Sometimes, the debate over health care reform gets personal. Like two weeks ago, when my oldest daughter ended up in the emergency room to replace fluids after a raging flare-up of ulcerative colitis. She had lost eight pounds in just a few weeks, and was so weak she could barely walk.
Colitis is a debilitating autoimmune disorder that frequently hits between the ages of 15 and 30 (she was in her mid 20s), or later in life at 50 to 70. It is not a lifestyle-induced disease so common to today’s fat and bloated Americans who stuff themselves with McDonald’s non-food and KFC’s artery clogging crapola.
Kate has always eaten nutritiously, and has never been overweight. She is simply the victim of a bad gene pool that afflicts my father’s side of the family, where Type 1 diabetes (another autoimmune disorder) is rampant.
Kate is a bright girl with a gift for math. She has a master’s degree in statistics, and is working toward a second master’s in real estate finance. She loves her job as a risk analyst at Freddie Mac, which comes with good health insurance.
But what happens if she loses that job, either due to her illness, or to the vagaries of the marketplace? She would be uninsurable if she had to buy an individual policy. If she did manage to find a health insurer that would accept her, decent coverage would be unaffordable.
And so we have the Catch-22 of our broken, illogical, heartless system of reliance on employer-based, private-enterprise health insurance, a vestige of World War II wage controls that no longer serves our society.
If Kate lived anywhere else in the world, her health and well-being would not be tied to her job. If her illness prevented her from working, she would still have access to affordable medical treatment. Any decent society provides this, at the least.
This is why I’m so pissed off at Barack Obama and his constant caving in to the Right Wing Fox Nuts. He has allowed the Plutocrats to frame the agenda, starting with his “health care reform” proposal that offers a leg up to a paltry few who fall through the cracks.
The 20-somethings who can’t find work can remain on their parents’ plan, and those with pre-existing conditions can’t be dropped (but nothing stops the insurers from jacking up rates to the point where the chronically ill can’t afford them.) I suppose this is a small measure of progress compared to what we have now.
But what rankles the the Tea Baggers, the Plutocrats, AND us Progressives is the mandate to buy a faulty for-profit product that is overpriced and which weasles out of its contractual obligations to pay whenever the bills come due.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Don't Punish the Doctors
The most recent depressing development in the War Against Ourselves Concerning Health Care was reported this week when a growing number of doctors declared they will no longer accept Medicare patients because the government is cutting their payments.
Republicans, Tea Partiers, Faux News followers, right-wing extremists, Second Amendment fanatics, and other assorted nut cases, I’m ready to join your anti-government screed on this issue.
That is, if you agree that any savings in health care expenses should NOT be born by the doctors who deliver our care. Unlike health insurance companies, physicians have invested heavily in time and money to contribute to the health and well-being of us all.
Contrast this with Anthem Blue Cross, a giant health insurer with no purpose other than serving as a middleman to skim money from the system. Anthem heals nobody, can’t give a flu shot, does no research into cures for diabetes or cancer, and couldn’t hook up an IV if their life depended on it (though ours often does.)
Why do we in this country allow the likes of the health insurers to hijack our system and make our health care more expensive and our lives more miserable? The insurers contribute NOTHING to the good of the country, or to the health of its citizens.
I think we can all agree that we are unique among the developed nations, and even some Third World countries, that we pay too much for our health care and get too little in return. The statistics are daunting. The most recent estimate is that 59 million of us now go without health insurance, up from 46 million just a few years ago.
Health insurers have taken a necessity, like water and electricity, and monopolized it for profit. When we will we awaken, take up arms (hooray for the Second Amendment) and extinguish these thieves once and for all? Health insurers should be regulated like public utilities, which is exactly what the Obama Administration has tried to do with its reforms.
“Obamacare,” as the Right Wing has dubbed it, is NOT socialized medicine, but a long-overdue attempt to put some much-needed rules in place to reign in the worst practices of the health insurance tyrants.
