Categories
Political

Not so blind not so led

The clinic I’ve been going to this last month is a very efficient organization. Labs and X-Rays are handled in the basement, people get checked in at the main door, and each suite of doctor’s has a waiting room with a person seated at a desk to handle all the patient insurance accounts.

The woman who manages the accounts for my doctors, we’ll call her the Receptionist for want of a better word, is a very friendly woman, probably in her early 50’s. As she works on the paperwork, she chats with people in the room, and I don’t think she does it as part of her job–I think she just likes people.

This week while I waited to see the doctor, there was just her, an older guy in his 60’s, and myself in the room. She and he were chatting about paperwork and how it worked when they started talking about the upcoming changes to Medicare based on the recent bill passage in Congress.

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The Patient was curious about the Medicare changes because though he still works part-time and has full insurance through his company. he has Medicare as secondary coverage. The Receptionist talked about how people are having to register but there’s a lot of confusion about how it works. The Patient asked when the changes would go into effect and she didn’t know for sure. At that point, tired of rubbing my back against the wall to get at the itch, I mentioned that there is a real possibility that the bill would have to be returned to Congress as unworkable because there was some serious concerns about both the costs and the benefits.

(I was hesitant to give even a mild criticism of anything that was related to Bush because unlike other parts of the country, you never know if you’re going to run into a strong pro-Bush person in Missouri.)

The Receptionist agreed emphatically that the bill did need re-working, it was an obvious political move on the part of Bush. The Patient said that was to be expected from Bush, he hadn’t done anything right since he started office. The Receptionist then pointed out how lousy the economy has been, and how another company in town just laid off workers. The Patient agreed and talked about the price of gasoline, and how Bush’s foreign policy obviously hasn’t helped us at the pumps. Gas was now up to 1.79 a gallon.

I mentioned that it was 1.59 now, and the Patient replied he’d have to drive around his car until it was empty enough to fill.

*laughter*

The Receptionist gave as her opinion that the reason why gas goes up and down so much is so that when it does go down to something like 1.59 a gallon, we think we’re getting a deal because it’s not 1.79; forgetting that last year it was a 1.29 a gallon. And all those boys in Iraq were dying for nothing, if we thought we’d get better deals on gas because of this war.

The Patient asked if we had seen the news this weekend about all those poor people killed in Iraq–soldiers and civilians. The Receptionist and I both agreed, and he continued with there was no reason for us to go over there by ourselves, without the UN. No rush either, and now look where we’re at.

The Receptionist replied with how we’re now in the worst debt in history, and there was no end to the war in Iraq in sight.

*solemn head shaking*

The Patient mentioned he was voting for Kerry, and didn’t understand why anyone else would. The Receptionist agreed. I mentioned how Bush still has a lot of support with the morality folks. The Patient turned in his chair, faced me, and said, “I think that some issues are best left between a woman and her doctor and the government shouldn’t intervene.”

At that point the nurse called me in to see the doctor.

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Categories
Political

The “I got mine” libertarians

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I read in comments associated with another weblog this weekend that some Libertarian’s don’t believe that everyone has the right to basic health care in this country. I will admit I was surprised by this. I had assumed that we are all agreed that health care should be accessible to all people, but disagreed in how it would be provided. I wasn’t aware that there was a group of Libertarians who believe that basic health care is not a right.

When Ashcroft was diagnosed with gallbladder problems a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of my own problems with a large (undiagnosed) gallstone that went untreated for close to two years until I had insurance and could have my gallbladder removed. As I watched all the fuss being made over Ashcroft, I thought about how different the situation would be if he was uninsured, and even considered writing something about this.

Luckily, Dan Frosch at AlterNet did a much better job than I could have:

While it’s almost impossible to figure out the exact figure on Ashcroft’s bill, one can estimate. Five days in an ICU unit alone at Providence Hospital in Washington, for example, would run up to $30,000. And then there’s the laparoscopic gall bladder surgery and the five days in recovery – which could cost an additional $28,000 (according to Fairview University Medical Center in Minneapolis). But there are still all the expert doctors who’ve visited him daily and have their own separate charges. That price tag might run Ashcroft as much as $5000 for the ten days he’s in the hospital, says Dr. Quentin Young, PNHP’s National Coordinator and former Director of Medicine at Cook County Hospital. Using such rough estimates, Ashcroft is told he’ll have to fork over at least $63,000.

