Single Payer?

It used to be said that there were three professions that you didn’t go into in order to get rich. These three professions were: preacher, teacher, and doctor.

This was because supposedly the people who chose these career paths did so because they were called to them, not for the money.

In recent decades, preachers and doctors have removed themselves from that equation, with many in both professions choosing their profession for the sole purpose of getting rich. In too many cases, they haven't been interested in the well-being of their clientele, but rather in how much money they can make off of them.

If we go to the formula of everyone paying premiums to Medicare instead of Humana, Cigna, Aetna and the rest, then we will lose some of those doctors, due to the fact that they will no longer be able to make a fortune in the profession. In my opinion, those are people who shouldn't be doctors anyway, and I say "good riddance".

Considering that the insurance company lobby claims that over $100 billion a year is "minimal profits" and that the insurance industry spends over a million dollars a day on advertising, I would imagine that we could use some of those premium payments to fund the education of the many new doctors and nurses we seriously need.

Of course, medical schools will have to cease their elitist practice of limiting the number of med-school graduates that are allowed per year, but this might be a small price to pay.

I believe that, once the artificially low number of new doctors allowed and the astronomical cost of the education are removed as stumbling blocks, we will find that there are plenty of good, caring individuals who actually have the calling.

Zadroga Bill Congratulatory Letter to my Senator

Dear Senator Cornyn,
I understand that you voted with all other Republican Senators to keep the Zadroga 9-11 First Responders Health Care Bill from coming to the floor of the Senate for an up or down vote. Congratulations on allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to come before the health care of the true heroes who, without thinking of themselves, sprang into action on that most horrible of days.

But at least all of you Republicans stuck with your convictions, showing the rest of us where you truly stand with respect to those selfless men and women. The wealthy of this country can rest easy knowing that you and people like you are there for them, to ensure that they get those tax cut extensions, no matter who has to suffer for it.

I understand that you and your comrades are also unwilling to work the week between Christmas and New Years to try to work some things in. Senator, everyone I know (who has a job) will be working that week. Most of the people I know will make something like 1/7th your salary. I, and I am sure a lot of other people, would like to know just why it is that you and your associates believe that you are so much better than us, your employers, that you cannot work those days.

I also would like to know why it is that you and your associates, allegedly our employees, make so much more than the rest of us? You all seem to believe that the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is enough for us common schmoes to get by on, so what is the reasoning behind you guys taking so much more than that. I do understand that you guys have to maintain a residence in your home states and in Washington. So I would be willing to allow $14.50, and we can pay for your coach class airfare to and from out of the general fund. I think, however, that we are going to have to install a time clock, as from my understanding you guys don’t work full weeks even when there is no major religious holy day to conjure as a reason.

Again, congratulations on shafting the true heroes of this nation while at the same time extending tax cuts to your true constituency, the 2% of the population who make over $250k a year.

Merry Christmas to you as well. I hope yours is better than those emergency personnel you helped to shaft.

Who Cares?

To: 9-11 First Responders

From: Republican Senators

DROP DEAD. Oh, and Merry Christmas!

After ten years of pounding the drum in honor of the emergency workers, firefighters and police officers who were first responders after the worst attack our nation has seen since Pearl Harbor, Republican Senators on Monday seemingly showed how they truly feel about those responders. In a staggeringly lock-step partisan vote, the Republican Senators, with the exception of Sam Brownback of Kansas, unanimously voted to keep the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 from coming to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

Brownback abstained, presumably because he did not want to anger his constituents with a nay vote on this important issue, but was also unwilling to anger his party with a yea vote.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, voted nay, apparently in order to keep the bill alive for further consideration.

Most Americans are unaware that it is necessary to have a full 60 vote majority to bring a bill to the floor for a vote, in cases where the minority party wishes to block it.

On December 1, 2010, all forty two Republican Senators signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stating their intention to block from vote any bill that did not include an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans. At least they seem to be able to stick with their convictions.

UPDATE

Fox "News" reported this story, stating that "the Senate voted 57 to 42 against the bill." They did not note that the vote was 42 Republican (Obstructionist) party votes against bringing the bill to a vote, nor did they vote that the Democratic party was in favor of bringing the bill to a vote. None of the other major networks have even reported the story.

UPDATE 2

It took a bit of looking, but I have now discovered that the "Honorable" Michael Burgess, my Representative in the House of Representatives, also voted with the "nays" when this bill went through the House. I am completely ashamed to be from Texas.

