Thu May 27, 2004 09:21 PM ET
By Caren Bohan
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - President Bush, taking on Democrat John Kerry over health issues, pitched a plan on Thursday to expand the use of technology in medicine -- including a cure for doctors' illegible handwriting.
Bush touted a goal of storing most Americans' medical records in electronic form within 10 years, saying that would reduce paperwork costs and cut down on medical errors.
"Docs are still spending a lot of time writing things on paper. And sometimes it's difficult to read their handwriting," Bush told an audience at Vanderbilt University in the election battleground state of Tennessee.
Democratic reaction was swift and incredulous. "Penmanship?!? Penmanship?!? We're in the middle of the worst fiscal and military mess since Tet and the President is worried about doctors' penmanship?!? What good is a clearly-written prescription if it costs $1,200 to fill? Our new slogan ought to be 'It's not the handwriting, it's the price, stupid.'" Another Democrat suggested the problem was with Bush, who "never really learned to read, at least not to read the writing on the wall in Iraq."
Others have suggested that, given the prevalence of poor spelling and innovative capitalization and punctuation on the internet, higher tech prescriptions may not be the answer. "Let's see a show of hands - how many people trust a computer database to dispense the right prescription, and how money trust humans, bad handwriting or no? I mean, those databases can't even spell our names right on magazine labels" scoffed a Mr. Obb Smiht of Neew York, NY.
With this announcement, Bush appears to have sewn up the crazed English teacher vote. "Poor penmanship is one of the greatest dangers facing this country," said Edna May Meeps, and English teacher from Throat Lozenge, MS. "Not one of my first-grade students can make a proper cursive alphabet, no matter how hard I beat them. They say their hands are wracked with pain from repeated metacarpal fractures; I say they're just lazy."
Others, however, see a darker side to the President's proposal. "What's the one thing Bush wants above all else? To distance himself from Iraq, of course," suggested pollster Hamsterlunch Woodchip. "What better way to do that than to play on his image as a dolt? In a few weeks he'll announce that he never ordered the invasion of Iraq, that some army PFC mis-read his note, and that he was really just ordering out for Middle Eastern Food."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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