Not Over Until the Fat Lady Sings

They say it is never over until the fat lady sings. I think Joe DiMaggio said it first. But like Dirty Harry and "Make my day" it has been said by so many people since does it matter?

The health care reform bill - or should I say the silly and often irrational fight against it - has gone on for so very long that I had almost forgotten about it until I was reminded this Sunday by a friend it was coming up for a final vote. President Obama is planning a signing party for today. Then he goes on the road to sell what it is that has been passed. McCain is launching a national campaign for its repeal already and asking for $25 donations from everyone that doesn't want access to health care? I am a little unclear on the concept. Another friend of mine into holistic medicine (as am I) is protesting the new bill because it will not cover acupuncture and herbal remedies. Hard to find insurance not that does.

Amendments to this very new bill loom in the wings already. It was a pass what you can and then modify as able effort. But we are no longer the only developed country in the world without open access to health care and insurance. The mere outlawing of exclusion for pre-existing conditions makes it worth the fight. But clearly the fight is not over.

A friend of mine noted recently that the world seems to be speeding up with all the technology and communication available but when it comes to laws and legal matters the wheels grind ever so slowly. I maintain something needs to be done. My relative small legal issue in the scheme of things has lingered on for two and a half years and already taken a full day in district court and likely to take another. And then there is the judge's time in considering the matter after both sides rest. My legal aid council figures roughly $50,000 spent to defend me against my house being taken from me. I estimate that opposing council has billed $36,000 to his client for an original $21,600 lien with no back up proof that has already been amended to $14,000 by the plaintiff because of an accounting error.

I believe that now we are on the road to a reformed health care and health insurance system we need to work on reform of litigation. Our legal system is almost as screwed up as the health insurance industry. It is just that people don't die waiting for decisions from judges like they do HMO's. A book I was reading about a murder in Victorian England has the accused tried and hung within three months. Average wait on death row in America today is 9 to 15 years.

On other news there is an extreme Cabernet shortage because of the Chilean earth quake, sharks lost their bid before the UN to be protected (did a legal shark plead their case?), and a Nazi man in Germany was convicted for 1944 murders. Now there is a legal case that has taken forever.  And Google China has decided to leave the Chinese mainland and relocate in Hong Kong. Fear of reprisal?

This Would Be Funny if it Wasn't So Pathetic

The House of Representatives of the United States has at last passed a universal health care bill. It is only one step on a very long road to passage of a measure to be sent to President Obama for signature. But it is one step further than any president in the history of our country has gotten.

We have been trying to pass something for decades. We are the only developed nation in the world without universal health care. And we are the one with the highest medical costs in the world. I won't go into all the reasons why we should be writing our representatives and urging them to move forward with this. I have written lots of blogs on the subject. But just yesterday I was talking to a long time and very dear friend of mine. We have remained friends inspite of the fact she listens to and believes Rush Limbaugh. We just avoid the subject of politics. But every once in a while some subject we are discussing sidles into forbidden ground and it did so yesterday.

I have been busy (too busy to even keep up on this blog - mea culpa) and have not made myself check in on the extreme right. So rather than stop the conversation yesterday I just let her ramble on about what is being said in the dungeons about health care reform. Frankly, I was rather stunned. The AARP and the American Medical Medical Association have deserted the conservatives and endorsed this "socialistic plot." The end of the world as we know it is close. Oh, so close. Well, according to my extreme liberal friends (studiers of the Mayan Calendar) it is suppose to end in 2012 anyway. I think it would be nice to have good and cheap health care for the last couple of years.

I always rather wonder if my friend has it right - what she says they say. It always sounds so obsurd so I tripped off to various Internet sites after the conversation (why I did not get as much painting done as I wanted) and found out it is even worse then she reported. Being intelligent she naturally threw out a few extreme claims of the right.

I have an ex-husband who loves to reuse key phrases to skip over large sections of background information he knows I am aware of. It is one way to move the conversation forward rapidly. One of his favorite is: What are they thinking? To which I generally reply: Isn't it clear they are not thinking?

In fact, having exhausted all meaningful argments regardless of how innane, they have moved on to pure scare tactics. The dreaded monster in the closet approach of GW Bush. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

But the really, really, really scary part is there are people out there that believe in that monster.

In a Just World the Bullies Wouldn't Win

Sticks and stones my break my bones but words will never hurt me. Mother taught me that when I came home crying from school after being teased mercilessly. She was wrong. She was also wrong about those teasing me secretly wanted to be my friends. She was right that I was too thin skinned.

