The emotional illogic of yelling liar at the President

The Congressman who yelled liar at President Obama during his speech last night has already apologized but it may already be too late as donations to his opponent for Congress next year rose sharply overnight as he capitalized on raising money to run against "the man who yelled liar at Obama." However, no matter how impolite that shout was, the Congressman did raise a valid point when he yelled liar after the President noted illegal aliens will not be covered under his plan. What happens to illegal aliens if they can't get coverage?

Under EMTALA, emergency rooms must stabilize any patient that walks in the door regardless of coverage or citizenship. Does this mean illegal aliens will no longer be able to go into an ER and get care that is more expensive than it should be because they couldn’t get preventive care? If so, who will pay for their care? Us with that hidden tax mentioned that we already pay to cover the un-insured or is the plan just to let them die in the street?

I think the President mistakenly got caught up in the emotions running through this country that is anti anything good for illegal aliens. That is not looking at the big picture. If the President really wants to lower medical costs the illegal aliens must be covered. Call me a bleeding heart liberal instead of a fiscal conservative but I'd rather spend an extra $1 a month in taxes to cover their preventive care than pay an extra $10 a month in insurance premiums to pay for their emergency care.

This has been been the big problem with the health care debate. We are letting emotions get in the way of fiscal common sense. Too many concentrate on how we can not let the government be involved at all while ignoring the possibility that reform with a public option may save us money. And maybe that is what the President should focus on. Get away from the emotions of government death panels (in lieu of insurance company death panels) pulling the plug on Grandma (or worse, fat panels) and concentrate on the cool, fiscal logic of Spock.

I read an article that noted that a huge percentage of medical costs is due to doctors’ offices wrestling with the different paperwork of over a 1,000 different health care plans. Maybe in lieu of a forced public option for insurance there should be a forced public form option where all companies are forced to use the same forms. Maybe make them an automated form a little later, just fill in the different insurance company and have all their information populate the form instantly, including possible specialists etc. and move on from there.

If private insurance is so much better they should be able to compete with a public option. We already have that in our mail and package delivery system. The USPS is a perfect example of private industry doing better than the government and yet shows there is still the need for a public option. Fed Ex & UPS picked off the lucrative package business and email killed their private letter business model. Yet, while a private entity may be able to deliver 1st class mail to urban areas for 44 cents a letter they would never do that for rural areas so you still need to provide a public option for the crud no one else wants to deliver.

Meanwhile, if you're illegal, poor, and have diabetes, you'll still die a miserable death due to lack of care. However, fortunately for you, the emergency room will cut your leg off when it gets really bad, ensuring you become a dependent of the state for the rest of your days. We're still civilized enough for that at least.

A civilzed medical debate?

On Facebook today, there has been an update string stating, more or less "No one should die because they cannot 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." There have been a few variations such as "No one should die because drug companies need to suck up to politicians, rather than develop new drugs for the free market. No one should die because an official panel decides you're too old to be worth treating. If you agree, please post this as your status for the next 24 hours" from free-market type people or "No one should die because they cannot afford a Big Mac, and no one should go broke because they want fries with it. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day" or "No one should go dry because they cannot afford beer, and no one should go broke because they drink. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day" from people with a sense of humor, but the first post has been the main variation.

Of course, Facebook being Facebook, people are commenting on the status of those who post the first status update. However, as everyone reading and writing the comments is a friend of the status poster (or a friend of a friend) the debate has been fairly polite, even when posters are blasting each other's position. One person opinioned that no one is going to die because they cannot afford health coverage as all states already have a "welfare" system in place for those that can't afford it, and under EMTALA, emergency rooms must stabilize any patient that walks in the door regardless of coverage or citizenship. It was then pointed out that we the insured already pay for the uninsured through higher taxes to cover the uninsured and/or through higher costs we pay in insurance premiums and medical bills. If you ever get sick and look at your hospital bill and see you have been charged a small fortune for a band-aid (I wish I had my mother's last hospital bill handy) you will see we (through higher payments to our insurance companies) are already paying for the welfare for the uninsured. Another thread focused on how how some people have trouble paying whatever deductible they must pay before insurance kicks in and are forced to the emergency room for health care which is a pretty expensive way to go. Under my current plan, I go to the doctor and pay my somewhat reasonable co-pay and that is it, whether it is the first time I'm seeing him or the tenth (easy to do with kids). Now I can afford to pay the $75-100 (or whatever the cost of the office visit is) if I had to pay $X before insurance kicked in, but some can not. Those are the ones who can't afford health care. And I'm not talking about people with Dish TV, I'm talking about people who decide between heat or eat in winter.

