Pardon the mess around here, folks. I’m in the midst of a site redesign, as you can see. There’s some broken links, but most of the site is available. I’m hoping to have it finished this weekend, but we shall see. In the meantime, a couple of good links about healthcare coverage:
On a completely unrelated but utterly adorable note, when I played the Horrorshow video, and all the screaming came out of my laptop, Jazz was terribly upset. She’s currently jumping around my lap worriedly, sniffing at the computer and giving me big, anxious eyes. What’s wrong? Fix it! My dog’s fucking cute, folks. That is all.
I was chatting with Jim online the other night, and mentioned that I hadn’t seen Sicko, the Michael Moore documentary from a couple of years ago. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.) I know, I know, it’s a Michael Moore movie, and we all know that Mr. Moore plays fast and loose with his editing techniques sometimes. (On a side note, that really irritates me. More often than not, he’s tackling a subject that doesn’t need anyone playing fast and loose with it to make it look bad. Like, oh, healthcare in America. But I digress.)
Are there inaccuracies and omissions in Sicko? Yeah. Actually, as far as I’ve been able to tell, the biggest inaccuracies come from omitting context about how the foreign healthcare systems are funded, and how well they work. (See here for more information on that.) Are the Canadian, British, French, and Cuban systems perfect? Hell, no — and it would be silly to think they are. Nothing working on that large a scale is going to be flawless. However, they’re better than what we’ve got going for us right now.
This morning, I got an email from Congressman Dave Camp, our local guy, and a Republican. In it, he extolled the virtues of “his healthcare plan”. You can read his “plan” here. I’m putting the word “plan” in quotes there because the PDF I’ve linked is not exactly what I would call a “plan”. In order for it to be a plan, it would have to have some, oh, actual plans in it. Some explanation as to how all this is going to be accomplished, and maybe some numbers and costs would be nice. Something other than comforting political healthcare buzzwords would be pretty cool, too.
So, at any rate, I sent a snippy little note to Camp’s office, not that I expect that to do any good. Camp has shown time and time again that he doesn’t actually listen to his constituents, unless, possibly, they’re waving a whole lotta money in his face. Then, sometimes, he listens. My note:
Sir,
I’ve read your health care plan, and I’m not impressed. For one thing, it’s pretty short on how you think you’re going to accomplish all your goals, and for another, there aren’t any numbers or costs. In fact, now that I look at it, there aren’t any details, either. It’s a nice, comforting-sounding platitude, but it’s not an actual plan.
In your newsletter this morning, you said, “My health care plan: will lower health care costs for every American, will bring health care coverage to more Americans and lower the number of uninsured in the country, will improve the quality of health care in America, comes at a price our country can afford.”
Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege to be paid for. Lower costs? How about no costs? Bring healthcare coverage to MORE Americans? How about ALL Americans? In eleven years in restaurant management, do you have any idea how many lives I’ve seen ruined by lack of healthcare, or how many of my employees I’ve seen buckle under the insupportable weight of grotesque medical bills? It’s criminal.
”Socialized” medicine works just fine in many countries. The only reason NOT to “socialize” our medical system is because you people in congress don’t have to balls to eliminate the insurance business. Medical insurers are profiting off the misfortune of Americans, and you aren’t standing up to put a stop to it. Send me a letter when you are. Until then, I’m not interested, and I’m not voting for you.
I got out of work last night and ran down to the local Walmart to grab a few things. When I came back out, I discovered that some asshole had dumped something icky all over my car. It appeared to be chocolate shake, or maybe one of those iced mocha thingies everyone sells these days. They’d gotten my car and the SUV next to me, and whatever it was, they had a lot of it.
As you can imagine, I was thrilled. And, of course, it was 11:30 at night, so there was no place to actually wash my car. I ended up using a gas station squeegee to clean the car off. Whatever was on it, I didn’t want to leave it there, in case it was something that might eat the paint. It was a charming way to end an otherwise decent night.
It’s been a busy summer, personally, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be slowing down any time soon. Despite the lack of a new chapter to read, we actually have been working on the book. We had finished Chapter Eight, and then let it sit while we vacationed. Two weeks went by, I returned home, and reread Eight. I’d not been tickled with it to start with, and two weeks didn’t help any, so we’re rewriting it. Hopefully we’ll have that done some time this summer. Heh.
In the meantime, I’ve got my Asatru friend’s mid-summer Moot coming up next weekend, and the weekend after that, Dr. Celestine’s 40th birthday bash down in Ohio, and after that, a quick trip back to Oregon to do some apartment hunting, as I’m moving out there in mid-August. And after all that, there will be all the hassle and planning of a cross-country move. In between, there will be writing and probably quite a lot of Sims 3, which I promised myself I wouldn’t get, but got anyway because I’m weak.
Like I said — busy times!
With my remaining few shreds of attention, I’ve been watching the news, still trying to keep an eye on what the politicians are getting up to. I’ve been equal parts amused and baffled with the Republican party. It’s like they’ve gone nuts, particularly in regards to closing Gitmo and shipping “detainees” to prisons in America. I think some of them actually believe that the current administration intends to turn detainees loose to walk free in America or something. Guys, have you seen who we put in our prisons? Do you really think detainees are going to be worse, somehow? Really?
And, for the record, I’m all for socialized medicine. Raise my taxes as needed. I’ve seen too many people suffering due to lack of healthcare, and in the great country that America’s supposed to be, that’s some bullshit. Get us some healthcare.
Dear Jebus, please tell me this article is some kind of joke. Is this site like the Onion? You know what, even if it isn’t, could y’all just tell me it is? (And on a sidenote, is it bad that I can’t tell anymore when it comes to shit like this?)
KINGSVILLE, Texas (AP) — In this friendly little ranching town, “hello” is wearing out its welcome. And Leonso Canales Jr. is happy as heck.
At his urging, the Kleberg County commissioners on Monday unanimously designated “heaven-o” as the county’s official greeting. The reason: “hello” contains the word “hell.”
Flying sucks. They really need to invent some alternative method of fast travel that doesn’t cause me to be miserable for several hours. Also, the airport managed to deliver Mike and I to our destination, but they left our luggage in Minneapolis. Nice. Well, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I suppose. I got my luggage this morning, after all. The bags could have ended up in France or something. Also, here’s the last of my vacation pictures. I’m uploading a youtube video of all my vacation footage, too. Check back here in an hour or two to see it.
