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I pride myself in setting out every day to learn something new. Lately however, my taste for things scientific has given way to my overwhelming sense of inadequacy when it comes ito the language of scientific inquiry…mathematics. I rue the fact that I am a language-y, feeling-y type. I’d rather be a cold, hard, logical person any day. Then I could be working with CERN or something.
Oh well, my jealous phase shouldn’t last long. I have other interests to keep me occupied in the meantime, and was very impressed with a BBC program from a few years ago that explains so much more than even the documentary’s producers could have known at the time. The focus is on the American Neo-Conservative movement and the Radical Islamic movements that came about roughly around the same time. The series explains A LOT about where we are today and the tension that exists between and within the U.S., Middle Eastern countries and Radical Islamic Factions. Very interesting stuff, so I’ll post all of the segments here.
**Ironically, my s/o has just recently found and begun playing the Bible quest video games they talk about in one of the segments…he has no idea why he remembered about them, but has been playing every night lately!**
I have stayed out of this Health care debate pretty successfully until now. I’m not a doctor, insurance agent, or a politician. I have no special interest in this at all…except that I am again uninsured (unemployed again…geez, that sounds horrible, but a 5-hour commute to work every day would not have been possible)…but this is a debate that is completely full of ugliness and b.s. being slung from both sides. I don’t completely agree with any side vs. the other in any way, but I do have a few ideas that might be of interest.
Here’s what my primitive, 28-year-old brain came up with. A major part of this is raising taxes. YES…simply plan to raise taxes in the area of Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. Tell the truth about it!! They are payroll taxes anyway, and at my basic calculations we will need approximately $420 billion to get this thing started.
- Employ parts of the Whole Foods method. If you haven’t heard about this, read here, but understand that I do deviate quite a bit:
- Create health savings accounts (HSAs) for each individual American. I think a good number here would be $1500 (hence, the $420 billion for the 280 million of us that are currently here).
- Every American with a Social Security Number will be assigned this account on January 1 of their first year of life. Parents can opt-out at birth for religious or other objections.
- Annual contributions to the HSA will make it at least equal to, but no more than the prescribed minimum, here $1500. So, if someone only uses $150 of their HSA, the Fed will only add back $150 on the following Jan 1st.
- The amount of the HSA will increase over time, because it will accrue interest. Safe investing should cover this. If an individual opts not to use any of the funds, the government will not need to add anything to it, nor will it hurt the economy if the money sits and accrues interest (ok, except that it won’t be in the process of being spent at Best Buy).
- Turn the much talked about “public option” into a High Deductible Insurance plan that is federally funded.
- The federal government, businesses and individuals should put funds in reserve that people could use without private insurance or demonstrate need. For my purposes, we’ll call it Federal High Deductible Insurance (FHDI).
- Set the deductible before insurance pays at a reasonable, but attention-getting level above the HSA level. So, if there is $1500 in an individual’s HSA and the deductible is set at $2000, once an individual has exhausted their savings acct they must pay $500 out-of-pocket before any public option kicks in.
- If individuals opt to not purchase any form of insurance, they will pay into the FDHI fund as part of their federal taxes. They won’t have to pay any extra if their income level causes their HSA to be dormant, unless they have no private insurance and have to use the FDHI.
- If businesses don’t directly insure their employees, they will have to pay into this fund annually based on their number of employees.
- Create health savings accounts (HSAs) for each individual American. I think a good number here would be $1500 (hence, the $420 billion for the 280 million of us that are currently here).
- Costs could possibly be contained in the existing insurance companies if we do this first step in setting up HSAs for U.S. citizens. Reasons why:
- Citizens can choose to either spend all HSA funds first before allowing insurance or other coverage to kick in OR can use the HSA to cover costs private insurance does not cover (i.e. if insurance pays 70% of a procedure the HSA funds can cover the other 30%).
- Only once the HSA is exhausted might a person go to their private insurance or a publicly-funded option, and may even elect to choose less expensive insurance.
- If individuals have private insurance they must use this instead of the FDHI, but could use the public option if their insurance company refused to pay for a procedure.
- I too think it is a.)ridiculous to forceinsurance companies to cover random people with pre-existing conditions that have never had insurance and b.) ridiculous to define pre-existing conditions as being pregnant while switching from one insurance provider with similar coverage to another. I can understand reluctance to cover persons with pre-existing conditions who have not previously had any coverage…for this reason I believe the FHDI would be the best and only option. For those who are switching between companies with similar coverage and benefits, we absolutely should force insurance companies to treat them as lifelong customers.
