Annabel Edith Villagra, RIP

Michael F. CannonAnnabel Edith Villagra hasdied.If that name doesn ’t ring a bell, you may have known her as Annabel Battistella. Or Fanne Foxe. Or the “Argentine Firecracker.” Or “the Tidal Basin Bombshell.” Or the 38‐​year‐​old exotic dancer with bruised eyes who jumped out of a car and into Washington, DC’s Tidal Basin after a row with her lover, 65‐​year‐​old House Ways and Means Committee Wilbur D. Mills (D‐​Ark.), in 1974.Mills was the father of Medicare. In his 2006 bookMedicare Meets Mephistopheles, Cato adjunct scholarDavid Hyman writes, “As the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Mills shepherded the Medicare bill through Congress, and was the person most responsible for Medicare’s basic design features.” The Tidal Basin incident led to the discovery of his affair with Battistella (her surname at the time) and to the end of his tenure at the helm of the committee that oversees Medicare.Medicare Meets Mephistopheles is likely the only satire anyone has ever written about Medicare. (Even more likely it ’s the only funny one.) Borrowing from C.S. Lewis’The Screwtape Letters, Hyman writes in the voice of a  junior devil who reports back to Satan on Medicare’s success as a recruitment tool. The program’s many faults, you see, are all traps that its demonic progenitors use to tempt humans into committing all Seven Deadly Sins. The junior devil reports that he tempted Mills into an affair with Batt istella ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs