An Improbable Victory

Congratulations to congress for taking a giant step toward securing better medical care for all Americans. We should keep the momentum going and get at some of the roots of our soaring healthcare costs. We need tort reform, stricter fraud enforcement, and we need to plainly live healthier. Health is a human right, and like most rights, it comes with responsibility. We should have the right to be treated for unforeseen accidents and genetically or environmentally induced ailments. We should also be treated for conditions caused or exacerbated by our choices, but we should pay for it. Cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana (once legalized), and even fatty foods should have ridiculous taxes levied on them, and that money should go directly into subsidizing health care. Yes, I believe that french fries, Doritos, Twinkies and the like should be taxed at ridiculous levels. Americans will continue down the self-destructive path of obesity as long as it is cheaper to eat unhealthy. As Americans get fatter, health care costs will go up astronomically.

We do have the best doctors and hospitals in the world, but we do not have best system of delivering care. Canada and other countries with socialized medicine have their problems, but their systems are sustainable, and no one in Canada will be financially ruined by a health problem. Some paranoid citizens say they don’t want the government to get between them and their doctor. Do they really prefer stockholders who make more money if a patient dies or doesn’t receive treatment at all? Capitalism cannot be trusted when it comes to our health and safety. Profits=cutting corners. So, if you are really going to call socialism a great evil, then from now on you must boycott it. That means home-schooling your kids, delivering your own mail, putting out your own fires, policing your own streets, and growing and inspecting your own food.

Haiti...

The earthquake in Haiti is the worst natural disaster I can remember. The human suffering is unimaginable. Please don't forget about them. It will take a decade at least for them to recover and the aid workers on the ground are simply overwhelmed.

This is the best depiction I have found to actually get a sense of the enormity of this disaster. Look at these photos and really try to imagine what these people are going through. Subtleties like children with bandaged faces that are still covered in ash made my heart sink. Someone put a bandage on them, but didn't have time or water to clean their face first because so many others are waiting for treatment.

Yes, they had the audacity to put a commercial in front of it, but watch it anyway. There are almost 300 photos and if you can get through it without tearing up, you are stronger than me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/01/12/GA2010011203712.html?sid=ST2010020803656

Haiti Needs Help

I just found out there was a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, not far from the capital, Port-au-Prince. I haven't seen any casualty numbers yet, but my heart is aching for those people because I know it is currently hell there. It was already one of the most impoverished nations on Earth, and now the gods apparently think it's funny to level hospitals treating people for diseases they aquire while living on piles of garbage.

For those not aware, it is a relatively small nation that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. The size of Haiti lets me know that there was no corner of the country unaffected by this disaster. A magnitude 7 earthquake is not twice as powerful as a 3.5 (which are not uncommon in California), it is 5000 times more powerful.

I hope the world rallies to their aid quickly. I'm sure OxFam, Doctors Without Borders and many others will be on the ground soon and needing resources. If you can help these charitible institutions, please do.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34829978/ns/world_news-americas/?GT1=43001

What's In A Name -Part III (see 2008)

So a hotel owner in New Mexico is under fire for asking some employees to change their name. Actually, he was asking employees (presumably from Old Mexico) with hard to pronounce names to go by something else while answering the phones.
Is that really so wrong? He wasn't asking them to literally change their name, but just to pick a nickname for work. I don't think it is racist to try to provide good customer service. We are all off-put when we are talking to someone and have no idea how to pronounce his or her name.

In grad school the Asian kids and the Indian kids didn't mingle much outside their own groups and I think the hard-to-pronounce names were part of the problem. How do you start up a conversation with someone when you are afraid of offending him or her by slaughtering the name?

When the waves of immigrants first came to America on boats the U.S. officials didn't tolerate difficult names. If your name was unpronounceable to an American you were given a new name.
Immigrant: "Mhy neme esk Petrovich Groskyovski."
Customs Official: "Peter Grossman, welcome to America."