James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010

57 "aye" votes (57 D)

42 "nay" votes (1 D 41 R)

1 abstain (Samuel Brownback, R-KS)

Democrats voting "nay":

Harry Reid, D-NV

Republicans voting "nay":

Lamar Alexander, R-TN
John Barasso, R-WY
Robert Bennett, R-UT
Christopher Bond, R-MO
Scott Brown, R-MA
Jim Bunning, R-KY
Richard Burr, R-NC
Saxby Chambliss, R-GA
Thomas Coburn, R-OK
Thad Cochran, R-MS
Susan Collins, R-ME
Bob Corker, R-TN
John Cornyn, R-TX
Michael Crapo, R-ID
Jim DeMint, R-SC
John Ensign, R-NV
Michael Enzi, R-WY
Lindsey Graham, R-SC
Charles Grassley, R-IA
Judd Gregg, R-NH
Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Kay Hutchinson, R-TX
James Inhofe, R-OK
John Isakson, R-GA
Mike Johanns, R-NE
Mark Kirk, R-IL
Jon Kyl, R-AZ
George LeMieux, R-FL
Richard Lugar, R-IN
John McCain, R-AZ
Mitch McConnell, R-KY
Lisa Murkowski, R-AK
James Risch, R-IN
Pat Roberts, R-KS
Jeff Sessions, R-AL
Richard Shelby, R-AL
Olympia Snowe, R-ME
John Thune, R-SD
David Vitter, R-LA
George Voinovich, R-OH
Roger Wicker, R-MS

We Want Our Country Back

We want our country back. What an interesting mantra.

Exactly where (or when) do we want our country back to?

Do we want it back to where Blacks had to drink from a different water fountain?

Do we want it back to where there were no usable roads?

Do we want it back to the good old days when 11 year olds were forced to work 80 hours a week with no rights and little pay?

How about all the way back to when everyone "owned" at least a couple of other people?

What is it that we want back?

Do we want back the days when even adult workers had no rights? How does an 80 or 90 hour workweek with no overtime pay, no minimum wage, no sick time, no holiday pay, and no weekend sound? When the owner of a company could keep his employees under his thumb by paying them very little, and then extending loans to keep them working there? That song "I owe my soul to the company store" wasn’t just a song.

Oh, I know. Do we want back the days when everyone had to carry a weapon because there weren’t enough police to keep order?

Or do we want it back to where woman couldn’t vote, and could barely get a job?

How about we do away with all those costly government programs. We don’t need any federal agency to police our food and drugs. Those companies that provide that stuff will police themselves adequately. Just like the peanut butter folks a couple of years ago. Or the Vioxx folks.

Where, or when, is it exactly that we want our country back to?

How about the days when a person could be turned out of a hospital ER to die on the sidewalk just feet away because he had no insurance or cash to pay for treatment?

What DOES "We Want Our Country Back" mean, exactly?

Deregulate Now

Government regulation of any type needs to go away. Our Federal government tells businessmen, the very people who create jobs, that money they could spend on creating new jobs must be spent on various things that curtail their abilities to create the jobs we, as Americans, depend on.

For instance, companies have to spend untold billions of dollars every year ensuring that their workers have a safe working environment. If they did not have to spend this money on frivolous safety measures, imagine how many more jobs they could create.

Imagine too, how much money businesses could save every year by not being forced to pay workers extra simply because they work more than 40 hours a week. Or, for that matter, a minimum wage. Workers around the world subsist on several dollars a day; we Americans are spoiled to the point that we insist on wages that will pay our bills. Get a second job people. Put your children to work to make ends meet. Whatever you have to do. Your insistence on making a so-called living wage hurts your employer’s ability to hire more workers, thus decreasing unemployment. Also consider that if Americans didn’t insist on such high wages, if our average pay was even less than what other countries have, we would have zero problems with illegal immigration.

And there is another one: why should a businessman have to pay into a pool that continues to pay a worker even after the business no longer needs his services? If wages were kept low enough to inspire hiring, then that worker could easily obtain another job, even after losing his previous one.

Who are we to tell the food industry that they have to spend a fortune on food safety? Without this unnecessary expenditure, they could lower the price of the foods that we buy; thus enabling them to not only make a better profit, but to hire more workers. How many thousands of tons of otherwise good, edible food is thrown out every day simply because it has reached some arbitrary expiration date, or been "contaminated" with some cleaning chemical or other innocuous substance?

What about the drug companies? How many millions of dollars do the pharmaceutical companies have to spend on needless testing of new drugs? If they didn’t have to spend this money, they could then hire even more workers to produce their drugs, thus, again, cutting unemployment. This would also have the effect of lowering drug costs.