I have never gone into politics other than in the background because of that thin skin. Who really wants to make themselves that miserable. I can get all emotional about my chosen candidate getting called names even.

I have not blogged here on my "political" blog of late because I have not even been able to objectively watch the news with all the unreasonable anger and name calling going on over the health care issue. Aren't adults suppose to be able to sit down at the table and talk in a reasoned tone of voice? Okay, maybe there are no adults in congress.

Yesterday, because my own personal life was going relatively well, I got on my objective observer hat and took a tour through the health care debate (actually my speech teacher would have never used the word debate for a shouting match) again. A couple truths (or as I see it) stood out: All Republicans are shouting these days, and they are not shouting logical arguments.

Republicans, be they on the floor of the house or in town halls or just in front of a Fox camera being egged on by a Fox reporter (did you by chance see that brief clip on CNN before it was pulled from the internet?), are bullies. They are the type of people that used to make me run home from the fifth grade (it reached an all time high that year) in tears and develop a tummy ache for the next week. I even knew the foods I was allergic to that I could eat and break out in hives. Just anything to not got to school and have to face their shouted names and cruel innuendos (none of them would have known what that word meant).

And so why I became a writer. It gives me distance. And here on blogland ultimate power. I can delete your abusive comments. But what I want is reasoned debate. An open forum for logic. The impossible. Republicans are bullies. Democrats know the meaning of words like innuendo. And most liberals I know are frightfully thinned skinned. I guess we are always going to lose in what my father (ever more truthful than Mom) would have called a pissing match.

Shut off the TV and the streaming videos and read only the reasoned articles on the subject and then write your congressman. We need health care reform and all the name calling led by Rush and Fox news won't change that.

What I Heard?

I watched President Obama's address to the joint session of congress last night on health care reform. Today all the talking heads and bloggers are taking apart his speech line by line. I read a few before tackling this blog. Yahoo News has one: What he said, what he meant. As if they know what he meant.

I am not going to discuss the pros and cons of his speech here. Nor am I again going to address the various health care plans. Been there and done that.

I have also attended more than one joint session of congress. As a spectator in the gallery when I lived in Washington, DC and worked for a US Senator. And quite frankly I was abhorred when Rep. Wilson (Republican of South Carolina) yelled out, "You Lie" in the middle of the President's speech. Bad manners. Democrats sat through eight years of GW Bush without once doing that. Admittedly his speaking style was so boring the opposition may have fallen asleep but nobody snored let alone heckled. For Shame!

I had fully intended to watch the Republican response but that little episode and the scowling faces of a handful of Republicans put quit to my interest to be bipartisan. Ram it through, Obama, I don't give a damn if they like it.

And would everyone please just grow up. Sarah Palin, GW Bush, and Cheney lowered the level in politics and nobody among the Republicans has been able to rise above it since. But please can't we at least have good manners?

Win One for Teddy

Lots of political pundits and talking heads (who have entirely too much air time to talk) are advancing the theory that the death of Senator Edward Kennedy will spur the congress on to victory on the health care issue.

Meanwhile it seems that those who are against health care are also those that hated Teddy (and probably most liberals). Statistics are being bantered about concerning the number of Americans opposed to health care reform. These all have to be taken with a grain of salt (or the whole shaker) given the lies also advanced by the loyal opposition.

If we go with those Americans that have ample health insurance as the core to those which what no reform we arrive at a 40% figure. This is by no means the majority of Americans as the Republicans would have us believe. And I am willing to advance some theories about that 40%: 1) they have never been seriously ill, 2) they have not lost their jobs and wound up paying for insurance on Cobra, 3) they have not had the company they work for change carriers or coverage or co-pays, 4) they have not had their insurance carrier changed by the company they work for or because they took another job, 5) they do not have a pre-existing condition which limits their freedom to change jobs.

Ten years ago those insured people that fit that parameter was a lot more. Now companies because of the cost of insurance coverage are cutting back on the "frills" or raising the amount their employees have to pay to be in the plan for themselves or their significant other. And during the current economic downturn in the US more companies went bankrupt and/or laid off workers. And a higher percentage of employees job hop.

Health care insurance coverage costs has risen 400% in that ten years. And medical costs have followed right along. Those costs are so above the rest of the civilized world that there is a huge boom in medical tourism. I can get my shoulder rebuilt in Thailand for less than the copay here in the US and that is with air fare.

What that 40% opposed to health care reform does not know yet is insurance and medical care reform is not necessary for just the "have nots" but in the not too distant future it will be necessary for them too. Time to get your heads out of the sand and see the writing on the wall. This is not about insuring the uninsured. This is about keeping America competitive with the rest of the world before we are left in the dust.