According to this article, over 18,000 people die every year because they don’t get the medical attention they need until it’s too late. Hard to believe when this country prides itself on the medical care it provides to other nations.

What didn’t surprise me about the conversation is how ill-informed these people were about the state of health care in this country. There were assumptions that the only people who don’t have health care were poor; that anyone needing health care could get this at some ‘local charity clinic’; that COBRA coverage was available to everyone; that only five percent of the American people don’t have health care coverage (it’s closer to 20%).

There was also the usual discussion about socialized medicine being inefficient.
I have to laugh at this because my bill for my dental surgery I had in the beginning of December still hasn’t been paid, this with the ‘efficient private care sytem’ we so enjoy in the United States.

What happened is the company I have COBRA through changed providers unexpectedly, and I had the surgery three days after the switch. When the doctor put in the claim, it was denied because there was …a mixup in the paperwork at the time. When I got the bill from the doctor with the note that the claim was denied, I called the insurance company and they reprocessed the claim. About a month later I got a cc letter from the company asking my doctor for x-rays; the claim wouldn’t be processed until they had the x-rays. I called the doctor, and they said the x-rays had been sent…with the original claim. Most likely tossed out, too, by the insurance company.

At this moment, almost four months later, the bill still hasn’t been paid while the Catch 22 game is played between the insurance company and the doctor, and now I’m being told by the doctor that I’ll most likely have to pay the bill, even though I was insured, because it is ..my problem.

Now, what was that about the efficiency of socialized medicine?

Returning to the comments from this weekend, in the end the discussion kept coming back to a belief that no one has a right to basic health care.

I am reminded of the earliest form of home insurance in this country. Homes so insured had metal plaques nailed to the sides of the homes, and if they were to catch fire, the subscription-funded fire department would put out the fire. However, if the house was not insured, it would burn down to the ground white the department watched.

If we believe that basic health care is not a right, then basic fire protection and other emergency services shouldn’t be either. Seems fair to me, and just think how much those Libertarians would save on local taxes.

(Thanks to Feministe for pointer to the story).

Categories
Political

Running Christ for President

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Whenever the Democrats run for President in this country, they’re facing two opponents with each election: the Republican challenger, and Jesus Christ.

It’s not that there aren’t Christian Democrats, or Jewish Republicans for that matter. But every four years, we have to play this little song and dance to skirt around issues that might get people to dig in their religious heels; because of this we keep coming back to the same issues again and again and again. This year though, I don’t think the same old song and dance is going to work. We have a President who has decided to attach Jesus Christ–a Political Christ–as his running mate, whether Christ would approve or not. And pretending we can’t see this act for what it is, a deliberate breakdown between Church and State, isn’t going to make it go away.

We have to confront the Political Christ in this year’s election, and I don’t mean by going to see a propaganda movie created by a famous actor undergoing a religious rebirth. We have to stop shying away from issues just because we’re afraid that we’re going to offend someone’s religious sensibilities, and lose a vote.

Gay rights and gay marriage, creationism versus evolution, racial equality, book banning and burnings, school prayer, religious artifacts in public spaces, faith-based initiatives, abortion, equal rights for women, birth control, AIDs treatments, the environment, freedom of speech, the Pledge of Allegience, our currency, war, and even the Constitution–none of these, no matter how seemingly secular, is ever completely free of the shadow cast by the Political Christ.

We keep looking in fear at the children of Mohammed, but it’s the children of Christ that scare me more.

Pem provided a link to an truly excellent article in MSNBC that talks about this issue. In particular the following quote has to stand out:

The connection between politics and religion for me lies in the motto of Cornelia Connelly, the Philadelphia wife and mother who founded the order of nuns by whom I was lucky enough to be educated. Actions, not words. Touch the sick, the poor, the children, the powerless, as Christ did, and never mind quoting Leviticus.