The airline industry, already saddled with astronomical losses because of 9-11 and soaring oil prices, could save billions if they could do away with all these silly regulations about how often they have to perform maintenance on their fleets.

And don’t get me started on unions. The TWU is currently in "negotiations" with American Airlines simply because the executives at AA were given millions of dollars in bonuses while the workers themselves took pay cuts. So what? Those executives went to college for the very purpose of being able to have a job with such bonuses. If the airlines and other industries could crush their unions, they could save billions upon billions of dollars in wages and perqs. These savings would allow them to not only hire more workers, but also to pay bigger and better bonuses to their executives, ensuring that they have the best and the brightest at the top.

No Mandate for Private Services

I keep hearing folks say that it is unconstitutional for the United States Government to mandate that we, the American people, purchase the services of a private business. Several states’ Attorneys General have promised to sue the Federal Government if the insurance reform bill in front of the House of Representatives passes.

OK, I have a fix, at least for the mandate part. How about if we do not insist that everyone buy health insurance. How about if, instead, we say the following:

You, as an American Citizen, do not have to maintain Health Coverage on yourself. But if you opt to not carry coverage, and something happens to you, such as an unforeseen illness or injury, then you will be required to pay cash, up front, out of your own pocket or forgo any treatment for said illness or injury.

You see, right now, if you do not have coverage and something happens, you can go to a public hospital, get treatment, and simply not pay the bill. That debt then reverts to the rest of us, and our tax dollars pay for your treatment. You will have to be required to pay cash up front because we cannot take the chance that you will simply SAY that you will pay on an installment plan and then just disappear or allow your payments to lapse.

So you pay up front or you simply fix the problem yourself. That way we all can be sure that those of us who have insurance aren’t being double billed.

Oppose anything the Democrats Attempt

This is a letter I intend to send to the four people who allegedly represent me in Washington, D. C.:
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senator John Cornyn, Representative Michael Burgess, and President Barack Obama.
I will blog this and any response (if there is any) at oakminde.blogspot.com
　
I use the word "you" to refer to the Republican Party because three of the four people are members of that institution.
　
　
I have noticed that most, if not all, of the Republican Party seems to be opposed to any kind of national health care system. You call it a government takeover, compare it to socialism, and in Washington, you simply refuse to participate in the proceedings or just block the proceedings. Since you are opposed so vehemently to any of the suggestions the Democrats have put forth, I would be extremely interested in being educated as to what your alternative ideas are. I feel certain that the status quo, allowing insurance company executives rake in multimillion-dollar salaries while denying care to their customers, is not your plan. Or is it? I have not yet heard a single intelligent proposal out of the Republican wing of government. All I hear, day in and day out, are complaints that the plan(s) the Democrats have put forth will not work.
Now let me give you an idea. I pay $6,000 a year in premiums to my insurance company, to cover myself, my wife, and my daughter. They pay their CEO 18 million dollars a year. They pay several highly placed executives close to that, I assume. They also pay enough in dividends to entice investors to park money in their stock. All the while denying care to customers. Since the highest paid government employee makes $450,000 a year, I have to assume that the head of Medicare makes considerably less than that. I think you will have a difficult time finding anyone that is currently covered by Medicare who would be willing to give it up, so I have to think that that system works.
I would never be described as the "brightest bulb in the pack" but it seems to me that if I give that $6,000 a year to Medicare instead of a for-profit insurance company, and everyone around does the same thing, we might just be able to make it work. I would even bet that it wouldn’t have to be all of the $6,000, so there might even be some savings on my end. Even if it is all of the $6,000, as long as there is not some insurance company flunky declining to cover the colonoscopy that my doctor thinks I need (as my insurance company did earlier this year), I will be happy. You can call it a tax increase if you feel like you have to, but in my book, I am already paying that tax to a private company.
Certainly there are things that need to be done to cut out waste and fraud in the system, but I think that can easily be taken care of once we have everyone adequately covered.
For sure, this idea will put a lot of insurance folks in need of a new career. I, for one, do not care if the multi-millionaire CEO of my insurance company suddenly has to go out and find a legitimate job.
I think that if we adopt this plan, and demand that Congress uses it for themselves as well, we can adequately cover every citizen of the United States and ensure that the coverage is fair and comprehensive.


As an afterthought, I also included Senator Bernie Sanders in the recipients. I hear him on the (liberal) Thom Hartmann show every Friday morning, and he seems to actually care about the American people. He supposedly does not accept campaign contributions from corporations, only from regular folks like you and me. I don't know if this is true or not, but I do know that he sounds intelligent and informed.