So Annie get your gun, and let’s go after these outlaws.
Republicans, Tea Partiers, Faux News followers, right-wing extremists, Second Amendment fanatics, and other assorted nut cases, I’m ready to join your anti-government screed on this issue.
That is, if you agree that any savings in health care expenses should NOT be born by the doctors who deliver our care. Unlike health insurance companies, physicians have invested heavily in time and money to contribute to the health and well-being of us all.
Contrast this with Anthem Blue Cross, a giant health insurer with no purpose other than serving as a middleman to skim money from the system. Anthem heals nobody, can’t give a flu shot, does no research into cures for diabetes or cancer, and couldn’t hook up an IV if their life depended on it (though ours often does.)
Why do we in this country allow the likes of the health insurers to hijack our system and make our health care more expensive and our lives more miserable? The insurers contribute NOTHING to the good of the country, or to the health of its citizens.
I think we can all agree that we are unique among the developed nations, and even some Third World countries, that we pay too much for our health care and get too little in return. The statistics are daunting. The most recent estimate is that 59 million of us now go without health insurance, up from 46 million just a few years ago.
Health insurers have taken a necessity, like water and electricity, and monopolized it for profit. When we will we awaken, take up arms (hooray for the Second Amendment) and extinguish these thieves once and for all? Health insurers should be regulated like public utilities, which is exactly what the Obama Administration has tried to do with its reforms.
“Obamacare,” as the Right Wing has dubbed it, is NOT socialized medicine, but a long-overdue attempt to put some much-needed rules in place to reign in the worst practices of the health insurance tyrants.
So Annie get your gun, and let’s go after these outlaws.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
At Long Last, I Understand
I am old enough to have studied history long before the State of Texas was able to hijack the publishing industry and rewrite the textbooks to propagandize their fundamentalist right-wing agenda.
But though I read history texts untainted by Texans back in the 60s, I never really grasped, at a gut level, how Germany could have fallen prey to the Nazi plague. After all, most of my ancestors are German, and their descendants are the salt of the earth.
My contemporary German relatives are God-fearing Midwesterners who say grace before they devour their homemade chicken and noodles. They don’t just pass away. When they write their obituaries, they enter into the arms of their savior or ride the wings of an angel up to the heavens.
These are decent folk who keep clean homes. They don’t cheat on their taxes (though they’ve been known to cheat on their wives), and they are frugal to a fault.
Still, at worst my German ancestors participated in one of the most vile movements in the history of the civilized world. At best, they simply ignored atrocities carried out in their name.
How could they have bought into a movement so evil?
Plainly and simply, they were angry, afraid, and looking for someone to blame for their diminished status after their economy was devastated by World War I. Pretty much like what we see going on in the U.S. these days.
Which makes me wary of what lies ahead as I watch the anger of the Tea Party foment into a combustible stew poised to lash out at the most convenient scapegoat they can find. Their target is always The Other, just as the Nazis scapegoated the Jews.
Today’s Tea Party targets are Brown or Black, most often, and practicing an unfamiliar religion that has been demonized by politicians in the War On Terror, which is just a euphemism for empire-building, theft of natural resources on another continent, and reducing labor here and abroad to a cheap commodity.
God help us all.
But though I read history texts untainted by Texans back in the 60s, I never really grasped, at a gut level, how Germany could have fallen prey to the Nazi plague. After all, most of my ancestors are German, and their descendants are the salt of the earth.
My contemporary German relatives are God-fearing Midwesterners who say grace before they devour their homemade chicken and noodles. They don’t just pass away. When they write their obituaries, they enter into the arms of their savior or ride the wings of an angel up to the heavens.
These are decent folk who keep clean homes. They don’t cheat on their taxes (though they’ve been known to cheat on their wives), and they are frugal to a fault.
Still, at worst my German ancestors participated in one of the most vile movements in the history of the civilized world. At best, they simply ignored atrocities carried out in their name.
How could they have bought into a movement so evil?
