Friday, September 4, 2009

Hello, true believer!

Allright, so I've been trying to churn out a new post for little while now, and honestly just haven't had the time. Started a few, finished nothing ("ACK!" is a product of this rushed blogging exercise, and I'm not really sure the one you're reading is "finished" either). Honestly I'd been digging for something to write, but not really coming up with anything that felt right for the ole blog. I mean, as much as I like to joke about the afterglow of scrotal surgeries, there is a certain focus I'm hoping to keep...I don't know exactly what to call it, but there's a focus dammit.

So, today I had to call-in to work: I brought home some sniffles, Jules got them and, well, sleep didn't happen. Now that he is up and running around, it's just a runny nose and hopefully won't get any worse. But after I awoke from the three hours of sleep he did let me get (this being after I still had to go to work to drop off lesson plans because the network had crashed) I found a lot of talk about the health care debate waiting for me. I suppose half the world setting their facebook status to:

No one should die because they can not afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

will do that (myself included). With the things that have happened in our lives as of late, the wife and I have certainly given some thought to all of this health care brew-ha (I've only heard broo-ha, never seen it written...or is it broo-ha-ha?) . Jess has even been invited to officially give her input on some health care reforms, at least for the local medical giant.

For myself, I honestly don't get the debate. Well, I get the debate on how to make reforms work, but I just don't get the arguments objecting to reform. I've been trying though, I honestly have. As I get the opportunity, I try to read or watch anyone I can who might give a reasonable argument against healthcare reform; I just haven't seen it.

I either see folks that simply ignore pro-reform information and strategies that have been presented (ie: where the money will come from) or the people that just spin it (ie: death panels). The only honest argument I've seen against it was basically someone saying, " I don't want to pay for these other people." I don't get that either, but at least I can respect someone just flat out saying it instead of spinning it around and trying to scare everyone else.

Others -- and this is the real debate, in my opinion-- focus on the statement that it is unfair to tax one portion of the population more than another. Essentially, the idea is that tax money from the rich would go to help cover what those of us below the $250,000 mark can't do for ourselves. Well that's just un-American! We live in a free market and if I'm able to make more money, then I deserve to keep it because I earned it! This isn't what the founding fathers had in mind.

Well, Daddy Warbucks, you're probably right. Yet somewhere along the way, our Supreme Court decided that it was unfair for our schools to be "separate but equal" because it was a distortion of reality. Now we have government funds( tax dollars, believe it or not) that are spread out to the schools standing in impoverished communities, to make sure that all American children are afforded a fair shot in regards to education. If we deem education an inalienable right, and a burden that all members of our country should shoulder, why not the right to be healthy enough to go get that education?

I'm not saying the government should have paid for my vasectomy reversal; that was completely elective. But I do think, "What if the the haggling of insurance companies weren't involved?" Would I and my family be where we are today if our health care system had been different? Maybe, maybe not.

Perhaps the Perinatal Specialist, when he decided to cancel the ongoing scans that would have caught Joel's worsening condition and perhaps given us a fighting chance, was concerned that our insurance would deem weekly tests unnecessary and/or too costly. Maybe he was concerned more with my paying the 20% co-pays than the insurance paying out. I don't suppose we will ever know, but in this climate, I find it hard to believe that no thought was given to the business end of things.

Admittedly, I have decent insurance. It certainly isn't great, and it actually gets worse every year, thanks to rising costs, but still, it isn't the worst out there; a lot of people are worse off than my family. Still, we aren't in great shape. Losing Joel brought on many burdens; thankfully we had family to help us out (among that family we now happily include friends and my incredible co-workers that went above and beyond for us; they rock beyond words). Despite our own troubles and concerns, we try to help people when the opportunity arises; perhaps even more-so now.

The argument is that helping isn't something the government can force us to do. I think we've already agreed as a nation that sometimes it is (I was going to use FEMA as an example, but then I started snickering...). We live in a 'free market' and so our money should be ours to do with as we please. In the free market, money equals power; nothing new being said there.

I don't hear a debate about money; I hear a debate about power, and what people with power do with it; and I see our President being called a socialist by people that maybe just don't know what a socialist is...

I wouldn't call him a socialist, I don't know him that well, but I know what looking at this debate makes me think of; and do I know the President learned the same lesson from the same place that I did:

With great power, must also come great responsibility.



Thanks Stan, you're still "the man".

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