Dan says…

Using her other persona, the real one, Jane wrote a little something about Canada a few days ago that struck me funny. You know, the way the people of Wal*Mart strike you as funny. Here’s what she wrote:

This got me to thinking. (Also, to researching, because Jane makes shit up all. the. time.) Why am I not engrossed in this winter Olympiad? I used to watch every hour of coverage, but now I’m only tuning in as a bedtime sleep aid. Why?

Is it because what I’m hearing through Twitter about this Olympics sounds so much like the descriptions of the girls my mother used to try to set me up with? #great_personality

Or maybe it’s because I find it hard to believe that the organizers of a billion-dollar, multi-national sports event can’t think to wrap a pillow or something around a pole that could end up killing someone, yet the people at the sledding run at the 19th hole of one of my local municipal golf courses can.

The fact that someone’s boner is missing, and that the search for said boner represents about 15% of the Olympic storylines right now, could be part of the reason why these games aren’t drawing me in.

Maybe it’s my disappointment that people in Florida can make smoother ice than the people who invented it.

Or maybe it’s the lame logo:

It could be that the venue just isn’t compelling enough. If I get in my car and drive an hour straight north, I can find all the flannel and below average dental hygiene I could ever want.

So I’m hoping I’ll be spared the Rudy-esque ‘rooting for the underdog of Olympics’ for the rest of the week. I mean, c’mon. Rudy was five foot nuthin’, a hundred and nuthin’, and in the end all he did was tackle a couple dudes one time. Hardly enough to make him the best ever.

P.S. to Jane:

The forests are bigger and healthier because it’s fucking cold in Canada. Nobody lives in half of it. Which is also why there’s lower crime. Who wants to go out and steal stuff when it’s 20 below? And then have to cover up their footprints in the snow as they get away?

True, the Canadian dollar was worth more than it’s U.S. neighbor. For about a week.

Canadians have nat’l healthcare. They have more government per capita. Hmm. Related?

The Canadian economy IS growing. Why? Oil. And diamonds. See ya later, beautiful forests…

…but Jane thinks…

I’m sticking by my original observation about the bandwagon jumpers complaining about the Vancouver Olympics: sour grapes, people. And people, especially Americans who are ever more envious of people who have their act way more together than we do, love to trash the Prom Queen. The truth is, Canada is looking lots more like Prom Queen these days. And the U.S.A., We’re the mean girl who backstabs her friends, assumes she’s going to be the belle of the ball, and spends her night hanging out by the punchbowl alone.

Dan, you imply that there is an inherent problem with having more “government per capita.” Next you’re going to be declaring yourself a teabagger. Use your head, boy man. The only potential problem with having “more government,” which by the way is not what I said, I said that the people had greater representation in government – more elected officials doesn’t necessarily translate to “more government” – , is if that government inserts itself into people’s lives in an way that is undesirable or invasive. Most Canadians aren’t complaining about their national healthcare. They’re also not complaining about government’s role in their daily lives. Americans, on the other hand, are splintered, fragmented, and disgruntled.

Canada has had oil and diamonds, this isn’t new. And so far, they are way more responsible with their natural resources than we are. Our own government fact sheet about Canada highlights a few of the reasons why Canada is thriving while the U.S. is flailing under the weight of its own self-declared dominance:

For a country who occupies more land than any other nation than Russia, their per capita GDP rank is a respectable 25, and they’re not poking their neighbors with their elbows and filling every available acre of land with strip malls. And there are fewer Canadians living below the poverty line than Americans. Crime rates are lower in Canada, despite the fact that vast regions of the Canadian interior are practically lawless – Hey, Dan! You and your teabagger buddies can get behind that! The unemployment rate is lower than ours, and their public debt is lower.

In fact, the only gripe I can muster about Canada at the moment is that their women’s hockey team celebrated excessively after their defeat of the U.S. women for the gold last night. Their over the top and not very gracious celebration was especially surprising given that Canadian athletes and officials were directed to behave modestly and to avoid giving the appearance of hyper-nationalism. See how I did that, Dan? Pretended like I was criticizing Canada and turned it into a comparison with the U.S.A. cultural norm of flag waving “We are Number 1!” mania?

Still doubting the merits of the quality of Canadian life? Watch this video prepared by Tom Brokaw at the start of the Olympic games. And thanks to The Redneck Mommy for the link.