- One other enhancement that might help the above situation would be to standardize the benefits among all insurance companies and at least have similar levels of coverage for approximate costs…not carbon copies, but this would not only give companies a space to compete but a way to judge similar coverage from another company. Also there may be a place for a mandatory, basic plan that exists with the same benefits and at the same price point with all companies.
- Insurance companies should be allowed to compete across state lines, since the FDHI ideally would operate on a national level.
- Some other important points about the HSA that might make it work
- Anyone can refuse to use their HSA, but just like the payroll taxes we pay for medicare/social security, it would still be funded by every American. This is a necessary evil, because the public option is “insurance for when insurance fails”.
- Any citizen’s HSA will become dormant or inactive when they begin to make over $250,000 per year. It can become active again if their income falls below this amount.
- It might still be okay to allow the individuals described above to use the high deductible public option if they choose not to purchase private insurance. They would simply have to pay the $2000 out-of-pocket first.
- When an individual either reaches the age or otherwise becomes eligible for medicare or medicaid, their HSA will rollover into this general fund. This, of course, means we have to fix these programs.
- End-of-life counseling is a great idea. Providing the funds for it is also a great idea, so when the funds rollover, there might be a portion set aside for this purpose.
- All employers must either offer some form of coverage or pay into the national HSA fund and the FHDI fund.
- This has been a talking point that has angered many Americans–to force the small business owners to offer insurance at much higher rates than large businesses. A Health Cooperative might be the best plan here.
- Small businesses can band together in what is recently being referred to as a marketplace or exchange, since the difference between them and large companies is numbers.
- The more small businesses (and individuals who for whatever reason need to buy their own) that band together in a state, a region, a profession, etc., can get more competitive rates.
- These co-ops may need to operate across state lines, to take advantage of the greatest numbers possible
- These co-ops might be of interest to fragmented organizations, where they might find the most competitive rates if they band together in larger numbers.
- In order to get into the co-op, a small businesses might pay a one-time fee (per corporate entity) to the FDHI, a reasonable amount that would not only bolster the FDHI, but allow the business access to the cooperative network, then set this up as a deducted benefit to their employees.
- For the sake of being fair, large businesses (with whatever criteria will classify them as large) will not be allowed to put employees into the co-op systems.
- If they opt not to insure employees directly, they can either:
- Pay a fee anually to the FDHI through their business taxes, or
- Set up their access on the network, but set it up so individual employees can choose their own coverage, but still work within the discounted co-op structure with whatever network fees that might entail being covered by the employer.
- This has been a talking point that has angered many Americans–to force the small business owners to offer insurance at much higher rates than large businesses. A Health Cooperative might be the best plan here.
- The other cost-cutting measures would be to fix the issues in the medical profession itself. Currently, medicine is advancing quickly, but malpractice issues–that drive up cost–are in need of overhaul. I don’t know enough to wax poetic, but I’m willing to pay for the innovation, not so much the litigation. There is the problem within the insurance and government way of thinking that they will bargain for the average cost of a service and pay only what they deem is the “fair” price. Let’s investigate if this is really fair to the physicians that take care of us
I feel that this might be an idea–a rough draft–of a direction we could go. We’re slated to spend $900 billion on this anyway…These ideas give choice; they allow for competition; they cover those who are not otherwise covered; these ideas give an idea of the source of funding, and how they go back to medicare in the long run; they should appeal on some level to all Americans.
In conjunction with whatever health plan that is chosen, there will need to also be a huge effort and focus on better health choices and prevention through lifestyle changes.
Surely we can agree on some comprehensive reform where everyone on every side wins something. There is no place for any more ugliness in a civilized, adult problem-solving process.
Jeez. What wasn’t announced today? The presidential choice for a new/Hispanic/female Supreme Court Justice, and the upholding of Prop 8 w/compromise on what marriages were deemed legal before the vote. In other news–North Korea tried out two more ballistic missile tests, A Russian company bought about 2% of facebook, the price of oil went up (apparently over the weekend), the median price of homes went down according to new data, Verizon Wireless reps refused to help police find a missing man–until his past due balance was paid, heartburn drugs now make pneumonia more likely, Rush Limbaugh bashed Gen. Colin Powell for basically saying the Republican party needed to be more inclusive. What a day.
