Health Care

I received an email that asked me to participate in a survey and it contained the line "I'll bet you didn't wake up this morning thinking about paticipating in a survey." No. What I did wake up this morning thinking about was my ever-increasng list of things that would make a military dictatorship palatable. And as I took one of my $5 per capsule medications (let me repeat that: $5 per capsule!!!), I was reminded that fixing the health care system is number one on the list.

I guess I should clarify about the military dictatorship thing. It's just that there are so many problems that don't seem susceptible to voluntary solutions that sometimes it's tempting to think that solutions could somehow be imposed. Unfortunately, the military dictatorships don't always fix what they promise to and they create other problems that usually outweigh any good they do. So don't think I'm a Stalinist.

Back to health care: So there's the price of medications. I recently had a temporary lapse in my health care coverage and I had to pay full price for my prescriptions so I became painfully aware of their cost. OK, I know drug companies need money for research, and blah-de-blah, but there has to be a point at which they've recouped their costs and even have enough left over to pay doctors to recommend their products (which they do, by the way, though not directly). So after that point, the prices should be reduced.

Then there's the question of how complicated everything gets, the amount of paperwork, what's covered and what's not. I recently had surgery on my knee which ultimately involved getting a walker and a cane. These weren't covered--not expensive but still you'd think an indispensable part of the process. Then when the time came for the visiting nurse to remove my staples, the "kit," consisting of a staple puller and dressings, weren't covered. I suppose I might have known this in advance if I had read the telephone book-sized manual the HMO sent me. But shouldn't there be some determination of what's essential to procedure so the patient doesn't have to figure it out?

Youl'll notice that I'm just now getting to the universality of health care. If you had a roommate and he or she was sick and didn't have the resources to take care of him- or herself, wouldn't it occur to you that if that person continued to be sick it would affect you and that you should do something about it? Well guess what. The citizens of this country are our roommates. Wake-up up out there!

Just think how much work and time I could save by just saying Aaaargh! about 100 times.

Email Forwarding

Why is it that when people reply to or forward messages they will so often include everything that comes before, including multiple of copies of pictures, emal addresses of people you couldn't possibly care about, footnote advertisments from Yahoo, AOL, and Google, and so forth? It's so easy just to select the part you want to forward. Can I get an "Aaaargh!"?

Appointments

Too bad President Bush doesn't have the power to appoint the director of the Planetarium. Then he could appoint someone who believes that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.Memorial

If Martin Luther King, Jr. had known that Dubya was going to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for his memorial, he might have said "I have a nightmare."

Strategic Planning

If everyone who vigorously opposes gay marriage turns out to be gay (e.g. the mayor of Spokane, Ted Haggard), then there may come a time when no one will want to speak out against gay marriage for fear of being thought of as gay. (Hey, maybe the President is gay and that's why Laura has the frozen smile all the time.) So then it would be a good time to push for changing the laws to allow same-sex marriage.

World's Biggest Problem

The biggest problem facing the world right now is not poverty, disease, war, or global warming but rather the fact that there are men's jeans that cost in the vicinity of $100 and people are buying them! (I say men's jeans because women will buy anything at any price.)

Chinese Rebus