A conservative speaks out against the Birthers movement

Nice find. Bill Pascoe helped in the Senate campaigns against Obama. First, with Jack Ryan, and then with Alan Keyes. This won’t shut the Birthers up, but it does show that there are sane people on both sides.

I’d prefer he be a little more to the left, but as it’s been pointed out to me time and again, it’s not all about me. (Are we sure about that?????)

Keyes, Birthers, Buckley & Birchers: Oh My!

“Dear Birthers: Stop! Sincerely, Serious Conservatives.”I’ve held fire for the last several months as I’ve watched the so-called “Birther” movement gain steam. At first it was amusing…It’s not amusing anymore.

Obama haters: the new racism

Good to see that sane, rational-thinking people are addressing the bs that’s being put out there. Honestly, I don’t think that I’ve witnessed this kind of blatant racism in my lifetime. Eric Kleefeld lays it out. Beautifully.

Here (Go on, you know you want to.)

…So let’s take a look at some of those recent racially-charged attacks that have circulated against Obama, both right before and after the Gates incident.

Canadian Health Care Facts

From a Canadian’s p-o-v.

Debunking Canandian Health Care Myths

After you read this, go read the entire article. For some folks, no amount of myth-busting will satisfy them. But, give this a try.

Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists’ care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.

Those 1%ers are whining again

The rich keep getting richer and the poor, well…you know about the poor. Now before you go shouting “commie-pinko-socialist-blahblahblah” and throwing your drink at your keyboard, understand that I don’t have a problem with anyone making money. Hell, I’m all for EVERYONE making money.

Here’s something to keep in mind when you hear the bitching and moaning about those making more than $280,ooo a year: That wealthiest 1% that we’ve been hearing about for years and years? They’re not only getting more of a share of American $, their tax rate is at its lowest in 20 years.

We’re all (almost) going to hell

You know that group of “Christians” that protests at soldiers’ funerals, or where ever they can find a vacant corner? Well, they showed up again. This time at Walter Cronkite’s funeral. Yep. That’s right. That radical, satan-loving reporter. From John Avlon in The Daily Beast, Family of  Hate . 

Their press release: “We protest all this holy Cronkite worship. He was no hero to God. On his Cronkite Watch, America was surrendered to the fag-agenda. Ergo, Cronkite is now in Hell. And that’s the way it is. God hates Cronkite. “

The Friendly Atheist

I love speaking with others on just about anything. The conversation stops for me when there is a bullying, denigrating tone.  I’ve just spent quite a bit of time over at the Friendly Atheist. Love it! Try it.

Colonoscopy, Insurance, More $

More aggravation than anything, but another example of what’s wrong with the insurance industry. (Yes, I was very satisfied with how the c-scope went, the clinic, and very happy everything was okay. That’s not what this is about.)

My employer recently changed insurance providers, much to my doctor’s happiness. CIGNA was who it was at the time of my colonoscopy. I received an additional bill for $40.00 from the clinic that did the procedure.

Here was the process:

1. Initial visit $40
2. Day of procedure: $120

That was supposed to take care of everything on my part. However, on the day that I received the additional bill from the clinic, I received an “Explanation of Medical Benefits” from Cigna. The total charge for the procedure was around $1,400. There was nothing unusual about the procedure, no added medication, surgery, etc. Everything had been cleared through the referral process (and this was a test that CIGNA was encouraging me to have because of my age). So a month after the fact, I’m told that my plan liability was a little more than $200, and I’m responsible for another $40.

Now this might not seem like much to you, but to me that’s like going to buy a pair of jeans and they’re marked $40, which you pay; then after you’ve left the store, you get a call saying that you owe an additional $20 for.

Shouldn’t the cost be the cost? The patient liability be all settled ahead of time? I’m going to pay it, of course.I can appeal, but if it goes anything like appealing my traffic ticket did, it would wind up costing me more.

Oh, and you saw where there were an additional 5 million who lost their insurance; which brings the number of Americans without insurance to over 50 million. I hope you aren’t one of them.

The fight for health care gets personal, part 2

I was 19 when I had my first child. Normal pregnancy, great OB/GYN, great hospital, no insurance. At the time, the hospital charged a flat $1,00. I think the dr. was $600. We made payments to both and were paid in full by delivery. It wasn’t easy, but my mom helped out.

Almost 4 years later, a different state, a small town doctor and hospital, we still had no insurance. As in the first case, too much money to be on Medicaid, and there was no maternity rider on the insurance. Doctor out of town when I went into labor, hospital couldn’t find him, so someone else wasl called in. He had no idea about the type of block I was having and instead shot me up with Demerol and attempted to put a gas mask on . All the time, I’m thinking how barbaric this situation is, and how I should have gone to a nearby city. You don’t know how many times I’ve relived that.

My son was purple and when I asked the doctor, he just said that it was cold in the delivery room and that’s why he was purple. Less than an hour later, they were rusing him by ambulance to the hospital I should have gone to, because he had underdeveloped lungs and was struggling to breathe. They knew he was 3 weeks early, how could they have so cavalierly stated he was just cold? I went to the smaller hospital, the small town doctor, because I had no insurance and because everyone has healthy babies, right?

Fortunately, my son was stubborn, and after 13 days in NICU, was released to go home. A hospital bill of $14,000+ which was 30 years ago. That was almost equal to what his dad made in a year.

Why should a parent have to sacrifice care because of lack of insurance? Why should a child be denied excellent care because their parents make too much to qualify for assistance, but too little to afford insurance?