Dan says…

Also soon to be found at a military BX near you: Special K, glow sticks and roofies. And a used double-turntable and a stack of trance music.

According to senior CNN reporter Mike Mount, the Plan B (levonorgestrel), morning after pill will become available worldwide in every military medical facility. Conveniently, it’ll be disguised as a 20-pack of mints.

IMR Coordinator Dick Aplenty says “this decision will make it way easier to keep our personnel on the battlefield mollified and fighting. We just pump ‘em full of Prozac and Special K, stuff their pockets full of birth control and bullets, then send them on their way.”

Coordinator Aplenty continued “…and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we’ve never had a fighting force this loose before. Morale’s at an all-time high.”

Jane and I actually talked about this topic by phone about a week ago, and it was fortunate it was by phone, otherwise this post would have been about hospital copays, insurance deductibles and unnecessary rectal exams.

My primary argument remains now what it was then: This. Is. The. Military. It’s not Wal*Mart, Good Vibrations and Johnny the Dealer rolled up into one. It’s the place where we give people guns and instruct them to kill other people. Or protect other people with their guns. All while not getting their shit blown up. Should the military really be stripping them naked and shoving their uglies together in the middle of all that gunplay?

…but Jane thinks…

Dan, choose 1 of the following to describe yourself: a) out of touch b) a repressed Midwesterner laden with Catholic guilt or c) someone practicing Socratic irony – a little too convincingly. I’m praying it’s C.

You are being willfully naïve if you think that the way to prepare or support a military during a time of war is to dump them in some godforsaken desert for YEARS at a time with nothing other than cold steel , a scratchy woolen blanket, and some MREs. I cannot believe that I am in the position here of the Patriot, while you are…I don’t even know what…proposing that we deny fighting men and women the same basic rights that other consenting adults have?

It doesn’t seem as if your objection here is to the morality (don’t even start with me, people, it’s completely none of anybody else’s business) of the morning-after pill, but rather the notion that the military should be acknowledging and responding to the simple fact that soldiers are going to have sex – should the lucky moment strike. Why is that wrong? They aren’t robots – although, there’s an idea – they are human beings, with physical and emotional desires, probably more in need of human contact and comfort than those of us here safe at home stateside. Should they not be able to buy tampons or Diet Pepsi? Those things aren’t necessary to blowing the enemy whoever the hell that is these days sky high. How about pillows? Nobody needs a pillow. Sure it’s NICE to have a pillow, but if you’re really tired, and I’ll bet those soldiers are, they’ll sleep without one. Playstation and Xbox, heck, television, computers, cds, ipods. Those things don’t have much to do with their mission, do they?

Or maybe your point is that we and by we, I mean you and Goody Brown from the old settlement in Jamestown, shouldn’t be facilitating sexual relationships at all unless they occur between married people at home in their own bed. And somehow NOT providing birth control is going to keep unmarried adults from having sex. In a war zone. When they are scared and lonely. And bored. And facing death on a daily basis. Right…that’s about as likely as turning up those missing WMDs and yellow cake uranium.

.

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Dan says…

Americans have very short attention spans, even for really important things.  That’s why little devices used to grab attention, if only for a fleeting moment, are employed on posts like this one about healthcare reform.

HEY!   Wait a second! Let go of the mouse!

How much have you actually READ about this legislation, not just been fed by the white-toothed prompter readers?  Give us five minutes (seven if you’re a slow reader), and we’ll get you caught up with what’s important about this reform and how it might affect you.

Lemme make this easy for you – I’ll give it to you in bullet point form.

Healthcare reform in 12 easy bullets:

• The goal – expand health insurance coverage to as many of the 40+ million uninsured Americans as possible.  Each bill would roughly cover three-quarters.
• How much will it cost to do that? Roughly $850 billion spread over ten years.

