NO sweat nowadays to make a short shrift of Longfellow’s bit of reasoning in rhyme: “Joy and Temperance and Repose/ Slam the door on the doctor's nose.”

In a recent cover of Time Magazine, the president of the United States is shown white in a medical attire. But even as he gazes ahead with gleam of hope past the political furor over health-care reform, he may as well have struck a pugilist’s do-or-die pose. Brace for bare-knuckle worst, yes, without looking blue with a black eye and a nosebleed.

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In the face of emergency issues—-war against terrorism as well as the horror of economic eclipse—-here comes the so-called “Obamacare” offensive. On behalf of nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, Obama has been keeping his fists near his lips against the onslaught of scare tactics. “They will create bogeymen out there that aren’t just real,” he complains.

Going for the kill, indeed, are his detractors primed with a dose of partisan superstition laced with misinformation.

An explosive cocktail of ignorance, intolerance, and arrogance has been tearing apart town-hall consultations across the states.

How they echo the rabble-rousing chorus from Republicans out to steal the thunder from Obama’s prescription for change.

With Sarah Palin as their blabbermouth muse, they have been gobsmacking the media into a muddle of sound bites on alleged Obama-sponsored “death panel” deciding to “pull the plug on grandma.”

With all that outbreak of viciousness, who needs a viral epidemic?

Moreover, many are sick along with Obama who worries about “unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits.” Owing to a previous medical condition or pre-existing ailments, more than 12 million Americans have had to deal with discrimination by insurance companies, according to a 2007 national survey.

The companies either turned their backs, refusing to cover a particular illness or charged a higher premium.

Small wonder why these companies have been splurging millions of dollars—-extracted from consumers’ premiums--for advertising and for lobbying so that Congress will deal a death blow to public option in Obama’s health-care reform.

It’s not as if the ill as well as potential patients are not already spooked by another spine-tingling hospital phenomenon: medical malpractice. At least 98,000 Americans have been estimated to have died annually from preventable medical errors on top of another 99,000 patients believed to have died from hospital-acquired infections.*

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Talk about a malaise, and it’s not a far cry to carp about the debilitating effect of demoralization. That’s something that doctors at the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) reportedly suffer from as Tom Osmeña thumbs his nose over reported death of patients due to dengue. It’s a shared affliction, as a matter of fact. “Because of their performance, I’m the one demoralized,” snorts the mayor against their unease vis-à-vis his ill feeling toward them. They say he’s adding insult to everything they allegedly endure: heavy workload and long hours at work for a pittance of professional reward even as they “sometimes spend for the medicines of some patients.”

As some public doctors feel pinched, no less distraught are members of the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines now threatening a “hospital holiday” following the passage of a law (Executive Order 821) that cuts the cost of essential medicines by half.

Ouch, that’s cold comfort for the chronically less privileged: the legion of the injured, the sick and the dying now having to deal with politicians, policy-makers, and even doctors who don’t feel much better.

(geemyko@gmail.com)