Monster in the Closet

I had a little brother when I was growing up that delighted in building on all my fears. We don't talk anymore because I got tired of being belittled all the time but I think he must have grown up to be a Republican.

Hey, we are all scared of the unknown whether we admit it or not. When we are kids it is the beast under the bed or the monster in the closet at night. Hey, sometimes my closet still scares me. When we grow up and become adults we are scared of the unknown like where the money is coming for the car insurance payment. Or, heaven forbid, the car needing major repairs. Or needing major repairs ourselves.

And those opposed to medical insurance reform are praying on those fears like my brother did when I was a kid. They are telling us all sorts of horrible things about the monster in the closet. Stephen King in his non-fiction look at horror films and fiction - Danse Macabre - explains that the monster we cannot see is always more scary than the monster we can. And who can "see" all the details of their medical insurance or what horrible illness might lead to them confronting it.

We are told that the health care system we have at the moment is the best in the world. Wrong. We are actually about 49th or so. Though we lead in costs for that system. And only the haves can afford it. We are told that if Obama's system goes into effect there will be government panels telling the sick they cannot get coverage. And that is different from your HMO refusing to cover your latest bill how?

I just went through this with a friend. He ended up having half his foot amputated because the infection ran wild while his insurance company debated the costs of prescriptions doctors wanted to stem the spread of the bone eating bacteria he most likely picked up in a hospital being treated for pneumonia. And yet Republican Senators and Congressman with the best medical coverage in this country want you to believe Obama will ruin yours. Sarah Palin, who does not read any major papers, claims the plan includes "death panels" (tell me again why it is we listen to this woman to begin with).

The loyal opposition has us running scared like when we were kids cowering in the bed under the covers. But that is nothing new. They did that for the eight years of the Bush administration only then the monster was 9/11. They invoked its name everytime the polls showed lack of support for some new democracy crushing measure.

So get out from under the covers and turn on the light and open that closet door. Call your insurance company (if you have one) and ask if they approve hospice care. Ask if you need to purchase supplemental insurance to cover cancer treatment. Check on their "approval" process for "extreme" measures. And ask who owns them. (It could be the same people that have owned all your other insurance companies.) Hey, get a definition from them about what they consider extreme. I am betting you won't like their answers.

Could it be that our current health care system is the monster in the closet? The one we refuse to confront while whistling in the dark.

The Wizard of US

I have been doing what a lot of people do, researchers inform us, when times are tough; I have been escaping to fantasy. Yes, even watched again the Wizard of Oz.

Oh, and the entire Harry Potter DVD set to prepare myself for number six just released on the big screen.

I have avoided the health care debate and the beer summit, though I admit to watching William Shatner doing a dramatic reading of Sarah Palin's Farewell Alaska speech, later to be a major motion picture.

This morning I was lured into "hard news" with a time headline on MyYahoo! page informing me that Obama Drops Faster than Bush or Carter. To show you where my mind was I briefly wondered it he had been sky diving or mountain climbing. Seems we are talking polls. Mind you Obama is still over 50% approval reading. How far over depends upon who took the poll.

Both Obama and Carter began their presidencies with polling numbers in the 60's. Obama had a 60% approval rating after his inaugral speech. We thought he was the Wizard of Oz or Harry Potter. With a wave of his magic wand he was going to solve all our problems. And with a wave of his pen he did banish various executive orders which were unpopular.

Then he did not instantly close Gitmo. Nor slap Cheney in a cell there when he defended enhanced interragation techniques. He began the pull out in Iraq but did not silence Iran. He upped troup levels in Afganistan. And the Blue Dog Democrats have slowed his advance on the health care reform. The investment banks and firms are paying back TARP funds but people are still losing jobs, all be it slower than they were losing them before.

Shovel ready projects are being slowed by government red tape, and Fox News is making a lot of noise about "pork barrel" spending and putting our grandchildren in hock. We want him to banish all the naysayers like Potter dispensed of his dragon in Goblet of Fire. So some of us disappointed followers probably gave a negative response to the pollster calling. I know I said, mind still on the Potter movie I was watching, that I felt the economy was better but personally my finances still rather worried me. And no I could not see a time when I could reinvest in mutual funds. And yes, all my friends had withdrawn and spent theirs too.

No, Obama does not have a magic wand. If he did Rush Limbaugh would be in Never, Never Land. I think the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz holds our answer; it is within ourselves. We just need to believe in ourselves. We have looked too long for solutions from others. We need to argue for what we want and need. August recess is upon us. Talk to your Washington representatives.

