2013-06-25
Explanation
In this comic, a man excitedly tells a red-haired woman, "I found a way to increase your expected lifespan 20 years." She asks, "How?" and he enthusiastically replies, "Step over this invisible line!" She responds skeptically, "Riiiiiight." The caption below reads: "National borders are weird."
The joke highlights the dramatic differences in life expectancy between neighboring countries. Simply by crossing a national border -- an arbitrary invisible line drawn on a map -- a person can go from living in a country with poor healthcare, low life expectancy, and dangerous conditions to one with excellent healthcare and safety infrastructure. The humor lies in the absurdity that such a simple physical action (stepping over a line) can have such an enormous statistical impact on one'''s expected lifespan, pointing out how strange it is that human-created political boundaries produce such vastly different living conditions.
In the votey, a woman straddles the border and says, "Weird. Half of my body has healthcare." This extends the joke by literalizing the absurdity -- if life expectancy changes at the border, does healthcare coverage apply to whichever half of your body is on the "good" side? It also serves as a pointed commentary on the state of healthcare access, likely referencing the contrast between the United States and countries with universal healthcare systems.