Plainly and simply, they were angry, afraid, and looking for someone to blame for their diminished status after their economy was devastated by World War I. Pretty much like what we see going on in the U.S. these days.
Which makes me wary of what lies ahead as I watch the anger of the Tea Party foment into a combustible stew poised to lash out at the most convenient scapegoat they can find. Their target is always The Other, just as the Nazis scapegoated the Jews.
Today’s Tea Party targets are Brown or Black, most often, and practicing an unfamiliar religion that has been demonized by politicians in the War On Terror, which is just a euphemism for empire-building, theft of natural resources on another continent, and reducing labor here and abroad to a cheap commodity.
God help us all.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
We're Still in Kansas, Toto
The violent storm system that brought tornadoes to the Midwest and South this week reminded me (1) How grateful that I no longer live in Tornado Alley, and (2) The destructive twister that hit Dorothy’s family in The Wizard of Oz is likely to descend upon us Nov. 2 in the form of some brutal windbags being elected to the halls of Congress.
It looks all too likely that Teabagger Sharron Angle will defeat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada. If she were running for a House seat, I wouldn’t fret, as it would take less than a year for her backers to have buyers’ remorse and kick her butt out. However, as a U.S. Senator she'd have six years to inflict real damage on the entire country.
Angle would abolish the Department of Education, privatize Medicare, and “transition out” Social Security because it is "welfare. " (Nevermind that we Boomers have paid into the system for 40 years.) And just ask our kids whether they would like to be responsible for our well-being in our dotage if we weren’t able to collect it, as their children will be for them if Angle has her way.
She wants the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. She does not believe that the U.S. Constitution mandates the separation of church and state.
And then there are her anti-immigrant rants and television advertising spots that reveal her as a racist to the core.
If she prevails, Sharron Angle will become the ugly elected face of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Rand Paul is ahead in the Kentucky Senate race, despite the despicable scene witnessed this week when his Brownshirts stomped on the head of a woman who showed up outside his event to peacefully draw attention to his allegiance to the Corporatocracy.
In the Alaska race for U.S. Senate, the Palin-backed Joe Miller resorted to using hired guns to handcuff a reporter who wanted to question him about his dubious (and illegal) electioneering activities while holding public office. He has since confessed his guilt to the original charges, although he issued no apology to the editor of the Alaska Dispatch who had the temerity to raise the issue.
Thankfully, Miller has plunged in the polls. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has a shot of winning back her seat as a write-in, if Alaskans only know how to spell her name. But with the dumbing down of education that has taken place over the last 30 years, it is doubtful that Sarah Palin’s fellow citizens can master that task.
Mercifully, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware has exposed herself as so utterly ignorant that even the dumbest of the dumb can’t bring themselves to vote for her, so her Democratic opponent Chris Coons is well ahead in that race. Score one for the realists.
But back to Kansas, and what’s wrong with it. As author Thomas Frank pointed out in his book, "What's The Matter With Kansas?," these are good people who for some strange reason, keep voting against their own self interest. And they are about to do it once again on Nov. 2.
The cyclone is on its way. God help us all.
It looks all too likely that Teabagger Sharron Angle will defeat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada. If she were running for a House seat, I wouldn’t fret, as it would take less than a year for her backers to have buyers’ remorse and kick her butt out. However, as a U.S. Senator she'd have six years to inflict real damage on the entire country.
Angle would abolish the Department of Education, privatize Medicare, and “transition out” Social Security because it is "welfare. " (Nevermind that we Boomers have paid into the system for 40 years.) And just ask our kids whether they would like to be responsible for our well-being in our dotage if we weren’t able to collect it, as their children will be for them if Angle has her way.
She wants the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. She does not believe that the U.S. Constitution mandates the separation of church and state.
And then there are her anti-immigrant rants and television advertising spots that reveal her as a racist to the core.