Republican Purity Test

Do people truly not remember anything?

Are we going to collectively go to the polls in 2010 and vote based on what the Democrats have not been able to do? Or are we going to vote based on what the Republicans have stood in the way of? Will we remember the 1994 "Contract for America" (also known as the "Contract on America").

Will we, as a people, remember that from 1994 to 2006 the Republicans had control of the legislative and judicial branches of the government? And that from 2000 to 2006 they had control of the entire government? Will we remember what they did and did not do while they had control?

We got a couple of wars we had no business being in, we got decreasing regulation on the financial sector; we got really good legislation for the credit card industry; and a whole lot more that was good if you were a corporation or wealthy American, bad if you were a tax paying middle class citizen.
　
Oh good Lord, I certainly hope this happens.
　
Apparently the GOP has come up with a set of guidelines they are thinking of requiring any candidate to swear to uphold before they will allow him/her to call him/herself a Republican.
Red text is the "test", black text is my comments. There is a link to the news story at the end.


REPUBLICAN PURITY TEST

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill.

Because anything from Obama is bad? So far the Republicans have been pretty consistent about opposing anything put forth by the current administration or the Democratic Party. Smaller government like President Bush 43 made? Smaller national debt like the same guy gave us? Lower deficits? Let me get this straight. Lower deficits like Clinton gave us? Or "lower" deficits like the totally Republican run government gave us from 2000 to 2006, largely accomplished by hiding war costs? Lower taxes for the rich and higher taxes for the middle class like Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 gave us?

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare.

Because market-based worked so well for the banksters. Just kinda sucked for the rest of us. And again with the anti-Obama thing.

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation.

See my comments on #2. At least they left our President out of this one.

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check.

I am not real sure what is up with this one, but anytime I see Republican response to anything union, I have to assume that it is going to be horrible for unions and non-union workers alike.

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants.

I got nothing for this one. One of those things that I happen to be in almost total agreement with the GOP.

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges.

What? Victory? Someone please define what that means. All terrorists dead? How do you quantify that?

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat.

Because we have not yet managed to start World War III, and sticking our noses there might just do it.

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Keep the government out of our business, but it’s OK for them to be in our personal lives? If you truly want to maintain the "sanctity of marriage", make it harder to get a divorce. Otherwise, just admit that you hate gays and move on.

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion.

What? I thought the Republicans were FOR private, for-profit insurance companies? Aside from the government funding of abortion, these are all things that private insurance companies do now.

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Because anyone, no matter how psycho he/she may be, should be allowed to own a Howitzer or an M1 Abrams.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl996

Health Care: Fixed!

How many people who have Medicare are willing to give it up? I don’t know the answer for sure, but my bet is not many, if any.

People on the "Right" like to argue that Medicare is going broke. It will be defunct in just a few years.

So here is my health care plan.

Reduce the age of eligibility for Medicare to 0. Or minus 9 months, if we are too stupid to figure that one out without it being in writing. The only requirement would now be that you are an American citizen.

Instead of paying thousands of dollars a year to private, for-profit insurance companies, everyone will now pay 1500 dollars a year into Medicare. This works out to about 35 dollars a week, less than half what I pay to my insurance company.

Sadly, insurance company executives will no longer be able to rake in multimillion-dollar salaries. Life sucks, find another way to make money. If the business I work for all of a sudden becomes unnecessary to society, no one is going to cry for me, I don't see any reason to cry for them.

My insurance company can cover me, pay their CEO 18 million dollars a year, pay several lower level executives multimillion-dollar salaries, and pay enough dividends to keep shareholders interested, based on the premiums of the people they "cover".

I have to assume that Medicare should be able to cover me on $1.5k a year, without having to pay out all those wasteful salaries and dividends. Once this is done, we can concentrate on weeding out the waste and fraud in the Medicare system.

My $1500 dollar per person price tag is just off the top of my head, and probably way high. I am sure there are folks that can figure out what the exact number needs to be. I would be happy with the 1.5k.

Bam, health care fixed and paid for.

Health care, some more.

