Thursday, July 30, 2009

It Has to be a Bad Dream

This has to be a really bad dream. What the hell is happening to our country? Actually I guess I should ask what is happening to our government? Everyday I listen to the radio or watch some TV and am stupefied by the blatant abuse of power, disregard for the Constitution and lack of concern/action of the American people.

Lately, the whole healthcare change debacle is making me want to stab myself in the eye with a pencil. I don't get why there is such an urgency to dismantle the best healthcare system in the world (yes it has problems, but there is No. Better. System. Anywhere) and replace it with a system that has been proven time and time again not to work! Also, why are we doing this when the vast majority (85%) of our citizens HAVE healthcare coverage and those without coverage still have ACCESS to quality care?? I mentioned that 85% of our citizens have coverage. It's probably closer to 96%; it all depends on what number of uninsured you use. 47 Million seems to be the big number Herr Obama is throwing around, but if you take out the illegals and those who are temporarily uninsured, the number is closer to 15 million. Compare those numbers to 306 million citizens and you can do the math yourselves.

Back to my point. WHY are we so willing to sacrifice the wishes and penalize the 259 - 291 million covered Americans for the 15 - 47 million uninsured when they DO have healthcare available? And WHY does it seem that not one of the clowns in government, or their high paid aides have any basic problem solving skills?? Instead of shooting from the hip and trying to reinvent the healthcare wheel, why don’t they look at the problem, break it down to the causes and finally to the root cause, and FIX THAT PROBLEM?

This isn’t f’ing “Rocket Surgery” people! Medicaid and Medicare are failures. The brain trusts up on Capitol Hill should be fixing THOSE nightmares while providing incentives for businesses and individuals to get their own private coverage, and fixing the problem of malpractice coverage for medical providers. Or how about this; provide a cost-share program to all American citizens up to a certain amount; sort of like a 401k. You pick the coverage and carrier you want, the government price matches up to a certain level. Anything above that level the individual is responsible for.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that the way this is being handled right now is against everything this great country stands for. Right now the government is putting the needs, scratch that, the wants of a small minority over the wishes of the vast majority. While it’s true we are not a Democracy in the USA, we’re a Constitutional Republic. There is a difference, a big difference. What this means to all of us is that it is our DUTY, every one of us, to contact our representatives and let them know that we the people, we the MAJORITY, will not tolerate the systematic dismantling of our nation. They need to be reminded over and over again that it is OUR wishes, not theirs, that matter. We the people have the power, authority and RESPONSIBILITY to make sure that our representatives do what WE want them to do; NOT the other way around. This is not the time for quiescency; this is a time for action.

It’s easy, just call (202) 224-3121 to reach the Capitol Switchboard and ask for your representative, or speaker Pelosi (yeah, I know I didn’t capitalize speaker) or any member you wish to speak to. Let them know; call them, email them or better yet, write them a letter and MAIL it, the old fashioned way. Heck, do it all and then do it again and again. Find out where they’re speaking and go there, confront them (peacefully of course) and let them know where you stand.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Charge Your Government Rep with BRIBERY

I'm fed up. Our government representatives have perverted our system of government into an unethical, probably illegal system of bribery and graft.

Strong words. Maybe I'm being over-simplistic, but when Queen Pelosi, Herr Obama, Prince Hairy Reid and every other politician (Republican and Democrat) twist each others arms to get votes they want, it stinks of bribery to me. Just one example; when Pelosi, Obama and Reid are going to Congressmen asking "what do you need to vote yes on the healthcare (or cap and trade, or any legislation)?" "Do you need my support for one of your bills, or extra money for your district?" "You'll get it if you vote yes on this." That to me, is bribery.

I don't buy the bullshit that "that's how things get done in Washington". These people are OUR representatives, and when they get together and make their shady backroom deals for the advancement of THEIR carreers or THEIR causes against the will of their constituants, THEY. ARE. WRONG. They need to be held accountable and either brought under investigation, the whole damn lot of them, or voted the hell out.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Obama et al are LIARS and IDIOTS

I'm listening to Herr Obama and others trying to tell us how we need universal healthcare, how private insurance is sooooo expensive that millions can't afford it, blah blah blah. SO the answer is of course, force a program that is unsustainable and doomed to fail while killing thousands due to the timeline it wil take to receive certain treatments (look at Canada, Great Britain etc).