I think this really helped in the assimilation process. When you have a melting pot, you need something to tie all the flavors together. In our case it is the English language. If your name just doesn't work in English and you want to live the the United States, come up with a nickname. And for God's sake learn the language. If I decided to go live in Japan for some reason, I'm pretty sure I would be fluent in Japanese within a year.

Reform is a good thing.

I figured out why people who watch Fox News want to retain the right to die or go bankrupt if they need medical attention. They are conservative, and change frightens them. They are willing to protest loudly to keep things the way they are, or better yet send things back to the way they were. Glenn Beck is rallying the right wing troops to take things back to the beginning of America when things were so great. Let me clue you in; things sucked back then for average citizens. Apart from the top tier of society, people were repressed and led miserable existences until we had reform.

In the past, before any major reform occurred in the U.S., be the issue slavery, civil rights, or labor rights, brave people had to stand up for what they believed in and often suffered for doing so. They suffered at the hands of those that wanted to maintain the status quo benefitting their interests. Whose interests are the conservatives defending this time? Pharmaceutical companies are supporting health care reform, so it seems only insurance companies have something to lose. So, why are average people protesting the mere attempt to improve our health care system? The only logical argument I have heard is that it may further burden the deficit. Obama stated plainly that he would not sign a bill that increased the deficit, so why not hold him to that and let congress try?

Beck’s solution for America’s problems is to incite people to gather together to make sure nothing gets done. Um…what? Seriously, he is telling his automatons to protest any legislation until Washington promises to not be corrupt anymore. What a charlatan.
Politics have not gotten more corrupt since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. There have always been corrupt politicians and there always will be, because positions of power attract the corrupt. Luckily, the founding fathers were bright enough to put checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution, but they didn’t have all the answers back then (e.g. blacks were counted as 3/5 of a person for census purposes). All we can do is try to make our country a little better each generation. Please don’t protest progress just because you fear change.

H.R. 3200, Stick to the Facts People

The spokespeople for middle America are a pack of fickle mush-heads. Instead of offering alternatives to the health care bill or saying “Hey, we think adding this or getting rid of that part would be a good idea,” all they can come up with is misinformed, fear based rhetoric. Those protesting the Health Care Reform Bill apparently think there is nothing to fix. If you like your health care, what are you protesting? No one is trying to take anything from you, because all current coverage is protected under the bill.

Those people with signs depicting Obama likened to Hitler have never read the proposed bill. I know this because a mind that could make that connection is clearly illiterate. I have read much of the bill (it's over 1000 pages), and I assure you there are no provisions for “death squads”. What the barely-literate Ms Palin was referring to is offering people the opportunity to speak with a physician or nurse practitioner in order to make informed decisions about long term care. This would include providing information about services and benefits, living wills, hospice, etc. - sounds like the Gestapo, right? My only concern is that the bill does increase the availability of vaccines, so the mind control drugs that our government infuses in flu shots will be more widespread. In truth, it is a very good piece of legislation that protects our rights, and the majority of Americans should be applauding it to drown out the extremists.

Critics of reform are saying, “We already have the best health care in the world.” True, the United States has the best technology and the most skilled surgeons, but that argument is being made by those that can afford it. Now, because Pres Obama wants to offer a little of the best to the poor, he is being called a racist socialist. Excuse me?! Because there are more rich white people than rich minorities and he wants to tax the rich, apparently that makes him racist? His mother is white for hell’s sake. It is not socialism, because no one is talking about leveling the playing field. The wealthy will still be wealthy and in control, but I think it’s great that the IRS is finally cracking down on hiding money in foreign accounts. Don’t get me wrong because I love capitalism, but our Constitution was created to promote fairness in all things (when you include the amendments, of course).

Idiots and lobbyists (is that redundant?) are clamoring so much that the White House is backing down from insisting on a public option. The public option is the only way to give all Americans access to decent health care. Anything less would just be a reshuffling of the current failing system. Just as I feared, it seems we are going to get some watered down reform bill that will be criticized for not doing enough even though it will be the fault of the critics if it doesn’t.

By the way, Limbaugh and Beck…get bent.

Way to go Bill