I am personally excited about Sotomayor as a justice. If I were a learned woman, and was skilled at obtaining and reading opinions, I would like to read hers. Her colleagues on the federal benches think pretty well of her. Ultra-Conservative and Über-Liberal (felt the need to differentiate there) factions are outraged…it is as it should be. And I bet she is just as sensible and just as any other Supreme Court Justice, only lacking in the experience that comes with time. As a side note: I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg ROCKS because she was the only one out of the entire bench to realize that in the strip-search case (a middle school girl was searched because administrators thought she may have stashed perscription strength ibuprofen somewhere on her person) a 13-year old girl, with no prior misbehavior might be humiliated when strip-searched on hearsay, even if by female administrators and a nurse, when searches of her purse and backpack revealed nothing. Way to go. I guess my non-experience as a teenage boy would not shed any light on whether this would have been embarrassing to the opposite gender or not. Moving on…
The Prop 8 issue saddens me, but I knew it was coming. There are too many conservative voters in California that are already plenty mad over the state’s economy that I figured great pains would be taken to avoid uproar. I also believe that the vote and what the voters decided is constitutional and binding, but not fair at all. We need a big ‘ol Loving v. Virginia to get it all over with…people are still not ok with interracial dating/marriage/mixed kids (even though I can proudly say that one of those ‘mixed kids’ is our President!), but it’s still legal for people to meet someone of another race and fall in love, decide to spend the rest of their lives together…or not. This is not currently the case for many homosexual couples, who I think have unions just as loving and faithful–if not more so–than many heterosexual couples. Of course, if some form of same-sex unions were legalized nationwide, just like interracial relationships, they wouldn’t have immediate support, but people would have the choice.
As far as North Korea is concerned, I don’t even know how to feel about their lunatic ranting and raving as of late. There is such a thing in the classroom as “the child who is starving for attention.” This is North Korea, right now but the question of why may be very interesting to find out. In the classroom, the best answer is to discipline this student without giving him/her the attention that they are provoking. That approach is not so easy when dealing with a country that does underground nuclear tests. It could simply be that their nation is falling apart, or better still, ripping itself apart since Kim Jong Il is reportedly still in bad health. They also may be on the verge of setting the stage for disaster at the cost of innocent lives in neighboring nations. Nobody seems to report on why they would take these actions other than that Pyongyang is mad that we had the nerve to voice our disapproval. Not the most comforting thought in the world.
As for the other news, take the blurbs for what they are, and for God’s sake, please pay your phone bill before you go missing…
Unraveling?
September 12, 2009 in Authoritarianism, current events | Tags: Altemeyer, american dream, Armey, Blumenthal, Bob Altemeyer, commentary, conservative radio, Dick Armey, Freedom Watch, Giroux, Glenn Beck, Henry A. Giroux, Max Blumenthal, mccarthyism, political propaganda, Republicans, right wing authoritarians, Rush Limbaugh, RWA, Sarah Palin | 1 comment
I sumbled upon the idea during the 2008 campaign…
NPR discussed it this week, and Terry Gross talked with the author of Republican Gomorrah, Max Blumenthal…
And, unbeknownst to me, a few days prior morelightthanheatpublished this blogpost on ‘Democracy as Specacle’:
It began some years ago and reached a new level last summer, mostly at Palin’s rallies and mostly in rural areas. At the time I likened it to a new incarnation of McCarthyism, but using today’s fears. Since the election of Barack Obama, the voices have grown louder and more shrill. Spurred on by right-wing talk radio hosts, conservative pundits, and corporate public relations departments and their astroturf siblings, it has escalated further in the tenor of the health care debate. Yet that debate is but one in a panoply of changes that are occurring.’
It also cites an article “that everyone should read” (author’s words, and my sentiment after reading) — “Living in a Culture of Cruelty” although it is reprinted in its entirety in morelightthanheat’s post.
I have been hearing about this phenomenon–this irrational fear, unprecedented hate, unconscionable violence and cruelty, and skewed beliefs–for some time, and lately, the irrational behavior of a few (and the number is growing) has begun to spin out of control.
This is perhaps the unraveling of the American Dream, and in the loss of our most cherished American ideals (which, by the way, and before anyone throws the constitution at me, our forefathers had the intelligence to realize our democracy would change, and so, set protections in place so that no ideological ‘side’ could gain the upper hand and sole monopoly over the people) we are somehow losing what it is to be a United States of America. Wow…in my lifetime…I never saw that coming. We are in for a world of hurt if the trend continues, but at the same time I hope that the damage can be reversed or that we can at least learn a lesson, albeit a painful one.
Take the time to follow all the links and read the articles/papers. Always be informed about what you take to heart as the truth. Question what you already believe on a daily basis. And most importantly, constantly ask YOURSELF, “What am I afraid of?” and diligently look for the answer within.
It may open up a whole new world of understanding.
UPDATE:
Another blog came to my attention; Let it Ride’s most recent post, “The 9/13 Hangover” speaks in general about the “Angry Mob” mentality and also has some pretty good videos embedded (Especially the Rachel Maddows vids–worth a watch). Just a little excerpt:
So that’s where we stand today. *sigh*