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IT’S A CRAZY WORLD OUT THERE

On occasion I’ve used this blog to write something about my personal life rather than comment on the passing parade - and though I’m not about to do it today, I do want to offer an explanation or perhaps reiterate the reason for the gaps between comments. It is due to physical problems that make it hard for me to sit at the computer for any length of time. I hope things will improve - maybe after a few more surgeries.

Meanwhile…earlier this month - on September 6, I said that there were times when I despaired of some of my fellow citizens - and that day was one of them. I still feel the same way - and I can expand that to some fellow world citizens. A couple of examples of what leads me to despair. The Israeli/Arab conflict has been going on for decades - sometimes it seems as though it has always been with us. Now - as always - there is pressure on to resume the "peace process" and ideas are being advanced for the shape of an independent Palestinian state - living "side by side" with Israel. Like just about all the "ideas" suggested in the past, these are nonsensical and non sustainable. Gaza is supposed to part of this new state, so there’s a suggestion of a sunken highway to connect Gaza to the West Bank across Israel territory. And the Arab section of Jerusalem is to be part of the new state . A piece of a city surrounded by the territory of another nation as part of a new nation. Can you imagine cutting off some part of New York - say the Bronx - to be part of Connecticut?

I suppose one could reasonably conclude that the reason that no "peace" has been achieved after more than six decades of conflict could be ascribed to intransigence on both sides - but surely it is just as reasonable to conclude that the idea of two states living "side by side" is just not a viable solution. Neither is a single state - advocated by many on the Palestinian side - because it would take no time at all for the "Jewishness" of Israel to disappear - and then what would happen to the Israeli democracy? A long time ago I proposed an ideal
"two state solution." It was partly tongue in cheek - but only partly. The underlying idea was that of a "two in one" state solution. It brought a response from one of Israel’s leading peace organizations and they liked what I proposed - but, like everyone else involved I trying to solve the problem, were stuck in the quagmire of who gets what land and who compensates who for what!!

Likewise, I’m disappointed that Barack Obama keeps pushing the old idea of resuming "peace talks" and insisting that Israel stops building within existing settlements as though that would be a magic bullet that would change the nature and demands of the Palestinians. Someone needs to start proposing something other then the elusive two state solution. At least that would give the parties something that they could actually talk about with each other instead of past each other.

Back home, almost anything connected to the ongoing debate about healthcare "reform" can lead to a feeling of despair. The proposals floating around at the moment would make Rube Goldberg proud. Even the idea of a "public option." So far, that proposal has a name and little else, so it’s hard to see why so many are vehemently for it and other just as vehemently against it. One stupid thing that left me in the uncomfortable position of trying to balance uncontrollable laughter with irrepressible groaning at the suggestions being tossed out about how to keep undocumented workers dirty, socialistic and communistic hands off of what’re "reforms" are finally enacted. We already have the requirement that citizens show their proof of citizenship to benefit from whatever aspect of the "plan" is beneficial. But beyond that, there is a proposal to bar those UW’s - or as some prefer to call them, IA’s for Illegal Aliens - from being any part of an insurance exchange even when they have used their own money to buy their own health insurance - costing taxpayers nothing. You have to wonder what’s next - a requirement to present proof of citizenship before you can buy a car - or maybe your groceries?

It’s crazy. The only true "reform" is to have a national health service where everyone has an identity card and everyone gets the care they need without having to pay any "co-payments" or very modest co-payments - including for prescription medications. All that alongside health insurance companies from which you can buy insurance covering anything the national health service covers and beyond - or just things that will upgrade you coverage - for example to guarantee that you can get single room when hospitalized in situations where your national health coverage only pays for a double room. It’s a system that works fine in England where my brother lives with his national health insurance and his private insurance paid for by his former employer. And yes, National Healthcare in England did not put the English private healthcare insurance companies out of business. And by the way - if you’re in England, legally or illegally and you get sick, the national healthcare service will take care of you. They may kick you out if you’re not supposed to be there, but they’ll take care of your health problems first.