There seems to be a lot of talk about insurance coverage portability. This talk comes from the same folks who are adamantly against any kind of single-payer coverage, let alone the so-called public option. I have to say, the idea of portability WITHOUT a single-payer plan is just smoke. If you work for a company that provides you with coverage from Humana, and you leave that job to work for a company that uses Humana, then should be able to reasonably expect to get some kind of portability. You don’t have it now. If the company you work for has 2000 employees and the company you move to only has 50, you will pay more for the same coverage, even though it is from the same company. They have some kind of convoluted explanation for why this is, but you have to live in a fantasy world to begin to believe it. If you, however, move to a company that uses Aetna for coverage, you cannot expect to be able to carry your same coverage with you. The two different insurance providers are not going to offer the same plans or the same prices. The only possible way we can remove the ties between our insurance coverage and our jobs is to go with a single-payer plan, like most of the rest of the industrialized world has.
Consider, also, that the only real way to provide health care fairly, as a right, is to do away with the for-profit health insurance companies. I know, that would put a lot of people out of business. But, I don't remember anyone crying when Texas Instruments invented the calculator and put numerous abacus companies out of business. How do we pay for it? I'm glad you asked. My family pays just over 5 thousand dollars a year to my health insurance provider. It then pays out dividends to its shareholders, 18 million dollars a year to its CEO, and who knows how much more to the rest of its executives. Far far more than any government worker makes, you can be sure. Then, to ensure that their bottom line is nice and healthy, they deny me services like the (apparently) recreational colonoscopy my doctor wanted me to have.
If we take that 5 grand a year and instead pay it to the federal health care plan, we can probably push a lot of that 5k back into my bank account. There are no government employees pulling down an 18 mil a year salary. Nor are there any making anywhere near what probably the top 20 execs at just my insurance company make.
If my insurance provider can make the kind of profit required to justify the salary of its top executives by charging me 5000 a year, then I have to assume that the government can provide me with coverage for far less. Of course, it would also require that they hire honest people to administer. Maybe I am living a fantasy, too.
Some will say that this reeks of socialism. Yes, it does. So do public schools and hospitals, police forces, fire departments, military, and any number of other benefits we have that most of us pay for and all of us use.

Get your own Health Insurance

It seems awful strange to me that the same people in the media who are gung-ho about spending billions of US tax dollars to obtain the freedom of the Iraqi people (people, by the way, who have never paid a dime in US tax) are the same people who are viciously against spending our tax dollars to ensure the health of every American. These same people are the ones who told all of us, back in 2002, that if we were not on board with the invasion of Iraq that we were un-American. That if we disagreed with President Dick Cheney’s plan to depose Saddam Hussein we were terrorist sympathizers, and possibly terrorists and traitors ourselves. I would like to remind everyone that on 9-11-2001, Iraq did not attack us.

I would also like to remind everyone that there are a lot of Americans with inadequate or zero health coverage. Either due to the fact that their employer does not offer it, or because they cannot afford what their employer offers. On top of that, there are uncounted people slogging through every day in a job they hate just so they can have health insurance. THAT’s gotta be good for your health.

Of course, one can go out on an individual basis and get insurance, but it is pricey. What I found was $644.00 a month for a family of three. The deductible is $2500.00 per person. That is the middle of the road one. You can get it for about fifty bucks a month cheaper if you want to jump that deductible up past ten grand. You can drop the deductible too, but the monthly payment begins to rival Bernard Madoff’s monthly rent.

I have also heard people say that you can go to the emergency room if you don’t have insurance. You certainly can. Let us look at my case. I had epididymitis. Don’t ask me what it is, I haven’t really a clue. It is definitely painful, in an area you do NOT want painful. At least if you are a guy. Which I am.

What it is not is life threatening. Or so they said, anyway. Seemed pretty threatening to me, considering where it was painful. Since that is the case, I could have gone to an ER and sat for three days while they got around to looking at me. Once they discovered that I had no insurance and was unable to pay, they would have sent me on my way. The only way an ER is bound to treat an uninsured person is if that person’s life is in imminent danger. And even at that, all they really HAVE to do is stabilize.

Funnier (strange, not ha-ha), I work with a guy who, in the last year, had a pacemaker installed, paid for by Medicare. He is staunchly against the government being involved in health care. It seems that there is not a lot of thinking going on there.

I have noticed that a lot of the folks against any kind of reform have what they believe to be good insurance. I say they believe to be because that may just be the case. A lot of people believe they have good coverage right up until the point they have to use it. Then that coverage becomes either stunted or nonexistent, depending on the provider’s policy of dumping undesirable patients.

By the way, I do have insurance, the previous example was just for example purposes. My doctor wanted me to have a couple of tests run to be certain of what was wrong with me. My insurance company refused, so my doctor went to plan b: throw various pharmaceuticals at it and hope one takes. Nice.

This for six thousand bucks a year.

At least it wasn't some government flunkie telling me no.

