REAL solution for the Health-Care crisis

When I lost my job on June 9, I also lost my health insurance. Yes, I know that COBRA should apply, but I haven’t filed the 941 yet due to the premiums being THRU THE F***ING ROOF. I can’t afford $629/mo without a job. Restaurants have already been cut out, daycare for the kids ends tomorrow until I get sufficient work again. But I have to breathe.

This morning’s doctor’s appointment was set back before Memorial Day, and since I knew everyone would scramble to get July 3 off, I scheduled off for a half-day for AM July 2 to make sure I get in. Turns out that was irrelevant, but …

Appointment was at 9:30. I got there at 9:10 in case any new paperwork needed to be filled out concerning the loss of insurance. One piece of paper was all. See the doctor, tell him what happened, check-up, renew prescription of Symbicort and Proventil.

Doc gave me a coupon for Proventil, $15 off PER REFILL for 2009.  On the back were eligibility terms, and #2 was “Coupon is void if a third-party payor reimburses or pays any amount of the prescription price.”  In other words, if you have health insurance, you’re not eligible.  Hmm.  He also asked me check the AstraZeneca (patent holder for Symbicort) site to see if I qualify for a discount.

We wrap up the meeting, and I make the dreaded walk up to the counter to pay for the appointment.  The bill was $45.00.  Let me repeat that, $45.00.  MY INSURANCE CO-PAY HAD BEEN $50! In other words, I paid LESS because I had no insurance.

I asked if that was all, just $45.  They said yes.  I mentioned about the $50 co-pay with the insurance.  The response:  ”We make more off your $45 than we did of your $50 co-pay AND the $47 more we billed to your insurance. With cash customers, we don’t have to pay the insurance vampires (her words!!), just the doctor and the office operations.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said in disbelief.  ”It costs more to file with insurance than the doctor gets?”  She said yes.  I asked why.  ”Insurance department has their own inflated overhead, the insurance companies don’t pay on time or sometimes not at all, we have collection people who call no one but insurance companies, there is insurance regulations that have to be met, statistics kept, and all sorts of other things that cost money involved in taking insurance. There are more insurance people than health-care providers in the whole System, and that’s if you include me (the receptionist) as a health-care provider.”

It’s been an hour.  I’m still shocked.  Is this were over half of our health-care dollars go?  Insurance processing?

I’ll have to wait and see if the prescription drug insurance is as big a scam as the health-care insurance, somehow  suspect it is. I have my AZ stuff filled out and am about to put it in the mail.

So here’s my radical solution for the health-care crisis, one that I’ve heard from no one else:  OUTLAW HEALTH INSURANCE! That’s right, make it illegal.  Or at least only allow major medical health insurance (cancer, car wrecks, etc.).  Health-care providers could halve their prices and still come out ahead.  Let the free-market actually dictate the prices instead of a bureaucracy so bloated it makes the government look lean. Doctor’s fee would drop, drug prices would drop, all thanks to NOT having to pay unnecessary overhead.

Ideas?

Okay, it’s been 8 days

I’ve been job hunting, cleaning house, and Twittering, in decreasing order of importance and increasing order of time spent. Anyway, I’m brewing up a big one before going to see the hillbillies this weekend.

Hillbillies?  Yes, hillbillies.  They’re from so far back in the sticks that my mother was shunned for marrying outside the family, my Granny really did make her own moonshine, and I have an aunt that actually cooks opossums and squirrels.

Anyway, back to the job search.

Bible implies Life begins at birth. RTFM.

The Anti-Choice crowd loves swinging their Bibles with an air of superiority at people of reason.  Fills them with righteous satisfaction, bashing the enemy with the “sword of God.”  It’s a real shame they don’t actually read those same Bibles, they might actually learn something; like Jesus’s disgust with the self-righteous, like the Pharisees.

Ask one of them when Life begins, and they’ll say “At Conception!”  Why?  ”The Bible says so.”  Problem is that the Bible doesn’t say so.

Genesis 2:7 (NIV):  The LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Notice: the Breath of Life was not given while He was forming Man, but after He FORMED Man. AFTER BIRTH.  And as is implied in Romans 5:12, as it was with Adam, so it is with all mankind.

Of course, at this point the Christian apologist is crying, “But Adam was a special case. Surely that doesn’t apply to all mankind, since everyone else is formed in a uterus instead of the dust of the field. Fear not, I can rebutt that too.

