Commercials, part 1

We really need to pay attention to commercials--to listen to what they are actually saying and carry it to its logical conclusion.

• A friend of mine told me of the following experience: He and his sister shared a credit card with their mother. It was a MasterCard issued by one of the large banks. At some point he tried to use the card and had it rejected. When he traced the problem to its source, it turned out his mother had decided to replace the MasterCards with Visas. Why? Because she had seen the Visa commercials advertising that at certain locations (the Olympics, certain theme parks, certain restaurants) you should "bring your Visa card, because at . . . they don't take American Express." So she had decided that Visa was better than MasterCard. And he had to tell her: "Look, Ma. First of all, we're not planning to go to any of those places. Second, they're only talking about American Express, not MasterCard."

• I love the commercials for some organization that's supposed to help people without healthcare coverage pay for drugs. It's sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. First, if drugs weren't so damned expensive people might actually be able to afford them. And don't tell me that they have to spend all that money on research. Drugs companies actual pay doctors (by means of "goodies") to prescribe their products. Plus they spend all this money on consumer advertising for drugs which can only be prescribed by doctors. Second, the healthcare industry (of which pharmaceutical companies are a large part) spent $500 million to defeat plans for universal healthcare in the early days of the Clinton Administration. So, oh yeah, let's thank the pharmaceutical industry for being so generous in trying to help people buy their drugs.