Unfortunately, though, this isn’t facing the problem, it’s just pretending that if we ignore the religious right long enough, they’ll go away. But they aren’t going away.

This little uncomfortable writing of mine was inspired by a new Missouri House Bill, HB911, which is attempting to insert the teaching of creationism in our schools, through the concept known as Intelligent Design. The response to this bill from the educational community was compelling, intelligent, seemingly impossible to deny, and it does look as if the bill is not progressing at this point. The thing, though, is that it will appear again. And again. And again. And eventually, if we’re not paying close enough attention, it will succeed at some time because our politics are influenced by the Political Christ, no matter how much we want to deny this.

(Read more about pending legislation of this nature in other states. Be sure to check out the story about the mother suing to have a book on horses removed from the school library because it has two pages in it about the evolution of horses. Thanks to Rev Matt for pointing the Missouri Bill out.)

I have all my life believed that we should not talk about religion in regards to our politics. I have said so more than once in these pages–that we should focus on tax or war or any number of other seemingly government-related issues.

But behind all of these issues, yes even taxes, is the shadow of the Political Christ. And I have no doubts, none whatsoever, that the same is true in a lot of other countries with predominate Christian communities.

In her article, Quindlen describes the Political Christ as being about religiosity, not about faith, and I agree. She also calls it a wedge issue, and I also agree. Where I don’t agree with her is that we should ignore it and carry on. We have done so, and the concept has not gone away. If anything, this year the impact of religion on government is going to be stronger than at any other time in our past.

Now is the time to confront Political Christ. And in her own way, by writing this particular article, I think Quindlen agrees with me.

Second Update 

Pharyngula has a rundown on creation science fairs, part of the new move to introduce Christian theology into the classroom as part of the science education. One site is a hugely funny spoof site, but when you compare it with the real thing, frankly, it sends chills down your back.

Thanks to Joseph Duemer for the link.)

Categories
Political

Joel at APress and offshoring

I’m not a regular reader of Joel on Software, but he’s started a new “Ask Joel” forum that’s been generating some interesting conversations.

One is on Offshoring and features the usual offshoring is evil discussion, and a bit too much sucking up to Joel, but it also has some additions from people who work within the offshore companies, as well as other discussions about programming being a commodity, and globalization.

I particularly like the idea of bringing together developers from countries that have lost jobs with developers in countries who have gained jobs due to globalization – would be an interesting chat, wouldn’t it?

The second thread that interested me personally was Joel talking about his new book with Apress . Book branding is one topic in the thread, and both Tim O’Reilly and Gary Cornell from Apress add comments. What caught my attention, though, was a statement Joel made:

Whenever I’ve had any kind of issue no matter how tiny Gary always laid down the law: the author is always right 😉

The …author is always right. I’ll have to remember that.

I imagine that the forums will degenerate quickly, as these things do, but I found the discussion today of interest.

UpdateGina Trapani wrote at misbehaving.net about being told to ‘lighten up’ in the comment thread she was in at Joel’s new forum. She has valid points, but I don’t think she’ll get a hearing. From all indications, this new forum is going to be another boy’s only club.

No comments, though, attached to Gina’s post. So guess there’s no forum for the girls to talk, either.

Categories
Political

Will you still need me will you still feed me

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

I really must stop reading the news before going to bed because I spent a disquieting night last night reading Greenspan’s pronouncements on the changes that need to be made for Social Security to survive. It’s not that I was suprirsed by what he said; it’s that dour projections about the future of our retirement is not something I would recommend as an accompaniment to that nice glass of warm milk before bed.

The facts are, in this country, we are living longer and having fewer children — both good things and the way a society should progress. However, both events put strain on a retirement system that is based primarily on money paid in by a shrinking labor pool, spread thin by an increasingly large retired population.