Now I don't know how the folks in our "gubmint" got where they are without some basic problem solving skills (except Herr Obama, cause face it, he never had a job so he didn't need to learn these skills; it's just so easy to blame someone else right?). The way I see it, and I do have some knowledge here as my wife is a professional healthcare provider, the reason most folks dont have healthcare is the cost. Okay, I can see that to. a. degree. Let's forget the folks who drive Escalades and other high dollar vehicles while living on food stamps (a big portion of the population where I live) cause no matter how cheap healthcare insurance is, these folks are not going to pay for it. So, lets look at responsible folks who live within their means, and can't afford insurance.

Let me back up a sec. The problem isn't that these folks don't have insurance, the problem is that it is too expensive, right? So, NOT having insurance is a SYMPTOM of the problem, expense. Now, anyone with BASIC problem solving skills should see this as a glaring example. Anyone with BASIC problem solving skills knows that you don't treat symptoms, your look at causes, and narrow it down to the ROOT CAUSE and treat THAT!

So, back to our responsible folks who can't afford insurance. How do we help them afford it? I know of a few ways, and by no means claim that I have the final answers, but here goes.
First, get the lawyers out of healthcare. Get the ambulance chasers out of the mix. Insurance costs are directly related to the malpractice insurance that medical providers MUST carry to protect themselves. The vast majority of healthcare providers are good, honest, caring people who are in the field because they want to help people. Unfortunately, our society has made it very easy to target them for astronominal settlements when things go wrong.

Don't misunderstand and think I'm against fair compensation for mistakes, but we need to stop awarding millions of dollars for a bothched boob job. Healthcare providers should be held accountable for any costs incurred for treatment or correction of their mistakes, a reasonable amount of lost wages incurred (NOT millions for "potential earnings lost"). We need to stop the get rich schemes at the expense of our health care professionals.

Herr Obama and his army of idiots on the hill need to stop, analyze the problem, get to the root cause and fix that; not shooting from the hip and treating symptoms.

Monday, July 13, 2009

How Much is a Trillion Really?

Just a bit of perspective. Does anyone really understand just how much a Trillion dollars really is? According to my calculations, based on the latest info, there are 306 million people in the good ole US of A. That is every man, woman and child. For simplicity, I'll use 1.04 Trillion; close enough. So, here I go.

First off, a Trillion is one million million. Okay. So, if there are 306 Million people, and each of them (not families, but every single one) gave $3,333.00 to the "gubmint", we would come up with $1.04 TRILLION. Simple right? Okay, how about this demo.
306000000
x 3333
938000000
938000000
938000000
938000000
1042118000000

So, what I see is that for every TRILLION dollars of "gubmint" debt or spending, it costs my family (just me and the wife) $6,666. Not a huge amount, but about 4.5% of our income. But what about larger families with lower incomes? Let's take two hypothetical families and compare.

Family A: Four people with a gross income of $250,000.
Family B: Four people with a gross income of $60,000.

Family A's cost is $13,334 and approx 5.6% of their income.
Family B's cost is also $13,334 but approx 23% of their income.

Now, let's not even get into the families without income, or those below the poverty line, cause we all know who is going to incur those costs.

I'm by no means a financial genius, but I have an above average IQ (yes, I qualify for MENSA) and know that this current financial fiasco our current administration is trying to force on us is One Big Ass Mistake Assholes.

So I have to say to our "gubmint"... Do the fucking math assholes, it ain't that hard. Stop spending what we don't have, and have no hope of getting! Remember, this is just for ONE trillion! What happens to us when they're talking about a trillion for bailouts, a trillion for healthcare, and how many trillions we're already in debt for? How the hell do they think this can pass any sanity test?

I'm going to go stab my eyes with a pencil.

Okay, the math portion didn't format the way it should, but I don't have the time or energy to try and fix it. No one reads this anyway, so it's no biggie!