Finally - in the vein of despairing of my fellow humans - every once in a while I provide an example of why "they" won’t come - "they" being superior beings from another planet in a galaxy far, far away. What better example could there be than the successive speeches of Moammar Gadhafi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the U.N? The Iranian people perhaps have some slim hope of replacing nut case Ahmadinejad at some point in the future - but Gadhafi has reigned for forty years and you have to wonder how the Libyan people allow it. But you don’t have to wonder why they don’t come. Even if they overlooked the comical performers at last week’s UN show, there’s always Kim Jong Il, Robert Mugabe, OmarAl- Bashir and on and n….

Ah well. It’s cocktail time at the Whatshallthisthen abode. I’ll try to increase the frequency of my comments.. pain permitting.
posted by Jeff Smith at 9/27/2009 04:38:00 PM

 
A CYNIC’S VIEW OF THE HEALTHCARE REFORM SPEECH

I’m a little late responding to the President’s speech to Congress but that’s what happens when annoying physical ailments slows one down. I’m trying to catch up.

As readers of this blog know, I am an Obama supporter. I supported him with money during the campaign and my wife worked the phones. Unless the Republicans slate Superman to run in the next election, I’ll probably vote for him again. And I am a supporter of the concept of healthcare reform - though I can’t imagine what kind of reform can be accomplished without something like a Medicare Part E. Medicare for everyone. Buy in for a premium based on age. With plenty of insurance companies ready to sell any needed Medicare supplement policies.

Having said all that, a comment or two on the big healthcare reform speech. It wasn’t a bad speech but it didn’t strike me as a game changer and for sure not the "greatest" speech that Obama has ever delivered - as some have described it. Any speech loses a little of its potential luster when "snippets" are released in advance - and then you hear those snippets verbalized. We know he’s reading from a TelePrompTer but when you’ve seen some of the phraseology in advance, it sounds a little contrived when you hear it being read back to you. I’d rather hear it for the first time from the President’s mouth and not have any advance leaks.

Anyway - I thought it got a little heavy as he tried to lay out the details - but he made up for it with his reference to the letter a dying Ted Kennedy had sent him and with his categorization of healthcare for all as a matter of morality - as a measure of who we are as a people. That part I applauded. And if regulation of the healthcare industry can be accomplished and they can be forced to accept people with pre-existing conditions and restrained from dropping people arbitrarily - I applaud that too - though I can’t see the industry accepting those restrictions without a battle,

Speaking of applause - as I noted here many moons ago after a State of the Union speech - I think the interruptions for standing applause during these joint sessions are close to silly. There’s nothing wrong with brief bursts of applause to show approval of a particular point - but multiple standing ovations? It almost comes across as contrived. The Republicans of course did not applaud or rise to their feet - except for the brief mention of malpractice insurance. The President didn’t even say what he might do about malpractice - but the word itself was enough to arouse the Republicans out of their stupor. I’ll have a word on that topic in a moment.

There was nothing unusual about the lack of applause from the Republicans. The Democrats act the same way when the president happens to be a Republican. But I must say that the Republicans that we were able to see on camera looked particularly dour - and some were obviously trying to insult the president with a "what bill" on one idiot’s lap and a bunch of others waving something - a Republican bill perhaps? Cut taxes as a cure for cancer?

And then we had the idiot yelling "you lie" when Obama was assuring us that illegal aliens would not benefit from his version of a healthcare bill. I’m sure a lot of people were thinking "good luck with that" - including me - but yelling "you lie" was far beyond the pale. Even in the House of Commons where insults are common - , when one member wants to call another a liar - even if it’s the Prime Minister, he will say something along the lines of "the honorable member is lying through his false teeth" - rather than just yell "you lie." But the Prime Minister is just the chief executive, not the head of state. No British politician would dream of yelling "you lie" during a speech by the Queen. We have no royalty of course, but the office of the President represents the symbolic head of state and should command the same measure of respect no matter who is in the White House.