If she prevails, Sharron Angle will become the ugly elected face of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Rand Paul is ahead in the Kentucky Senate race, despite the despicable scene witnessed this week when his Brownshirts stomped on the head of a woman who showed up outside his event to peacefully draw attention to his allegiance to the Corporatocracy.
In the Alaska race for U.S. Senate, the Palin-backed Joe Miller resorted to using hired guns to handcuff a reporter who wanted to question him about his dubious (and illegal) electioneering activities while holding public office. He has since confessed his guilt to the original charges, although he issued no apology to the editor of the Alaska Dispatch who had the temerity to raise the issue.
Thankfully, Miller has plunged in the polls. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has a shot of winning back her seat as a write-in, if Alaskans only know how to spell her name. But with the dumbing down of education that has taken place over the last 30 years, it is doubtful that Sarah Palin’s fellow citizens can master that task.
Mercifully, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware has exposed herself as so utterly ignorant that even the dumbest of the dumb can’t bring themselves to vote for her, so her Democratic opponent Chris Coons is well ahead in that race. Score one for the realists.
But back to Kansas, and what’s wrong with it. As author Thomas Frank pointed out in his book, "What's The Matter With Kansas?," these are good people who for some strange reason, keep voting against their own self interest. And they are about to do it once again on Nov. 2.
The cyclone is on its way. God help us all.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Virtual Virtues
I used to be terrified to enter a virtual world populated by what I perceived to be as pervs, peepers and perps. If I were single and looking for a date, and thank God I’m not, why on earth would I go online to find one? I considered it Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.
And then, over the past several years, I had an epiphany when I learned that many of my close friends, my hairdresser, and even my family have successfully found friendship, love, and marriage via the internet.
Come to think of it, the online world is probably a better venue for discovering genuine human being-ness than a bar full of drunks and ne’er-do-wells, or a church full of self-righteous hypocrites who are keeping their demons in check by quoting the Bible while buggering little boys in the vestry on a Tuesday afternoon.
So I guess you could call me a convert to the wonders of the virtual marketplace. I still have reservations about privacy issues on Facebook, and Google’s intrusion into our neighborhoods and homes with its Wi Spy invasion while billing itself as the company that promulgates the mantra, “Don’t Be Evil,” so trust us.
So play Frontierville (as I do) and hook up with your old high school classmates online (as I do) but keep a watchful eye out for the potential for Facebook to sell you out to the highest bidder, as Mark Zuckerberg has done time and again.
And never take your eye off Google, whose tentacles are reaching into the smallest crevices of our lives and shaping our existence in ways unimaginable to the least sophisticated among us. Beware the Octopus.
So my advice for all of us who are addicted to the wonders of the internet is, go forth, engage, indulge, and enjoy. But do practice safe text.
And then, over the past several years, I had an epiphany when I learned that many of my close friends, my hairdresser, and even my family have successfully found friendship, love, and marriage via the internet.
Come to think of it, the online world is probably a better venue for discovering genuine human being-ness than a bar full of drunks and ne’er-do-wells, or a church full of self-righteous hypocrites who are keeping their demons in check by quoting the Bible while buggering little boys in the vestry on a Tuesday afternoon.
So I guess you could call me a convert to the wonders of the virtual marketplace. I still have reservations about privacy issues on Facebook, and Google’s intrusion into our neighborhoods and homes with its Wi Spy invasion while billing itself as the company that promulgates the mantra, “Don’t Be Evil,” so trust us.
So play Frontierville (as I do) and hook up with your old high school classmates online (as I do) but keep a watchful eye out for the potential for Facebook to sell you out to the highest bidder, as Mark Zuckerberg has done time and again.
And never take your eye off Google, whose tentacles are reaching into the smallest crevices of our lives and shaping our existence in ways unimaginable to the least sophisticated among us. Beware the Octopus.
So my advice for all of us who are addicted to the wonders of the internet is, go forth, engage, indulge, and enjoy. But do practice safe text.
Friday, October 15, 2010
A Meeting of the Minds
Well, at long last, a rabid right-wing acquaintance of mine sent me one of those emails churned out by the Tea Party noise machine that I can actually get on board with.