Don't believe anything you read, and only half of what you see

It never ceases to amaze how otherwise intelligent people will simply believe what someone else tells them. They don’t seem to bother to actually look into claims they hear on the radio or TV; they just take them at face value. Let’s look, for example, at the recent health care debates. And I use debates loosely, there seems to be a lot of angry rhetoric from both sides, not even actually resembling a debate.

Sarah Palin made the ludicrous claim that President Obama would set up a "death panel", a panel of government employees, that would take a look at how productive a person is and make a determination of whether to pay for health care based on that productivity. Conservative media figures picked that up and ran with it like a fumble. They have repeated it incessantly, apparently believing the old mantra "make the lie big, repeat it often, people will believe the lie to be truth". In fact, the only thing that could lead anyone to even consider such a remark is shear stupidity or shear malice. You pick which it is.

The section of the bill being considered that this comes from provides for Medicare to pay, once every five years, for VOLUNTARY end of life counseling. With your doctor, not a panel of government bureaucrats. Something that Medicare does not cover now. This would cover discussions about living wills, how long you want to be kept on life support (if at all), when hospice would be appropriate, etc. It would NOT cover discussion of suicide or euthanasia.

I have not been able to confirm this, but I heard (from one of the conservative talk shows, so probably false) that Ms. Palin said something to the effect of "if Americans actually read this bill, they would be appalled". I must submit, Ms. Palin, that if you actually made it a point to know what you are talking about before you open your pretty mouth, you might actually be vice-president now.

I have also heard the idiotic claim that bills in discussion would spend our tax dollars funding abortions. It is illegal, right now, and will remain so, to use Federal moneys to fund abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or where the mother’s life is in danger. Now I know that there are folks who don’t believe a woman should be able to have an abortion in even these circumstances, but those folks likely need to be beaten anyway.

And while I am on this subject, why do I keep hearing people talk about abortion as birth control? Last I checked, a condom was about a buck. I haven’t actually looked into it, but something tells me that abortions cost a heckuva lot more than a buck. Who can afford that kind of birth control? Frankly, if a woman has that kind of cash and wants to ruin her future reproductive abilities, I say let her. Maybe that branch of the stupid gene will end with her.

I drive around most of the day, so I listen to a lot of talk radio. I mix it up, I listen to one of the eight conservative stations, then to the one liberal station, then another of the eight, then back to the one, and so on.

I keep hearing, from the conservatives, how concerned they are about our taxes going up. I have to remind you folks that those guys you hear from that box in your dash or see on that box in your living room make TONS of cash. When they talk about taxes going up, they are talking about THEIR taxes going up. They are not concerned with yours. It is difficult for me to take seriously a guy who makes 40 million dollars a year just from his radio show, when he tries to make out like he has the same financial concerns that I do.

Apparently, there is a lot of flap over advertisers removing their ads from certain talk show hosts shows. People talk about boycotting stores that do not want to advertise on shows that foment hate and anger, and repeat malicious lies to further an agenda. Boycott, folks. Stand up for the rights of rich celebrities to act like they are actual newspersons. Let corporate America know, by your unwillingness to spend money on their products, that you think folks should be able to use the public airwaves to advocate hate and racism.

It amazes me that, if Pepsi ran an add claiming that Coke caused cancer, Pepsi would be fined hugely. Yet any idiot can go on an "entertainment" show and make false claims about someone or some policy he doesn’t like and that is fine.

I think my bottom line here is, do NOT just believe something because you heard it on the radio or saw it on TV. Actually do some research. Find out that people with agendas will lie to further that agenda. Even me.

Representative Michael Burgess' Town Hall slip-up

On Saturday, August 15, 2009, Representative Michael Burgess, Republican from Texas, held a town hall meeting in Denton, Texas. It seems that it was mostly civil, with the usual shouting matches. What I saw, mostly, were a bunch of senior citizens (on Medicare, I would wager) protesting the idea of the rest of us getting any such kind of health coverage. What I also saw was a woman ask Mr. Burgess why the Republicans, when they were in charge, didn’t pass some kind of health care reform. His reply was long and sidestepping, as politician answers tend to be. But what stood out to me was one statement in particular.
Rep. Michael Burgess-"...The Republicans have, and I’m not supposed to talk about this, the leadership, my leadership doesn’t like it, But it’s easier to poke holes in someone else than it is to defend your own product. We actually have a bill, which I participated in writing and we worked late into the night and many nights late in the spring to find something that would be, uh, you can’t fight something with nothing, and we needed a bill..." Excuse me? I mean, we all know this, but to have someone in the party actually admit at a town hall meeting that the agenda is not to make a better bill, but simply to defeat one… well, that is just un-American. Or not, I don’t know.
"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said some weeks ago, about the President’s proposal for health care reform.
It seems to me that these guys are banking on their respective constituencies being too stupid to realize that they are not working for the people, but for their own, and corporate, gain.
So, given that maybe none of the bills being considered are the fix, maybe the Republicans should actually come up with something that will work. Or, would that be too much harder than simply poking holes in anyone else’s plan?
What is also interesting to me is that the "liberal" media has not covered this at all. I had to find this on Jon Stewart’s website. Local stations showed the question being asked, but cut away from the answer. CNN, who Rush Limbaugh often cites as the most liberal of the liberal, treated the exchange in the same manner. Apparently the media, who seem to have no problems covering (nonexistent) "death panels" or questions over our President’s citizenry, are afraid to show us exactly how the Republicans who supposedly represent us really think.