Exodus 21:12-14 (NIV):  Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death. However, if he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate. But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from my altar and put him to death.

Exodus 21:22 (NIV): If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely (or, from the footnotes, “she has a miscarriage”), but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows.

If Life began at conception according to the Bible, then Exodus 21:12-14 would also apply to causing a miscarriage, and verse 22 would not be necessary.  From the context of Exodus 21, it appears that while an unborn child has value, the loss is not treated as a death or a killing but as a property crime.  Thou Shalt Not Kill does not apply here.

Other favorites of the hypocritical Anti-Abortion crowd:  Psalm 51 is David crying after getting caught with Bath-sheba, words from a guilt-ridden adulterer (and murderer of Uriah), not from God.  Psalm 139 is more of David waxing poetic, once again not words from God.  Jeremiah 1 is specific to Jeremiah only, not for all mankind, but then poetic license may influence this pasage as well.  Read it in context, and you will see that it DOES NOT APPLY to abortion.  Job 3 is Job’s lamentation of his losses, again read it in context.

While the Bible does not overtly state “Life begins at birth”, the evidence would certainly indicate that implication.  Christians would see that (or at least be thoroughly discussing it) if they’d actually read the Bible instead of thumping it and spouting their personal opinions as Gospel.

There are those who would bear false witness against the Word of God, which they say they believe in and guides their lives, and say “the Bible says Life begins at conception”.  According to their own beliefs, they are bound for an eternity in Hell just for the prize of a few years of political influence now.  Are they insane?  Are they hoping and praying that deliberate ignorance of the Bible will save them?  Or are they lying when they profess their belief in Christianity?

If I see them in Hell, I’ll be sure to ask them what they were thinking. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I won’t get that chance.

Father’s Day (yeah, it’s late)

I’ll be calling Dad just before noon today to wish him a late Happy Father’s Day.  We played phone-tag yesterday between dragging kids to the OKC Zoo and his constant work-load.

He is a work-aholic, always has been. He always buried himself in his work, and with extra work he does for others. If he sits down for a few minutes, he falls asleep, but he won’t slow down and won’t acknowledge that the years and the over-exertion are catching up with him.

Those who know how his mother (Lola) and his father (Earl) met are all passed on. But Lola’s family were Church of Christ, and Earl’s family were Pentecostal.  The “Church of Christ” prohibited the playing of instrumental music during church services, all singing a capella.  The Pentecostals insisted on the playing of instrumental music during services, sometime even playing music during the sermon.

This is the battleground he grew up on, one in which religion and faith were not sources of comfort but sources of destruction. On both sides, family members could not accept Lola’s or Earl’s choice because the other family were “heathens” and “pagans”. He found his refuge in work: lawn care, landscaping, hauling hay, and carpentry. When he worked, he got individual freedom, money , and compliments. More importantly, he didn’t hear the snide comments of family members about their in-laws; evil things said by one set of devout Christians about another set of devout Christians.

Earl betrayed Lola with an adulterous affair with her best friend in May 1962. Lola’s family were so thrilled to finally get rid of Earl that they paid for the divorce. Their victory was short-lived, Lola died in February 1964 from carbon monoxide poisoning (incomplete combustion of natural gas from a small heater).

Dad turned 18 in December 1963. He enlisted in the Air Force and went off to boot camp right after the new year.  A few weeks in, and he gets the news of his mother’s death. I may never know what happened, but something happened bad enough that the Air Force honorably discharged him RE-4, and he was back in Oklahoma in time for her funeral.

He never talks about 1965 or 1966. His older sister Earlene says he worked two full-time jobs during those years and did little else.  In 1967 he pesters a co-worker of his younger sister Marie into going out for Valentine’s Day. He and Mom marry just 10 weeks later, and by New Year’s Eve they have a bouncing baby boy (my older brother).

By my first memories in 1974, there are now three families fighting over faith: Lola’s, Earl’s, and now Mom’s.  Mom’s family are Free Will Baptists who think “straight is the gate and narrow is the way” (Matthew 7:14) means that everyone except them are going to Hell. Unlike Dad, I couldn’t work outside “Arkham” (the super-villain mental hospital from Batman, my Mom still doesn’t get the reference) because of my asthma. I couldn’t talk to Dad because he was always working, and my brother lined up with Lola’s faction early.