You may have seen it too. It’s entitled “My Twenty People,” and it offers a prescription for fixing what’s wrong with Congress.
“You're part of my 20 people,” it says. “Hoping you will send this on to your 20 so we get this out before November. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time. "
Congressional Reform Act of 2010 .
Term Limits.
12 years only, one of the possible options below:
Two Six-year Senate terms
Six Two-year House terms
One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.
Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.
“The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work. "
Well maybe it IS time for some fundamental changes in the way our self-serving Congress operates. At the very least, if there were term limits they wouldn’t be constantly running for office and forced to be whores for the big money elite. (Note to Meg Whitman: “Whore” is synonymous with “sell-out”, so don’t get all self-righteous on me.)
And you can bet your bippy if they had to go out on the open market and buy health insurance like the rest of us do, they’d pass single-payer in a flash. Dick Cheney would be first in line to champion it. After all, we taxpayers have been funding his gold-plated health care since his first heart attack at 37. Without our benevolence, he would have been shut out of the insurance risk pool 30 years ago, and quite likely, be long dead by now.
Now just think of the money THAT could have saved us.
You may have seen it too. It’s entitled “My Twenty People,” and it offers a prescription for fixing what’s wrong with Congress.
“You're part of my 20 people,” it says. “Hoping you will send this on to your 20 so we get this out before November. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time. "
Congressional Reform Act of 2010 .
Term Limits.
12 years only, one of the possible options below:
Two Six-year Senate terms
Six Two-year House terms
One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.
Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.
“The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work. "
Well maybe it IS time for some fundamental changes in the way our self-serving Congress operates. At the very least, if there were term limits they wouldn’t be constantly running for office and forced to be whores for the big money elite. (Note to Meg Whitman: “Whore” is synonymous with “sell-out”, so don’t get all self-righteous on me.)
And you can bet your bippy if they had to go out on the open market and buy health insurance like the rest of us do, they’d pass single-payer in a flash. Dick Cheney would be first in line to champion it. After all, we taxpayers have been funding his gold-plated health care since his first heart attack at 37. Without our benevolence, he would have been shut out of the insurance risk pool 30 years ago, and quite likely, be long dead by now.
Now just think of the money THAT could have saved us.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
A Rap for our Times
You got the GOP and the Tea Party Crowd
They have crazy ideas and they’re nasty and loud
From the anti-masturbator who was once a witch
To the woman in Nevada who’s a first-class bitch
They’re all misguided, and obnoxious as well,
They all say they’re Christians, but they’re going to hell
For if Jesus is their Savior as the Bible preaches
He’d hate the rhetoric of these sons of beaches
Just look at Kentucky where if Rand has his way,
No Social Security for a rainy day!
Thunderstorms are coming so you better be ready
Who holds your mortgage? Is it Fannie or Freddie?
Nobody knows, and that’s the rub
It’s been sliced and diced for the Rich Man’s Club
Are you ready to rely on your 401K?
Instead of a pension, when you’re 80 and a day?
Hope you get your wish in two thousand ten
When you win the election but you chose the wrong men
BREAK...
They have crazy ideas and they’re nasty and loud
From the anti-masturbator who was once a witch
To the woman in Nevada who’s a first-class bitch
They’re all misguided, and obnoxious as well,
They all say they’re Christians, but they’re going to hell
For if Jesus is their Savior as the Bible preaches
He’d hate the rhetoric of these sons of beaches
Just look at Kentucky where if Rand has his way,
No Social Security for a rainy day!
Thunderstorms are coming so you better be ready
Who holds your mortgage? Is it Fannie or Freddie?
Nobody knows, and that’s the rub
It’s been sliced and diced for the Rich Man’s Club
Are you ready to rely on your 401K?
Instead of a pension, when you’re 80 and a day?
Hope you get your wish in two thousand ten
When you win the election but you chose the wrong men
BREAK...
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