Politicians can be jerks

The public option is dead. Shocking.

Remember that part where every idealistic fool this side of Sarah Palin was raving about how Obama was going to bring hope and change? How everything was going to be better and soon the government would be issuing us our own personal rainbow-shitting unicorns?

Huh, funny how that's working out so far.

Health care

Why is it that people are so eager to believe that a government-run insurance agency would cheerfully sentence Granny to death because her blood pressure meds cost a lot, but don't suspect for a second that the private, for-profit corporations currently providing health insurance would do so?

Let's review some basic facts

In case you've been living in a cave for the past three years, Barack Obama is half-black. His mother might have been whiter than freshly-fallen snow, but that does not change the fact that for all appearances, and somewhat culturally, Mr. Obama is black.

I think, given that Mr. Obama is not white, we can safely assume he's not a Nazi, given that a fundamental belief of the Nazi party by and large wasn't a tremendous fan of people who did not fit their specific definition of whiteness.

Some crazies apparently think that the logo for Obama's proposed health care program resembles the Eagle/swastika Nazi logo. To this I say:
1. Actually no it doesn't so do shut up.
2. Even if it did - which, again, it doesn't - here's some bad news: The Nazis had freaking awesome symbology. That's part of how the rose to power - they looked powerful, and unified, and overall pretty damn sharp. Their symbols and uniforms were brilliant, and so arguing that Obama's doodle looks like it...well, if it's true that would mean at most that it's a snappy looking logo.

Argh.

I finally broke down and saw the nurse, thus ending my many-year streak of not needing to consult a medical professional for illnesses.  I haven't had any sort of illness that lingers for more than a day or three in a long time, which was a record I wanted to keep.

Verdict: It's probably a cold, probably not a sinus infection, and may or may not turn into a sinus infection and/or bronchitis.  

I really really hate being sick, especially when I swallow my pride, see a doctor (well, nurse in this case), only to be told that we can't do anything about it.  

*grump*

Dear vitamin-pill manufacturers

 Okay, I'm buying into your marketing, trying to be healthy, and trying to take a daily multivitamin.  I'm a vegetarian and don't eat much dairy, nor for that matter other things found in nature, so I figure that it won't do any harm.  Mature of me, right?  

But come on, is it too much to ask for a pill that is smaller than my thumb?  Seriously, even the brand-name ones - which cost me eight bucks for sixty tablets - are ridiculously huge.  They're nearly two inches long.  I'm sure you guys have some ridiculous advertising budget, how about shuttling some of that money into making more compact pills?  

And for that matter, do I really freaking need 200% of the recommended daily dose of vitamin D?

Surprisingly, doctors are proven to not be angels.

In a great display of the investigative spirit, a survey of doctors has revealed them to be often dishonest people who are first and foremost out to make a buck.

_A third of surveyed doctors said they would order an unnecessary and expensive MRI scan just to get rid of a complaining patient.

_A quarter said they would refer patients to an imaging center in which they had a financial interest without revealing the conflict of interest, which could violate certain laws.

But it's OK, because of the doctors who responded, 28% of their patients are on Medicaid or uninsured.

Please do not the inherent flaw in this as a self-reporting survey: only about half the doctors returned the questionnaire, and obviously, someone who is extremely unethical is either not going to answer, or going to lie.

*sigh*

So someplace deep in America's Heartland(tm), there's a big to-do brewing over a not-yet-opened Planned Parenthood clinic. As best I can gather, there was a lot of land zoned for medical use, thus PP didn't need to get the city council's approval. Now the legality of their building permit is being called into question, and the clinic remains closed.

Now, if it's truly a valid issue of someone screwing with the paperwork, that's all well and good. I still think the clinic should be allowed to open. I kind of doubt that, say, a plastic surgery clinic (read: something catering exclusively to rich folk) would have such a problem.

But there are some questions being raised as to whether or not that's the issue, or if it's a case of "run the eeeevil abortionists out of town". I'm inclined to think - especially considering that it's in what I'm sure is a bustling, civilized metropolis of Aurora, IL - that there's a good bit of that going on.

And that pisses me off.