The president wasn’t lying of course. His version of a final bill would specifically exclude undocumented workers from benefiting from tax supported programs - but come on - how are you going to enforce that? Even if you include a provision that proof of citizenship or legal residence is required - what will be asked for? Many illegals have phony social security numbers and other fraudulent documents. Are we going to ask for birth certificates? It gets pretty silly. Of course in countries that have national health programs - everyone who needs medical attention can get it - but this is the USA. We have to make it as complicated as possible.

I hold out little hope that any bill that gets signed into law will solve the problem of healthcare costing way too much and continuing to cost more year after year. The way things are being described at the moment - the executives at the nation’s health insurance companies must be having multiple orgasms at the prospect of every last American being forced to have insurance. It’s what they want. It’s what they are spending millions of dollars in television ads that purport to support "reform." Just listen to the ads from "America’s healthcare companies." And if they like it - it can’t be good for the rest of us.

If I sound cynical about the prospects for real change in healthcare, it’s because of alleged "reforms" that we’ve already seen that have done nothing for the consumers of healthcare. Changing malpractice laws for example - the magic words that brought Republican Representatives and Senators to life during the President’s speech. There was an editorial in the Chicago Tribune a few days ago lauding the fact that changes in malpractice laws have been enacted in Illinois and how money is being saved. The question of course is what money? What savings? For whom? There has been absolutely no change in the cost of healthcare for the average consumer. On the contrary, premium costs and deductibles have continued to rise since the changes were enacted in Illinois - as has the cost of pharmaceuticals. And speaking of pharmaceuticals , seniors who were conned into Medicare Part D are being promised that this convoluted program with its "donut hole" and other restrictions will be improved with healthcare reform. . Of course the geniuses who created this program totally ignored the real problem - which is the ridiculous cost of drugs - and instead of finding a way to drive those costs down, opted to play footsie with the insurance companies - handing them another boondoggle. Another reason why I have doubts that we’re going to get real reform.

Three years ago, I wrote about the way we are being ripped off by the pharmaceutical industry with a table of what we are paying for certain drugs and how much the actual ingredients of those drugs costs.. Do you take Lipitor? Three years ago, the average cost for 100 pills was $272.37 and the cost of the ingredients to make those 100 pills was $5.80 - a mark up of 4,696%!! And that’s a bargain compared to Prozac. Eleven cents for ingredients turns into $247.47 for a hundred tablets - a mark up of a whopping 224,973%!! No kidding, You do the math. Get out your trusty calculated and multiply .11 by 224,973%.. Yes I know there’s a lot more than the cost of ingredients that goes into the final retail cost of drug - but you can’t convince me that there isn’t something terribly wrong when the cost of the ingredients for a pill that costs $2.47 is .0011 cents!!!

And the administration tells us they’ve made a "deal" with Big Pharm?"

I hope all my doubts about real reform being enacted before I get to be too old and demented to care will be proved wrong - but I’m not holding my breath. It’s dangerous to one’s health.
posted by Jeff Smith at 9/13/2009 09:14:00 PM

 
THE YEAR OF THE YAHOO

You have to wonder how many of them are out there - the crazies, the ignoramuses , the bigots. If you paid attention to their co-conspirators - the electronic media - you would think they were close to representing a majority - the way they are drawn to them like moths to a flame - ignoring the sane among us - hopefully a majority

The last time I wrote anything here, I asked if those protesting healthcare reform were lacking in basic intelligence or were bigots - using healthcare town hall meetings to express their bigotry- or had some misdirected mistrust of the Federal Government. Today I’m sure of two out of three. The bigots have come out from under their robes ands hoods to brazenly expose themselves - and ignorance abounds. There are times when I despair of some of my fellow citizens and this is one of them.