Some solutions come to mind: One is that we decrease our longevity, and that was jokingly mentioned yesterday. Or at least, I think that was a joking reference. Another is to start having more babies, and the technology exists to quickly meet this solution. However, in the long-term this is not an effective alternative as increased population butts head first into inflexible limits on resources, not to mention a labor market that is moving inexorably offshore.

Another viewpoint is to allow a redirection of money from Social Security to private investments, but I think that way lies danger. Not only will this drain the Social Security fund more quickly, it puts that money pulled from it into the hands of people that, frankly, usually don’t know what they’re doing. Then when they get too old to work, what will we do for them? They don’t have Social Security, and they have no funds of their own. Will we leave old people to die, starving and homeless, on the streets of our cities? We come close enough to that already, except that we try to hide this with below standard nursing homes.

If these solutions — decrease the old folk, increase the young folk, let everyone play in the stock market– aren’t palatable, then the only solution is to make some drastic changes to how Social Security is managed. Changes such as raise the retirement age.

If we put aside our emotional responses to this–difficult, because many of us have grown up with the ‘promise’ of retirement by 65–we can appreciate the truth in this statement.

The backlash against Greenspan isn’t surprising. He’s basically kicking at our most sacred institution, and he does so in the same breath used to defend tax cuts. I don’t fault Greenspan on his views on Social Security; however, I do believe that he’s relying on old economic truisms that are no longer so true; I question the general acceptance of his infallibilty based on his stubbord refusal to adjust to new information in his continued defense of trickle-down economics.

He’s like so many old time economists who believe that if we just pump money back into the economy, American businesses will do well; when American business do well, they’ll expand and hire more people, and that will lead to competititon for workers, and the workers will do better. It sounds good on paper, and it has worked in the past, but not this time.

This time we have a bunch of economists who are scratching their head because they don’t see an increase in hiring, at least not enough to offset the losses. They point, happily, to improvements in the economy, but are only now starting to acknowledge, far too late, that these are coming without the traditional improvement in the quality of life of the average American.

Greenspan defends tax cuts, and also defends, and this one takes my breath away, Americans dependence on credit and credit cards, this in the face of record numbers of bankruptcies. However, I can see why he does this: it is the Greenspan Touch.

Because of past reactions to his pronouncements, stock markets have risen and economies have boomed. So if he says that tax cuts will help, and then goads the American people into spending these cuts on real goods, rather than using the money to pay down debt, he hopes that by sheer will power and the Greenspan name, he can start that long-delayed trickle-down effect and finally kickstart a real uplift to the economy.

But it’s not going to work this time, or at least, not in the accepted manner. The numbers don’t lie, and they refused to be coddled. I acknowledge that Greenspan is a wiz at economics, but perhaps the economists need to put their spreadsheets down and just look out the window.

You’ll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride,
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

Jobs are not increasing, and people are becoming progressively worried about their own continued employment, even in, especially in, long-held jobs. Globalization is having an impact, and it’s not just that blue collar jobs are going to China and white-collar jobs going to India — jobs are going to any number of countries. As this happens, without careful planning and consideration, as well as effective re-training programs in this country, more people are forced into lower-level service jobs, such as those at Wal-Mart and members of the middle class fall like dead autumn leaves into new economic classifications.

As the level of living in other countries increases due to higher-level jobs moving offshore, the level of living in this country decreases and brings a closer alignment between the workers around the world. In some ways, this is a good thing — we do need a closer alignment between the countries of the world. An unfortunate consequence, though, is that a permanent worker class is created that has little hope for a future beyond meeting the immediate needs of a family. And as the shuffling of jobs continues, round and round about the planet, the standard of living for this worker class will continue to erode.

(I read recently that White House economists are working on the spin necessary to make all these changes more attactive on statistical sheets. For instance, they are at work reclassifying low-level service jobs such as those at McDonald’s as manufacturing’ work because the people ‘manufacture’ hamburgers by putting the components of the sandwiches together.)