"I told my children we were going to come out and pray for babies," Oswego resident Melissa Spartz said before the meeting as her 3-year-old and 5-year-old sat in their stroller.

Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area officials want to open a full-service health center. Abortion services would account for about 10 percent of the care provided there.

You know what the 90% of what they do is? It's stuff like this: Cancer screenings. Education sessions. Birth control. Prenatal health care. Oooh, very controversial, right? Clearly, this organization is going to morally bankrupt the lovely town of Aurora.

Planned Parenthood clinics provide health care to those who likely couldn't afford it otherwise. It's my personal opinion that sometimes that's going to include abortions, and if you don't like that and you're anyone but the involved patient and doctor you can shut up or go straight to hell. But even if you're vehemently anti-choice, what the hell is your problem with what's essentially a low-cost health clinic? Would you prefer pregnant women not see doctors? Would you prefer teenagers to just have unprotected sex for lack of condoms?

Argh.

Oh do shut up

Q: You're an American presidential hopeful on a trip to London. What are some things you should perhaps avoid doing?
A: Idiotically criticizing the UK's domestic policy with made-up statistics.

Seriously, I can't find any numbers backing what Giuliani said about prostate cancer having a 50% mortality rate in the UK. Nor for that matter can I find any reason why he'd take it upon himself to comment like that.

Also: "I'm a rich dude in America, I can afford the best medical coverage there is! But you in the UK, who have a state-provided system of basic care may not get such fantastic care! Clearly if I were a rich dude in the UK I wouldn't have the option of purchasing secondary, private insurance and buying better care! It's not as if the only difference is that poor people in the UK get health coverage regardless of how poor they are, while poor people in America don't."

Oh, come ON!

As far as I'm aware, none of the Democratic candidates for 08 truly get the health care thing. Granted, this is all my opinion, but here's what it comes down to:

Ensure that everyone in the country can get the care they need, without disastrous financial effects.

That's it. It's not complicated. Everyone should be able to go and get what medical treatment they need. Doing so should not bankrupt them. Necessary drugs should be affordable to everyone. Perhaps, as the NHS does, someone with demonstrated financial need should even receive discounted drugs. We should not force the caretakers of our older population to wade through seven thousand pages of Governmentese to get discounted blood pressure pills.

There's my dirty liberal manifesto about health care. Not terribly complicated, is it?

So, John Edwards, what the hell is this all about? You want to make doctors visits mandatory? You want to require everyone to have mental-health checks? Let's start with you, Mr. "Why would anyone want medical privacy" Edwards. Plus there's the issue of "Oh yes let's do bog down a doctor's time with someone who is entirely healthy." But I'm sure the pharmaceutical industry loves the idea - think about all the formerly healthy people who could be diagnosed with the disease of the week!

I'm 100% entirely in favor of universal health care. I think the state of health care in America is absolutely, horrifyingly shameful right now. But if you want to swing in the far opposite direction and require me to go to the doctor when I don't need to, you can take that idea, cram it into one of your bodily orifices, and then ask your doctor to remove it. Universal health care means providing the opportunity to get health care, not requiring you to get health care.

Good news, bad news

The bad news is that my eyes have not miraculously become functional. They have, in fact, gotten a tiny bit worse.

The good news is that since my eyes are so very good at being bad (quote from the tech/assistant/whoever guy when I showed him my previous prescription: "huh, you have really bad eyes."), new contacts are in fact a "medical necessity", which means under my insurance I didn't need to make a co-pay, and apparently it's possible (though I'm dubious about that). Also, NM state law apparently is stricter when it comes to contacts and a doctor can only give you a prescription for one year. Grr.

In other news, a hill in Santa Fe kicked my ass today again. Someday I will conquer it.

Oh god, America.

1. STOP IT WITH THE PANTS. I was happy before because I thought I would never again read a news story about someone suing over freaking pair of pants. If you're that upset about a dry cleaner misplacing an item of your clothing then you are A) paying way to damn much for your clothes, B) a shallow, self-centered freak, or C) both A and B and also a nincompoop.

2. I was planning on going to see Sicko tomorrow but I may or may not have to postpone it, because I had to make an appointment to get my eyes checked, because I'm going to need new contacts within a few months and may or may not have insurance past this month.