Many years ago, when I returned to the United States after spending my youth in England, I was appalled at some of the questions people asked me about the mother country. One that has stuck in my mind for all these years was - "do you have refrigerators in England?" I kid you not. It was a question sincerely posed. The questioner simply didn’t know anything about countries outside of the United States. Now here we are a lifetime later and hearing the same kind of ignorance from the healthcare protesters. A couple of years later, I took a driving trip to Florida and came face to face with racial discrimination and racial hatreds. I can’t forget the looks of hatred thrown at me when I stopped along the way to buy refreshments and insisted that the black man in front of me at the counter not step aside to let me be served first.

I’m not about to say that decades later, things are still the same in this country. Obviously they can’t be with a true African-American in the White House. But there is no question that for a percentage of the population - representatives of which we are now seeing spouting ignorance and hatred on the nightly news, there has been no passage of time. Like some Islamic cultures - our ignoramuses continue to live in the past. That’s why you see signs and hear nitwits proclaim that they "want their country back." Presumably the country where black people knew their place and Presidents were middle aged Caucasians that they could identify with as "one of them."

One piece of nonsense that we are hearing from the ignoramuses is that we don’t want the federal government "messing" with our healthcare system because it’s " the best healthcare system in the world." Really? In what way? Do we have the best doctors? The best nurses? The best hospitals? The best access and the best outcomes? The statement is patently ridiculous - but is the kind of thing we are hearing from idiots who know nothing of the rest of the world but automatically assume that no nation can have something better than us. Yes we have good doctors and good nurses and good hospitals - but if a system that can easily bankrupt a citizen who gets hit with a devastating disease or dies because he or she lacks the funds to pay for needed medical care or life saving drugs is the best in the world - then the rest of the world must be in a sorry state.

There is absolutely nothing that we are hearing from the protesters that makes sense. There is nothing being proposed by Republicans that can be thought of as healthcare reform. Yet the protests are coinciding with a drop in the president’s approval numbers and the president seems to be willing to strip his healthcare reform ideas of any real meaning just to get one Republican on board. Olympia Snow may win herself a moment in history - but there will be no winners if the nonsensical "trigger" idea becomes the keystone of any final bill. We’ll know next Wednesday, but I have little hope that Obama will present the nation with an FDR moment.

A final word about the crazies at the town hall meetings. Americans are known to be generally a generous lot when it comes to giving. But they often fall far short of the mark when it comes to common courtesy. In such simple things as driving habits for example. How many hundreds of times I have pulled up behind a car at a traffic light waiting to turn left when I too have wanted to turn left - only to neglect to move out into the intersection so that at least one more car can make the turn when the lights change That’s a driver who has no concept of common courtesy to fellow drivers. . Another example. Because of my accumulated surgeries, I have had the need of late to use a riding cart when shopping at a large store. The other day, I had to wait several minutes at a Sam’s Club while an employee found one out in the parking lot. As I wheeled into the interior of the store, I passed an area where people could sit and eat pizza which was being sold there - and there were two couples sitting and eating, each with a riding cart full of their completed shopping and not caring one whit about anyone with problems similar to theirs who might be waiting for one of those carts.

The news clips of the crazies we’ve been seeing now for weeks reveal the personification of that lack of common courtesy. Perhaps the worst I have seen was a woman confined to a wheelchair describing her medical condition which required drugs that she could barely afford, being booed and shouted down at an alleged "town hall meeting." And the media moguls at networks and local stations thought it was appropriate to end the clip with a yahoo complaining that the wheelchair bound woman shouldn’t have more rights than him to speak - or in his case, to interrupt someone else speaking. " I didn’t come here to listen to people’s opinions" said this yahoo, "my rights are no less important than a women in a wheelchair. Which is of course true. And unfortunate. As is this excuse for an American’s right to vote.
posted by Jeff Smith at 9/06/2009 11:45:00 AM