You can find the Michael Burgess exchange at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ue5S9ZFqv0

Foreign Aid... Local Aid

With all the debates over the economy, everyone seems to forget the human element in all this. A person who loses their income source is not far away from losing their place to live. Take, for instance, a woman in Fort Worth who is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. She cannot obtain a release to return to work, so she has zero income. All of the churches and charitable organizations have run out of money due to the abject financial situation our nation is in. She faces eminent eviction, with no prospects of a place to stay. Many other people faced with job loss face the same outcome. The major problem here is that an eviction goes on one’s credit reports, making it nearly impossible to obtain any kind of living quarters. Are we, as a nation, comfortable with expanding the homeless population? In light of the fact that we spend over 100 billion dollars a year on FOREIGN aid, it is unconscionable that we allow so many of our own citizens to fall through the cracks. It is not the responsibility of my tax dollars to house and feed someone in Africa when so many of my fellow Americans so greatly need help. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with helping folks around the planet, but I do NOT think we should be doing it when we have needs here at home. As long as there are ANY homeless Americans, or in any other kind of need, any money that we, as a nation, send to foreign lands should dry up. Once we have our own people taken care of, then, and only then, do we need to worry about the rest of the planet’s population.

How to pay for health care

The more I hear people lament that any kind of health care reform is tantamount to socialism, the more it irks me to know that these same people will vehemently defend a corporation’s right to deduct expenses from their taxes. If Scroodapeep, Inc. decides that it needs 12 forklifts to operate its warehouse in New York, they get to write off half that cost as a business expense. That means that half that money, they do not pay taxes on. All because they have to have those forklifts in order to make their business run. Well, folks, I have to have a clothes to wear so that I may work. I also have to have a car in order to get to work. I have to have a license to drive that car. I also have to have gas, maintenance, safety and emissions inspections, registration and insurance in order to drive that car, to get me to work, so that I may earn a living. I cannot write off any of these expenses. That same corporation, if it chooses to supply health insurance to its employees, can write off that expense as well. If I, as a private citizen, have to provide my own health care, I cannot write off any of it. Why are we, the people, subsidizing large corporations in this way? I say, if your company needs a forklift (or 20) to operate, then maybe you should pay for them in full. If this means that you cannot make a profit, perhaps you do NOT actually need that forklift. Or any other piece of equipment, for that matter. It is seriously far less my job to buy your forklift than it is yours to help make sure I don’t have some communicable disease.
It is also funny to me that some of the same folks who will argue against a national health care plan on the basis that it will ration care, or that you will wait months for needed procedures, will also argue that ANYONE can go to an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay, and wait months for needed procedures. Apparently this is a far more palatable solution.
A lot of these same folks will also argue that government run insurance will ration care. Apparently none of these guys has been sick lately. Sure, if you have insurance now, you can choose any doctor you want to. As long as he/she is on the approved list. You can have any procedure you need done. As long as you have met your exorbitant deductible and that procedure is on the approved list.
I seriously don’t have argument against those who believe that people who can afford health care deserve to be healthy while those who can’t don’t. I think that has something to do with being a sociopath. Fascist? Same thing?

