previously middleclass baby-boomers and his palliative crew was busy setting the final rigging in the cool autumn air. The pre-fabricated vessel made flat line waves as they began their once-in-a-lifetime death trip across the river. Ironically, some religiously yearned to survive it. Since the recent election, it had been determined that rising health insurance premiums were a pre-existing perdition and that those without healthcare would be forced to wander the banks of America for one hundred years.

Recently re-animated by working for an enormous salary in insurance subsidized services, the good doctor's fairy had generated odious religious convictions and copious capital in the form of co-pays. Ontologically, the irreversible loss of personhood was on everyone's mind. But terrestrial evidence suggested that from the source, all rivers flow downhill, typically terminating in that notion.

Beginning as an evangelical death panel hypothesis, this "probability of living eternally without government healthcare" meme had morphed toward infamy; penetrating Alaskan swamp-gas radio shows, passing for treason under the gold-covered bridge to nowhere and landing somewhere beyond the conceptual horizon.  Quite rapidly the questions of what constituted a human condition and how we could determine its needs had emerged as a political issue both philosophically rich and patently unheard.

Like an itchy uncertainty prince, Dr. Christsakes gathered up the opiate expedition tickets from his one-way commuters. Under duress, everyone had purchased them before boarding the common antiboat. The boomers were a little short of funds as many had complications of under-remuneration regarding their impending retirements. Somewhat exhausted by medical bankruptcies, most had conscientiously set their personal affairs in order, ready to give it up - notwithstanding the stormy crowd who gathered on the other side of the blather.

Double Blue-Crossing the River Styx, some prepaid winky whacktivists carrying semi-autocratic weapons and turbo snakes were bused in by repelican propaganda corporations. Zoned out hotsy sympathizers carrying flipnfuck mattresses from Null-Mart struggled to block some boomers from joining the hospice hospitality lines. But standing there in the majority, democritters who had lost their voices while in exile for nine years were now drinking unbottled municipal water and making reality-based appeals to reframe their optional hopes.

"Have you ever read that poem by Dylan Thomas?" Dr. Christsakes finally asked his passengers with a sardonic smile. "After the first death, there is no other." All rose on their last legs, placing their binoculars of foresight into a care package for the living. They threw paper airplanes back toward the children crowded on the shore. Printed on the planes surface was House Resolution 676, Medicare for All. The other side outlined the titillating Cash for Punkers program, already funded by insurance conglomerates and moving like an engine in full revolution.

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http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR00676:@@@D&summ2=m&

http://www.hr676.org/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death-definition/