How is it paid for?  It depends some on which bill the actual law more closely ends up resembling, but in general, it’s paid for:

• By adding an excise (aka luxury) tax on insurers who offer more comprehensive health insurance plans.   Wha?  How is spending more for a better insurance plan a detriment to anyone?  Hey Jane – bet you didn’t know you were driving a Cadillac insurance plan, did you?
• By adding another luxury tax for elective plastic surgery.   Insert breast augmentation and inflation of economy joke here.
• By requiring large and small employers alike offer health insurance coverage to all their employees.  Some categories of small employers will be exempt (with employee counts under 10, or payroll under half a million, for example), and the rest would have to pony up.
• By creating IMAB (Independent Medicare Advisory Board), a group charged with halting the acceleration of Medicare expenditures by no longer allowing payment for things like foot rubs (sorry, Jane – looks like you’ll have to stick to amateurs from here on out).
• By assessing penalties to employers or individuals who fail to insure themselves.  The House version indirectly provides for imprisonment if a person refuses to insure themselves and then refuses to pay the tax/fine levied as a penalty.
• By increasing taxes on “the rich.”  You know, people making over $250K per year.

The reasons I’m worried:

• There’s still talk of there being a “public option” among the varies health insurance coverages one could purchase.  Proponents argue it holds insurance companies accountable.  Ultimately I think it would lead to the government running healthcare.  As in all of it.
• Reimbursements of the “rich, greedy doctors” would drop to next to nothing and medical innovation would essentially cease, as all the best and brightest would choose another occupation instead of mortgaging a good portion of their adult lives for a medical degree and then never be able to pay it off thanks to miniscule reimbursements and ridiculous malpractice insurance rates.   (Jane: I’m serving up a softball on tort reform here for you to knock out of the park. Btw – does everyone know what tort reform is? I know Ms. Ivyleague does, but I didn’t.)
• Sir Isaac Newton teaches us that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.   Forcing small businesses to cover their employees’ healthcare coverage won’t happen in a vacuum.  That money to pay for employee coverage will have to come from somewhere, like 1) reduced employee wages, 2) increased prices of goods and services (really?  In this economy?  Pbft!  Not likely.), or 3) reductions in employment.

The reasons I’m hopeful:

• I have a messed up knee.  In 2003 I aggravated a very old injury, but after the MRI I wasn’t sold on the treatment plan and opted to not have surgery.  When our circumstances changed, the new insurance company ridered my knee, telling me “Anything ever happens to that knee, for any reason or any cause?  You’re screwed.”  A pre-existing condition.  So now I protect that knee like it’s gold, because I’ll be paying every penny for it’s care, forever.   Forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions means I can get treatment for that knee.
• I want to be able to offer my employees medical insurance.  I really do.  Maybe it’s the father in me, but I would love knowing that the medical needs of my people are being taken care of in part because of me.   Right now there’s no way I can afford that and not end up having to price our services beyond the reach of our clients to pay for it.  Offering to pool our company into a much larger group of small employers might be the only thing I need in order to make this wish of mine a reality.

So healthcare reform?  I’m in favor.  But I pray our politicians consider the future of medicine, not just the current medical needs of Americans when they assemble a plan to provide coverage for people like me.   Just allowing small employers to be pooled for premium calculation purposes is huge and may allow me to do things for my employees I can’t do today.  But if they go too far, this reform could just as easily put me out of business.

…but Jane thinks…

The healthcare reform bills that passed in the House and in the Senate don’t go far enough; Obama didn’t push as hard as I hoped he would in order to provide universal healthcare in the United States. Yes, the House bill does provide for a public option, but conventional wisdom has it that the public option is DOA when it comes time to resolve both the House and Senate versions of the bill. And this is a tragedy.

Have you ever wrestled an octopus? Healthcare reform has eight sticky tentacles and they’re all pulling me right into that funky beak in the middle to chew me up and spit me out.

One octopus arm is reform. Anybody who’s ever looked at a hospital bill to find that she’s been charged $32 for two Tylenol after a C-section – and seriously, Tylenol?? – knows that healthcare costs are ludicrous. EOB’s with charged amounts, discounted amounts, net amounts aren’t even real numbers. It’s like they’re playing with Monopoly money. The hospital picks a dollar figure from thin air. The insurance company laughs at that number but agrees to pay part. The hospital laughs at the payment, writes off some, bills you the rest, and Bob’s your uncle.

Like the famed $640 toilet seat cover from the good old days of unregulated defense contract spending, health care costs are out of control. This is not news. Waiting weeks to see a doctor? Bad. Denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions? Bad. Denial of services because of what some data processor in an office in Hartford thinks is appropriate for your condition according to form 431.B? Bad. There are plenty of opportunities for the cretins we elect to public office reasonable people to come together to hammer out a plan to reform the healthcare system so that it is more accessible and more efficient.