Pre-existing conditions? State Farm would not cover any repiratory illness for my youngest son for, I believe, the first year of the policy. This was well after he had started school, and had pneumonia three times, and bronchitis twice.

This health care reform is one of the most important policies that will be faced in our lifetimes. When an opposing party is claiming this will be Obama’s Waterloo, I wonder how out of touch he is? What would he do without his government benefits? Without the money he gets from lobbyists. What a pompous ass to make such a proud proclamation.

Say that it’s Obama’s Waterloo to a mother or father as they have to decide which medicine to purchase for their child because they can’t afford both. Tell that to the elderly person who decides to take only a half of their dosage because they can’t afford to purchase it as regularly as their doctor recommends. Tell that to the woman who doesn’t get a mammogram because she can’t afford to take off work and can’t afford to be sick if anything does show up.

You can take my two stories and multiply them by 47,000,000 – much more bleak than mine, and maybe you have a similar story. Please feel free to share. We are faceless victims to policymakers, and that needs to stop. Our stories need to be told. The time for real health care reform is now.

We can, but people have to buck up and stop being afraid of the bs that’s being dangled in front of them.

The fight for health care is personal, part 1

There are over 47 million Americans without any health insurance. None.They don’t qualify for state aid because they either make too much money or the state/s aren’t taking any more enrollees. Before you get your panties in a wad over the “making too much money” part, some are managing to pay premiums on children who have a chronic illness, or the “too much money” means they are above the poverty level according to government standards. For some, they simply can’t afford the premiums. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Republican overhaul of bankruptcy disallow filing due to high medical expenses?

When it became all to apparent that my mom, at 84, could no longer live independently, I brought her to live with me. I had always promised her that there would be no nursing home for her, and it was a promise that I intended to keep. Two years earlier, an RV had run a red light and slammed into their car, killing her husband almost instantly, and severely injuring her with a fractured pelvis, 8 broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, abrasions, and more. Determined not to remain in a wheelchair, she learned to walk all over again. She lost that ability due to illness prior to moving in with me. Once here, she needed a walker and a wheelchair to get around.

Her medicine ran over $1,000 a month. When the Medicare prescription drug revision/ modification was passed, it dropped the cost to several hundred a month. Her previous physician strongly suggested that she get involved with other seniors, so we enrolled her in an adult day care that she attended 3-5 days a week; that was around $2,000 a month.

Medicare would not cover a home health aide coming out to assist with baths, dressing, etc., so we took care of it on our own. The local hospital had a program where physical therapists would come to the home, but she was placed on a waiting list because they were short staffed. After having gone through their hoops to make sure she’d benefit from the PT, no one was available. Insurance would not cover having a private one come out, so we were at the mercy of attempting to do it ourselves.

Respite services were expensive…at least I considered it expensive at $15 – $20 an hour depending upon the physical limitations of the client. There were 3 days that we used their services: 1 was for a wedding, 2 were for day trips out of town. Neither Medicare nor her supplemental policy paid for that – otherwise we would have used it once every week or two. She loved visiting with others, and honestly we needed the decompress time.

When she developed an irregular heartbeat in the Spring, I drove her to what was alledgedly a fine  hospital 5 minutes away. It was the last time she was in my home. She was admitted to the hospital, where 1 week later she suffered a stroke because no one in their physical therapy department could be bothered to come up an sit her up – even though her doctor had instructed them to. When she missed a meal because no one would feed her (she had extremely limited use of her arms due a late onset of Parkinsons), I made sure that I was at the hospital to feed her every meal. A nurse couldn’t be bothered to put down her magazine and come see about her IV going off for 15 – 20 minutes.

Medicare said after x number of days (I believe 30), that she had to be dismissed. So they moved her to a rehab facility about 15 miles away. Her care was good, but she wasn’t making adequate progress according to Medicare, so she had to be moved to a nursing home that would provide at least some rehab. It, too, was a nice place, but again, after a certain number of days, because she wasn’t meeting the Medicare requirements of progress, she was being discharged.

I felt like I was in a nightmare. Before she’d gotten sick, she was able to help somewhat in getting up, but now, there was nothing. The stroke that she’d suffered in the first hospital had taken the last bit of strength that she could muster. It was then that I broke down. I didn’t know where to turn to protect and help my mom. Her Medicare wasn’t going to, nor was her supplement. What do you do, where do you turn? She’d worked so  hard all her life. The irony – she was a nurse.

The one person who’d believed in me always, and doors were closing. She was in her 80’s and so her life wasn’t valuable evidently.

A supervisor from the nursing home helped us. There are private residential homes that provide care, 24/7.  But guess what? Medicare and her Blue Cross supplemental did not cover. It was $2,000 a month just for her to live there. Any extra services would be added. We found one, a good one, that was 5 minutes away. Within 2 months, she’d been hospitalized twice as her poor little body weakened. It’s what the body does when it’s ready to let go – it gradually shuts down.

When the doctors said that she was dying, Medicare covered her Hospice. Mighty big of them, as they offered no encouragement to her recovery. Their encouragement was for her to die.

10 Things You Need to Know to Live on the Street

Like many neighborhoods across the land, we are surrounded by empty homes; each story unique yet the same. We, like several of our neighbors who are still hanging on,  could very well be the next victims of an economy brought to its knees.

With almost 3.5 million Americans homeless and the number increasing, Picture the Homeless and The Nation came up with the following list:

1. Be prepared to be blamed for your circumstances, no matter how much they may be beyond your control. Think of ways to disabuse the public of common misconceptions. Don’t internalize cruelty or condescension. Let go of your pride–but hold on to your dignity.