So, an interesting opportunity sprang out of nowhere as I was returning home on Sunday following a really pretty wonderful, long Thanksgiving Weekend with Family . . . A friend out of the blue called me, asking whether I’d be interested in driving his new wife’s father’s car down to Florida for the winter.
The immediate reaction was, “Huh”, followed by, “Gee, that’s a really interesting opportunity.” It took only about a day to figure out it was a great way to do, i.e. achieve, something really pretty simple and straightforward.
You see, my health insurance just went up this past month, [ more . . . ]
Did Reverend Thomas Tobin, Bishop of Providence, RI really say that on a national news program?!? I had to rewind it several times, and I still couldn’t believe it. One of his major arguments was “that any Catholic in public office, his first commitment has to be to his Faith.”
Again, “that any Catholic in public office, his first commitment has to be to his Faith.”
To quote someone much more respectable, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”
I’m truly dismayed.
I respect beliefs, especially those grounded in religion, that abortion is wrong — I really do. But what [ more . . . ]
There’s been a lot of debate on the topic (no pun intended, well, actually I think it’s a fantastic pun so, I’m going to use it!), but what exactly happened last night on the floor of the Senate vis-a-vis last night’s vote on Healthcare Reform is something worth investigating and explaining.
If you go to the Senate website and take a look at the Senate’s Legislative Process guide (.pdf link), you’ll see pretty clearly exactly what happened last night . . . and why what happened last night is so extraordinary.
For starters, what happened last night was not a vote [ more . . . ]
a) Sarah Palin quits her job as Governor of Alaska.
b) Sarah Palin appears on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
c) Only days later, Oprah Winfrey announces that she is quitting her show of 20+ years.
Coincidence? Or has Sarah Palin reached an infectious / contagious stage?
From a purely epidemiological standpoint this could go a long way to explain the Right’s paranoid, irrational, emotionally-charged behavior over the past few [ more . . . ]
I feel like I know these people. I feel like they’re my Mother or Father. I feel like I felt years ago when I was sitting in a hospital bed uncertain about my own future and, unknown to me, about to fight a multi-year battle with my insurance company and former employer over benefits I paid for and deserved.
These people, albeit actors, personify real people — Watch.
The Right’s next best effort at fear mongering, this time on a domestic issue, is DontKillGrandma.com. It looks like they’ve started only in the past week or two (late October or very early November). What’s stunning is the website’s basic premise, that someone — anyone — wants to Kill Grandma.
Look, this isn’t some Kill Bill: Vol. 2 sequel — This is real. It’s unacceptable to hold Grandma hostage to such tactics, virtual or otherwise. It’s an wholly unintelligent tactic to gain notice and make people afraid, made all the moreso pathetic by the simple fact those behind DontKillGrandma.com know [ more . . . ]
What role a Public Option would play certainly depends on its exact design and implementation, but simply put and staying true to its intent . . .
A Public Option is the lowest cost option that actually can insure a pool of insured.
Basically, it’s the floor on cost, specifically the costs of insuring a pool of insured. And ‘insured’ in this case isn’t an abstract idea — It’s people, like you and me, Americans every one of them.
Health insurance companies don’t possess money by virtue of their very existence. They get it from You, the people who buy their health insurance products.
So when you hear that, by many estimates, the health insurance companies spent EACH DAY, at least during the latter portion of the summer when Congress was in recess (and all those wacky Town Hall protests were going on), approximately $1,000,000 EACH DAY lobbying against healthcare reform, how does that make you feel? Is that how you want your money spent?
Wouldn’t you rather that money go to pay for your care (if you [ more . . . ]
It’s simple — There’s a give-and-take between preexisting conditions, another piece we’ll get into, and the Public Option. First, let’s dive quickly into the matter of preexisting conditions . . .
Simply put, insurance is meant to ‘insure’ against the unknown. It’s meant to take uncertain risk and either eliminate it altogether or at least make it more predictable and manageable.
That seems like an odd place to start, but it’s not — I assure you. It’s exactly why insurance companies want to discriminate based upon preexisting conditions. You see, insurance companies — by their very nature — don’t like knowing less than [ more . . . ]
I just finished watching Ocean’s Thirteen so, I’ve got a little bit of a gambling fixation. Not that I would ever bet on Healthcare Reform — It’s way too important an issue — but what does gambling say about where the Public Option might stand right now?
Bear with me for a moment . . . Something like 77% of Americans think the time is right for a Public Option (see SurveyUSA poll Question #2). But a lot of the criticism that’s coming out of Washington right now centers on the health insurance companies — largely due to Republican and [ more . . . ]