I think it says something that I need to postpone seeing a movie about how borked American health insurance is because my own health insurance is borked.

3. Philly doesn't want kids to help the homeless. I admit that the best way to help the homeless is not to give them food, it's to make them not homeless any more. However, that's not likely to happen anytime soon, especially not in Philadelphia, which of course is known for it's loving, caring, upright government.

But it's not like they're handing out cash that could easily be spent on drugs and alcohol or anything else not-helpful*. They're giving out food. Toothbrushes. Blankets. You know, things that primarily serve to keep people from dying, and maybe will in fact help them get off the streets. A school is helping others and using it as a civics lesson for it's students; I have no problem with that.

*Actually, if someone's a serious alcoholic one of the most dangerous things they could do would be abruptly stop drinking. I've read that alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs to detox from.

4. The RIAA can go rot in hell. Idiots.

In which MA is confused.

Massachusetts is making it mandatory for it's residents to have health insurance. On the surface? Could potentially be a step in the right direction.

Only they're not going to regulate the cost of health insurance any more than they already do.

If you can't prove on your tax return that you have coverage, you'll lose a $219 exemption. Businesses not offering insurance will have to pay $295/employee.

Those who do not qualify for subsidies and cannot get coverage through their jobs can buy low-cost but unsubsidized health plans offered by private insurers through the Connector under the Commonwealth Choice program. Premiums go up with age, but people cannot be charged more if they are sick or be denied coverage because of a preexisting condition.

This is the problem. The people who suffer the most aren't the absolute poorest. There are options for those at the absolute bottom of the financial scale - not good options, but options. But then you get a group of people who aren't quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but simply can't afford normal insurance premiums, even the low-cost programs (which, no doubt, have incredibly high deductibles and provide absolute bare-bones coverage).

Health care in this country is such a mess, and watching ourselves try to fix it is like watching a car accident in slow motion, over and over again.

Why everyone should take at least one biology class

Oh, for the love of all that is good in the world, will someone please physically and violently knock some sense into someone, anyone in the White House? Ideally, Bush himself, so he stops doing stupid crap like this:

Announcing his veto to a roomful of supporters, Bush said, ''If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos. I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line.''

NO IT WOULDN'T, YOU IDIOTIC SACK OF GUTS!

It would do absolutely nothing of the sort. It would, at most, compel American tax payers to support doing something with almost unprecedented potential with clumps of cells that are otherwise going to be discarded without any use.

The majority of stem-cells used in research come from IVF procedures. A typical IVF procedure fertilizes far more eggs then are actually implanted, thus, excess. If they're not used for research (which has the potential to save countless lives, to say nothing of the improvement of so many more), they're just destroyed. Incinerated, put in an autoclave and tossed out in the garbage.

What's more respectful of life there, hmm?

Aaargh

I have very sensitive eyes. I also have fairly bad allergies. This means that finding contact lens solution that doesn't in some way irritate my eyes has taken some work. A few months after getting contacts I found one brand that not only didn't make my eyes burn every morning, but actually made my lenses more comfortable.

Then they stopped making it because it caused people to go blind.

So, back to buying overpriced small bottles* and seeing what worked. I finally found a suitable replacement.

Which is now being recalled because it makes people go blind.

Pardon me while I bang my head against this wall here...

New Jersey considers another stupid move

The government of my fine home state is considering requiring all pregnant women and newborn babies to be tested for HIV.

On the one hand the idea has a certain merit. HIV is bad. They have incredible drugs these days that can drastically improve lives, especially if started early. If a woman is pregnant and doesn't know she has HIV, testing may possibly change her mind about keeping the child (meaning either putting it up for adoption or abortion).

On the other hand...I really dislike the government meddling in people's medical records. Your health and medical treatment should be an issue between you and your doctor. I think that there's a gross discrepancy in our government's attitude towards healthcare as it currently is: they require certain vaccinations and preventative care for children, but there's no absolute guarantee that the children will get that. Yes, most states have clinics and offer certain options for low-income families. But whenever I read about things like this I can't shake the impression of the government basically saying 'Do this, and good luck paying for it'.