Health care fiasco

Thank you for your comments. I am heartened to see that at least some folks who do not think that government health care is the answer actually have at least a go at a solution. I think that, for the most part, you are right. Co ops, however, are not the answer. How about this then?
If you work for a company with thousands of employees and your company contracts with, say, Aetna for coverage, they pay a certain rate. If a company with 10 employees wants coverage with Aetna, they have to pay a much steeper rate, because they have so few employees. What if we were to say that Aetna (and all other insurance companies) have to pool ALL of their clients together and charge everyone that same low rate? After all, if they can justify a lower cost for a company with thousands of employees, wouldn't it follow that they should be able to insure EVERYONE for that much less?
The U.S. government has not shown any ability to run anything well, and pretty much all of us know that. This country is pretty famous for innovation. I cannot see why the folks trying to hash out some kind of health plan can't look at all of the different national plans on the planet, pick out what works, toss out what doesn't, and mangle it all together to come up with the best system on the planet. Just my take.
Read the comments, folks. And please, if you desire to add your own, be as thoughtful.

SAVE THE C.E.O.'s

If you are the CEO of an insurance company and you make 20 to 30 million a year, do you really want to see the government step in and knock your salary down to a million?

Who can live on that?

And imagine if they also tell you that you have to insure actual sick people? Good gumdrops, how are you going to pay for that extra villa in Milan?

How about this absurd proposal that you would be unable to cancel someone’s coverage because they committed the unpardonable sin of actually using their policy? How are you supposed to make a profit for your shareholders, pay exorbitant bonuses to your agents, AND keep your salary at a living wage if the government sticks their paws in your business?

The best thing you can do is to spread millions of bucks around to crank out propaganda against any of these kinds of shenanigans. First, you make sure that the policy-makers that you have been supporting for lo these many years actually REMEMBER who pays their bills.

Then you make sure that the folks in the media know that THEIR bread has been buttered by you as well. If you can get these guys to bend facts a bit, even maybe tell a few outright lies, maybe, just maybe, folks will believe that it is in their own best interests to keep you insanely rich.

If you think about it, what is going to happen to the bottom line of the insurance companies if anything resembling a government run, or even strongly regulated, health care system comes about?

So then why would anyone assume that the folks whose own best interests would be served by killing any such measure are going to tell us the truth about said measures?

My mother-in-law, God love her, was convinced (because of a right-wing radio propaganda show run by a former Republican senator) that, as a Medicare recipient, she would be required to get counseling every 5 years that would, in essence, encourage her to "do right by society and end your life". Something like 10 seconds of extensive and painstaking research on my part came up with plenty of refutations of this absurd notion. Unfortunately, most people won’t do that kind of in-depth, labor-intensive brainwork.

This kind of fear-mongering is why we have never been able to get any kind of medical reform.

Basically, folks, you can either sit back and let other people do your thinking for you, or you can actually use your computer to search. The solitaire game will still be there in 20 seconds.

We all pay, in some way.

So, my wife sprained her ankle. Not badly, she can still walk, but badly enough that it hurts to do so. She went to a doctor, who confirmed that she probably did, indeed, sprain her ankle. But he wanted her to go have some x-rays just to make sure. The diagnostic clinic he wanted her to go to was closed, and she didn’t want to wait until Monday and have to take yet more time off work. So the doctor told her she could go to an emergency room to have the x-rays taken. Just to be sure, she called her insurance company (named after a volcano in Sicily). She was informed that if she went to a free-standing diagnostic clinic, they would cover 100% of the cost of the pictures. If she, however, went to a hospital emergency room, they would only cover 80% of the $940.00 charge. Nine hundred and forty dollars? For pictures? Admittedly, they are fancy, see-through-your-flesh pictures, but they are, nonetheless, pictures. It seems to me that perhaps the insurance company is not the problem in this particular instance. If it truly costs that much to take a few pictures of an ankle, how can anyone say that we don’t have a health care problem in this country?Nine hundred and forty dollars. And that is with insurance. It is my understanding that insurance companies negotiate prices so that they get a good deal. Uninsured persons get charged even more. So if I, without insurance, were to need x-rays, I wonder how much it would cost. Far more than I will pay, I can assure you.So here is a good one to consider, especially if you think that there is no health care problem. I have no insurance. So if I get sick, I will not seek medical help unless and until I become incapacitated or close to it. Which means that if I get something communicable, I will pass it around before I am forced to see a doctor. I really feel sorry for folks if I get something not only communicable, but deadly. And I can assure you that I am not the only person in such circumstances. Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with a desire to cause harm to others. This is simply out of a desire not to spend a lot of money to find out that I have a cold. It seems to me, however, that health care coverage reform is not all of what is needed. Perhaps putting the brakes on what gets charged might also be in order.
Interestingly enough, I heard some woman call into a radio program to say that she didn’t want some government bureaucrat deciding what doctor she could see or what procedures she could have done. I have to assume that she is OK with some insurance company flunky deciding these things. Which is what she has, if she is even lucky enough to have insurance at all.