So I buried myself in books. The summer of 1979 was my turning point.  I read about evolution, continental drift, the formation of the solar system, and I read about the Creation and had read the Bible all the way thru. I talked with Mom’s preacher, and Earl’s family’s preacher, and Lola’s family’s preacher about what I read and understood. None of the three could satisfactorily answer my questions, nor could they explain their own inconsistencies with each other or even themselves.

On August 5, 1979, I found Dad watching the Dallas-Denver pre-season game, or more correctly sleeping in front of the TV during the game. I turned the TV off, which of course woke him up. I asked him how he knew who to believe between the scientists and all these different preachers. He said that it was something I would have to figure out for myself.

“But Dad, it’s as if the preachers are all worshipping different Gods. Which one is the right one?”

I still hear his answer as clearly as I did 30 years ago. “Maybe there ain’t one. Maybe their all just fooling their-selfs.” He come to that conclusion with only a high-school diploma and work-time to mentally meditate.

It’s not education that makes the atheist, it’s observation and reasoning. While those around built their mental houses on the shifting sands of human beliefs, my father taught me to build on the bedrock of rational thought and empirical evidence.  And for that Dad, I thank you.  Now take a day off already!

Iran: will the real Conservative opinion please stand up?

Looks like the Republican Party establishment has yet again lost touch with it’s own base.

KFOR-DT here in Oklahoma City ran a poll tied to their “The Rant” series.  (No permalink available for the poll.)

As you can see, the 'hands off' approach is the Okie opinion. (2009/06/18 at 1541 GMT)

Apparently Oklahoma, the only state in which John McCain carried every county in the 2008 Presidential election, wants no meddling in the Iranian election.

And the reason I mention John McCain … (taken from http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/17/mccain-rips-obama-cautious-response-protests-irans-election/ at 1554 GMT 2009/06/18)

John McCain told FOX News that he didn’t think President Obama was doing enough to show his support for fair elections in Iran and civil rights for Iranians after a presidential election there that “everybody knows” was corrupt.

“I’m disappointed, it is an American principle ever since our founding that we are dedicated to the principle that all are created equal and the fact is they have the right to free elections and to select their leadership,” McCain said.

McCain argued that treading softly isn’t the right approach.

“People are being killed and beaten in the streets of Tehran and all over Iran, and we should stand up for them,” he told FOX News. “The way we stood up for the Polish workers in Gdansk, the way we stood up for the people of then Czechoslovakia in the Prague Spring and we have stood up for freedom in every part of the world. We’re not doing that.”

So exactly who are the Republicans listening to?  Obviously not their constituency.  Their own voters are against the GOP stance on the Iranian election.  Looks like the tail is trying to wag the dog, and the dog isn’t buying it.

KFOR did not mention during “The Rant” or any other part of their 10PM news last night about McCain’s opposition to Obama’s stance on the Iranian election, probably because they too noticed that the Okies’ stances were actually closer to Obama’s.  (sarcasm on) Heaven forbid they ever accuse Oklahomans of agreeing with a Liberal Black Muslim Gun-Stealing Baby-Killing Fag-Loving Democrat!  What would that do to ratings? (sarcasm off)

Iran’s ruling council is being squeezed from all sides.  Their past victims are coming back to haunt them; the “true believers” are accusing them of going soft and selling out to “The Great Satan”; they know a majority of their subjects freely voted against them; and several oil companies are becoming more hesitant in buying Iranian oil and thus potentially drying up the money well from which they derive their power.  They know they must either overturn the election, including punishing some of their own for vote fraud, or face a revolution similar to the one in 1979 that put them in power.

The best thing we can do is to let the pressure on them increased to their breaking point.  The worst thing we can do is to do something that allows Iran’s ruling council a means to redirect some of that pressure toward the US.

For now the Christian Conservatives are taking a stance that is actually consistent with the teachings of Jesus and with reasoning. I just hope that the Republicans don’t again turn them against their Christ.

Hello squirreled!

Yeah, yet another unemployed blogger.

The rundown: Just lost job Friday, male, late 30s, techno-jaded, wife, 2 kids, 2 car payments plus mortgage and student loans, and about five months of bills in reserve.

So what makes me so different that anyone should read this?  I am an atheist, stuck in the middle of the butt-hole of the Bible Belt.  Due to my wife’s job, I can’t be public with my beliefs without her suffering repercussions, like being fired.  (Oh the joys of living in a Fire-At-Will state.)  My children would likely be shunned at “public” school with the revelation.  So I pretend for the public.

Anyway, you’ll either get to know me better as we go, or this blog will go by the way like 99.95% of all blogs.