As the middle class shrinks, fewer taxes are paid, and the budget deficit, already bloated like a ten-day old rotted sperm whale washed up on shore, continues to increase. To counter, programs such as the ‘guest worker’ program are instituted to bring workers here to this country. These workers are willing to work for wages that push down the wages of those who are citizens, helping to make it more palatable to keep some jobs here that could be offshored. This helps to slow the steady stream of jobs offshore, and thus keep the taxes paid by these workers in this country, but without negative impact on the profitablity of the companies, which would be adverse to trickle-down economics.

No, the health of companies, especially larger companies will increase and stock value will grow. We’re seeing the trends of this right now. But a middle class that had discretionary funds to invest in the stock market is beginning to vanish, leaving the stock in the hands of a small percentage of very wealthy people, who will continue to increase their wealth.

Now, the taxes these people pay could offset the loss of taxes from the middle class — and it is true, most tax in the United States is paid by the upper 15% of income earners. However, as tax cuts increase, those in the upper reaches pay less tax and since they can only spend so much, re-invest less money back into purchasing of real goods; industries that are primarily supported by a middle class will begin to modify to provide mass-produced cheap goods for a larger group of lower-income people, or smaller numbers of luxury goods for a higher-income people.

(Some say that Michael Eisner’s management is responsible for Disney having problems with profitability in the last five years, and from what I read, he hasn’t helped. But I think a stronger factor is that Disney is, to all intents and purposes, a middle-income class company.)

By holding the line on continuing to cut taxes and then cutting most social programs, we remov the funds that could re-train the, let’s say displaced computer programmer, as a high school teacher or registered nurse — both professions that have a continued demand for people. Providing this type of training will increase the competition for these jobs and generate an increase in the style of living for both groups. This is counter to the worker class scenario, and cuts into profits of hospitals and health care programs, and increases the needs for more taxes to pay for schools. Rather than re-train our workers, we’ll use part of the guest worker program to fill these needs — already happening — and keep the economic incentives down to move displaced workers into these professions.

The worker class scenario of a the new trickle-down economics demands a downward shift in workers, not a lateral one.

In addition, cutting social programs also means that those who are poor are more likely to remain poor because they won’t have access to facilities that might help them climb out of their poverty. Poverty also leads to adherance to more dogmatic religious beliefs in addition to an increased birthrate — both incidental but useful components in the infrastructure of the new economics. Additionally, cutting social programs also means less money to medical programs including wellness programs for children and older people, and we can, of course, kiss any kind of universal health care program good-bye.

Holding the bottom line and delivering cheap will become the focus of this current run of trickle-down economics that Greenspan seems to lovingly embrace; having adverse impact on not only the people but also on the environment (but not the economy, which should continue to thrive). We’re already seeing a return to coal fired utility plants something that most of us swore we would never support.

However, after re-reading all of this, I may have to reconsider my disagreement with Greenspan’s approach, especially in regards to the upcoming crises in Social Security. By his reliance on trickle-down economics we will be seeing people who have less access to quality health care; this will probably be combined with a decreased life span due to worries about economic fluctuations, not to mention the stress of seeing one’s career being shunted ever downwards. And less social spending will result in a less educated and informed populace, which has been shown to have an adverse effect on lifespan but a positive effect on corporate profitability and other economic factors. In addition, increased spending for homeland security should keep people in that proper frame of fearful mind, which will probably steal a day or two away from their lives. This isn’t to mention the known fact that people with less money don’t eat as healthily (the healthier the eating the increased the costs), and without incentive, most don’t live right, either; not to mention increased competition for fewer resources and a degradation of the environment, both of which will kill folks deader n’ than a rattlesnake in a pissy mood.

So maybe Greenspan does have the right idea after all, but it’s hidden with talk of economics and taxes and spending and older workers because we can’t stomach the truth: it’s time to think about putting into place social conditions to kill off all the old farts who aren’t rich but still insist on thriving, and without any demonstrated usefulness to corporate society. These damn old people who stubbornly refuse to shuffle off this moral coil in a timely manner, the selfish pricks.

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

“When I’m Sixty-Four”, Beatles

Signed: Future selfish prick.