I’ll be damned, but there’s that octopus again, whacking me in the head with the cephalopodic appendage labeled “philosophy.” Do we, as a nation, have an obligation to provide basic health care for our citizens? Of course, the way this question is posed is in terms of financing: do we, as a nation, have the right to levy taxes to PAY for basic health care for our citizens? Though, for the record, to the first question, I believe the answer is a resounding YES. We do have an obligation to provide basic health care for our citizens. And the Constitution tells us that “the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence (stet) and general Welfare of the United States…” Doesn’t health count as general welfare? If not, we risk lighting our hair afire in an effort to provide for our own general welfare by employing medieval ear congestion relief techniques.

It is in all of our best interests to promote public health. Sick people are gross, but beyond that, they are gross and costly. For those unfortunate enough to not have employer provided benefits, or who are self-employed, or who work for businesses too small to generate enough cashflow to be able to sustain themselves AND provide insurance for employees still need health insurance. Where to get it? They can go to the insurers and purchase such coverage themselves, but…

Another icy, clammy Octopus arm. Welcome back, Bob’s Uncle. Good luck getting insurance for a premium you can actually afford. Insurance carriers know they have you by the short hairs when you apply for individual coverage, and they like to pull. And they hope you’ll get some kind of infected ingrown hair, too, so they can charge you double. (Note: try Tend Skin. Works like a charm. Not that I have any personal experience with nasty infected ingrown hairs or anything.)

Which leads us to perhaps the biggest, ugliest, slimiest of all octopus arms: the political process. The flaws in the system can be summed up concisely: Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. When these two special-interest, solipsistic boobs can hold the entire reform process hostage while they impose their hypocritical and irrelevant demands on all of us, something has gone terribly wrong. The flaws in the system begin and end with campaign contributions. Follow the money.

So, Dan:

As far as funding goes, though I’m unilaterally opposed to acronyms, I’m all in favor of IMAB, as long as it’s actually run by physicians and not moneymen and politicians. Go ahead, increase taxes on the rich. And go ahead and increase the taxes on “Cadillac” health insurance plans. Cadillacs are poorly made pieces of crap, anyway. If fraud and abuse are limited, if everyone is insured so that preventative care and primary care can work, if health insurance companies operate honestly and in good faith and are responsibly regulated, the long term savings gained will more than cover the costs.

Unlike you, I am worried BECAUSE there is only still talk of a public option. If healthcare is required, and we can’t (and I agree) expect every small business to pay for it, then how the heck else is it going to materialize? I don’t think that this would lead to government ultimately running all of healthcare. I don’t see how those dots connect. Public universities haven’t led to the demise of private institutions of higher learning. The existence of social security hasn’t squashed the rapid growth of the private retirement investment market. If competition in the market place works as it’s supposed to, the introduction of a competitive public option would only result in the availability of a better private product.

I totally disagree with your claim that a decline in innovation and well qualified doctors would be the natural result of limiting reimbursements – and, in fact, so does the American Medical Association. For one thing, limiting reimbursements doesn’t mean underpaying doctors, it means cutting fraud and. More importantly, the notion that doctors are only in it for the money is incorrect and even offensive. I’m a public school teacher. I’m sure as hell not in it for the money. Some people choose a profession based on future earnings potential, but lots of people do what they love and what they value and what they feel good about doing and don’t put accumulation of wealth first.

As far as tort reform goes, this is another area in which the Democrats in Congress haven’t gone far enough. It’s time for them to wean themselves of their addiction to funding from the Trial Lawyers Association and get serious about limiting frivolous law suits and outrageous damages claims.

I am, ironically, less hopeful than you are about this bill. I don’t think it goes far enough, and I am heartily dismayed by the compromises that those who were vociferously advocating change have been willing to make. If the compromises between the House and Senate bills can be made without the further manipulation of principle and attachments of special interest booty perhaps it will affect real change. If not, I fear that it is doomed to fail to live up to its billing. Given the weak stomach Americans have for anything less than the kind of victory that elicits endzone dancing and ticker tape parades, perceived “failure” would deflate our collective will to continue to try to improve.