Health Care Book Making Few Waves

So, you, like so many oth­ers, have spent the recent months on the road with a mot­ley crew of Mensa mem­bers in 18th cen­tury gar­ments, protest­ing against health care, tax cuts, edu­ca­tion, lamp-posts, and shop­ping carts with one miss­ing wheel. Now, out of the blue, you’re read­ing from someone’s Face­book update that the bill that was printed on both sides of hun­dreds of thou­sands of pages, and which grants the gov­ern­ment the right to make it eas­ier for peo­ple to keep them­selves alive (what­ever hap­pened to a man’s right to have a coro­nary on a Burger King park­ing lot?), has actu­ally been passed in secrecy in the dead of night. Who knew?

Sud­denly, it seems like you’re run­ning out of things to fear. How­ever, the flame of unabashed, unin­formed patri­o­tism is still flick­er­ing fever­ishly — and there is more to come.

Salmon & Shys­ter is pub­lish­ing the 8,000-page health reform bill in its entirety, accord­ing to the publisher’s spokesper­son. “We are print­ing the whole thing, all twelve thou­sand pages of it,” spokesper­son Amanda Hug­ginkess stated under con­di­tion of anonymity. “Noth­ing is going to be left out, it’s all there,” Ms. Hug­ginkess said moments before being dis­tracted by a bird. “Every word of that 16,000-page bill is going to be there. Plus, as a spe­cial treat, there will be illus­tra­tions pro­vided by a well-known politi­cian. I’m not going to spoil the sur­prise, but he’s one of the black lead­ers of the RNC.” Ms. Hug­ginkess refused to reveal the cartoonist’s iden­tity, and hur­riedly went on attempt­ing to keep her place in line for the recently released 12th vol­ume of the Harry Pot­ter series. “Cool, there’s magic in this one.”

Despite the publisher’s excite­ment, the antic­i­pa­tion on the streets is luke­warm at best.

“I’m not gonna buy it,” ombuds­man Tim­o­thy McDon­ald said, shak­ing his head. “I don’t need to read it to know what’s in it.” McDon­ald, on his way home from vis­it­ing his sick grand­mother, stated that most of what he needed to know he had already learned from tele­vi­sion. Cit­ing pub­lic prej­u­dice, McDon­ald refused to reveal his sources. “I ain’t gonna tell you what chan­nel, but it’s like an ani­mal. Not the emu, but the other one.”

As of now, Salmon & Shys­ter is yet to set a release date for the upcom­ing tome, but rumor has it that Para­mount is already plan­ning a major sum­mer block­buster based on the book.

Fur­ther­more, a heav­ily abridged ver­sion, edited by for­mer Alaskan Gov­er­nor Sarah Palin, is expected to hit the shelves just before November.