Cartoon Saturday

We are now just three weeks into the presidency of Donald Trump. I'm ready to wake up now and be thankful that it was all a bad dream.

Controversial Michigan millionaire Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education in a vote which required the Vice President, acting as President of the Senate, to cast the first tie-breaking vote on a cabinet nominee in history; White House press secretary Sean Spicer accused those who questioned a botched raid in Yemen of insulting the memory of a Navy SEAL killed in the raid, ignoring years of GOP harpig on the events in Benghazi, in which four American diplomats were killed; Alabama senator Jeff Sessions was confirmed by the Senate to be Attorney General on a nearly (one Democrat voted to confirm) party line vote; President Trump's* nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, described the president's relentless attacks on the judiciary as "demoralising" and "disheartening;" and on Thursday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to temporarily block the ban on refugees imposed by President Trump.

This week, in honor of the GOP's relentless efforts to "fix" the health care system and make health care more affordable for the insurance companies, here's a collection of cartoons about the cost of medical care.

Well, that's one way to look at it ...

This is where the GOP wants to take Medicare ...

It takes your breath away, doesn't it? ...

I can relate ...

 Most of us do ...

The wrong people are wearing the masks ...

When the doctor delivers the unpleasant results ...

It's all in how you present the options to the patient ...

Some tests are critical to determining the proper course of treatment ...

Open wide and say, "ow!" ...

And that's it for our second Cartoon Saturday of the month ... my attempt to help you cope with the barrage of unsettling news. Stay healthy, because the continuing health of your medical care is in the hands of some pretty inept surgeons.

The yo-you weather we've been experiencing here in NoVa is zipping back up again - after snow squalls that produced occasional white-out conditions (but little to no accumulation) on Thursday, we're expecting temperatures in the mid-sixties today, and up to 70 tomorrow (that would be about 19° today, and 21° tomorrow, for those of you who observe the Celsius scale). That means we'll probably have snow up to our armpits in a day or two. Sigh.

Have a good day and a great weekend, and come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* It still hurts to write that.