As to Obama. We just need some patience. And turn off Fox News.

Health Care?????

I mentioned I would likely write about this subject more than once. My friend, mentioned in the first article, lost half his foot. We do not know at this time if that is where it will stop.

The antibiotics the insurance company approved, as opposed to what the doctor recommended, did not work. The delay created, again by the health insurance company, in second guessing the doctor was not wise. The prescribed drug ordered from Canada did not arrive promptly due to directives to scrutinize all such orders at the US border.

This antibiotic resistant bone-eating bacteria is often picked up in hospitals and it can be fatal. Left untreated for too long it can reside in multiple places in the body other than the original site.

There is a great debate going on in Washington about health care. First I want to say health care insurance is a misnomer. It is medical insurance. They currently pay for nothing that can be called healthy. Even the routine exams they advocate we all have are not totally paid for. All deductibles are up front which, in this economy, deters people from going to the doctor to maintain health. Most insurance companies do not pay for things that would keep us healthy like exercise programs or vitamins or massage even when a prior health problem would advocate such maintenance programs.

Another total red herring in this whole medical insurance debate is that we would lose our freedom of choice. We have no choice currently. The insurance providers, as in my friend's case, call all the shots. Doctors and hospitals, to reduce administrative costs related to insurance, often hedge their bets on treatments from what they might think will work to what they know the insurance company will pay for.

And three, the United States no longer has the best medical care in the world. More and more people are opting for medical tourism. At some point in my future I may need shoulder surgery. I plan to go to Thailand. A $40,000 procedure here is only $8,000 there including the hotel before and after surgery. And they are considered cutting edge (no pun intended) with use of shark cartilage to replace damaged tissues. I want an insurance policy that will pay their 80% of that but then my co-pay on the cost here would be about the same. I only need to come up with the air fare if insurance will pick up post op physical therapy.

There is a lot of mud slinging going on around this whole issue. The waters have been muddied with half-truths and out right lies by he opponents. That if we go with any plan the government comes up with we will have to wait forever for treatment like Canadian and United Kingdom citizens do. In this day of Internet friendships around the world those lies can be easily put to bed if you are half-way computer literate.

Meanwhile a growing number of American citizens cannot afford medical insurance and their unpaid bills raise the costs of the treatments the rest receive. We have some of the highest medical costs in the world and they have risen way more than the standard rate of inflation. Something has to be done. We need health care which is based on what the doctor, and not the insurance company, feels is appropriate. And it needs to be at a price that does not lead us to bankruptcy.

Don't take me to a hospital

I think the one thing I most support on President Obama's agenda for America is health care reform. This is the one thing the Republicans seem most opposed to. The are want to say we have the greatest health care system in the world. They obviously have not used it lately.

I just got off the phone with my ex-husband that is on is 3rd week in a wound care hospital after 2 weeks in a general hospital for a wound on his toe that would not heal. He likely picked up the infection in this wound when he was in he hospital for pneumonia. And now seems to have picked up an intestinal infection while at this latest hospital.

Despite definite instructions that he is to be on a diabetic diet (not that rare in wound care facilities) he has continued to be fed pancakes and syrup for breakfast. And is not getting the every couple hour snacks that are essential to maintain a correct blood sugar level.

He just received some of his bills for the first two weeks: $38,000 plus. Now that does include surgery on the wound. Since it was not healing it was necessary to make it bigger. Now he is trying to get out of this hospital and into home health care so he can get away from any other possible infections he might pick up. The doctor agrees but there is a dearth of home health care professionals in our area. Those we did have abandoned it for the more stable hospital salary in light of our current economic issues.

I have my own list of horror stories about medical care. And currently have any number of friends also going through hell in the medical/insurance realm. One is dealing with the aftereffects of radiation treatment she got for cancer. Did you know it can prevent any future skin graphs. Another friend's brother just died from the chemo they gave him for lung cancer. Oh, they cured the cancer but the chemo destroyed his lungs. And for this fantastic health care system, per the Republicans, we pay double what most of the civilized countries in the world do. It is why we are not competitive in the world market on goods we make.

And our insurance companies do not help. They could force medical professionals to hold to certain charges but no. And they could allow payment for holisitic and alternative treatments but no. And they could stop lobbying the Republicans to oppose any reform of health care or health care insurance but no.

So until there is some serious reform do not take me to a hospital. When I had to have my finger reattached they berated me for not getting there sooner. I had spent three hours in the emergency waiting room. And my major concern from the minute the admitted me was what awful bone or blood infection I might pick up there. I think it is healthier to stay away from those places. Certainly cheaper.