Another person essayed "the problem is none of us (unless we're over 65) really have insurance. We are just led to believe we do. ... Let's imagine, despite exercising and eating right, you got cancer. No problem - you have insurance through your employer. Except you get too sick to continue working, and have to go on disability. You no longer have insurance through your employer and you are out on the open market. Except you have a pre-existing condition. You can get coverage, except not for what is making you sick, or you can pay astronomically for it. And remember - you are no longer able to work. What do you do next?"

Other posts were more touching. I had one uninsured friend remind me when he had to go to the hospital with a bad pain in his side a few weeks ago it cost almost $6,000 out of pocket. And of course I had my mother who had insurance (good insurance at as she was a retired teacher) and still had a medical bankruptcy at age 65. She lost her home and would have been in a nursing home a decade earlier than she went if she didn't have children who could help her out and pay for assisted living.

It's a mess all over and I'm not sure government can fix it. But what we have now is just a house of cards slowly collapsing on all of us one card at a time. I'm more of a fiscal conservative than a liberal and think the current situation is pretty lousy financially. I really don't care if an illegal immigrant, for example, gets free medical care for a dollar of my tax money if it means I don't have to pay $10 in extra insurance premiums to cover their ER visits due to EMTALA. However, while I don't trust the insurance companies to put health before profit, I don't think government is the complete answer either (I have sneaking suspicion there will be a bureaucratic nightmare when some entity tries to determine who does and does not have insurance and needs to pay a "fine"). Personally, I just want whatever is more efficient and costs less. If that is the government, then the private insurers can match. If it is the private insurers, after some streamlining and whatever else that they need to do to bring down costs and meet whatever minimal standards are set up, then they can do it. We are fortunate that we live in a time and in a country rich enough that can do this, if we want to. One thing I am pretty sure of though -- I'm not retiring to California.

Medical mess

In terms of finance, we force hundreds of thousands of Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. As my mother, who had decent health insurance, was one of the ones forced into medical bankruptcy, I am very aware of how bad the current system is. She lost her home, her savings and is now in a nursing home (where she at least gets decent health care -- her health is so poor now that she actually needs to be in a nursing home) She would have been in the nursing home years sooner if not for children paying her rent for a few years. Yet, she is one of the luckier ones. She had family to help her out. However, with our children still children, and my siblings with young families of their own, we know we may not be as fortunate if something were to happen to one of us that our insurance wouldn’t cover. Seeing my mother’s medical bills, I know that our assets (home, 401k etc) would go pretty quick. Other countries don't have this problem, yet we seem to be afraid to follow their lead. Why? Are we so worried about losing the freedom to die on the street and impoverish our loved ones or is there something else at play? Who would really lose, financially, if the public option came into play?

The health insurance companies are the problem, not the government. A real public option would open up competition and hopefully help the average American - maybe it would stop the bleeding of higher costs for small businesses forced to drop unaffordable health care plans for their employees. The government wants to increase competition, which usually in a capitalist society results in lower prices. Of course the insurance companies arefearful of this as this will cut into their profits.

Of course, part of this is the Democrat’s fault. A 500-1,000 page bill no one can wrap his arms around leads to many opportunities for those for want to keep the status quo to jump in and scare the public by filling in the blanks with made up stories about “death panels.” The real facts of reform are far too complicated for most lay people to read and understand but instead of letting the members of Congress explain or answer questions, they’ve allowed some of the most mob-like, hateful, ignorant, and self-centered people who show up to cause disruption make any civil discussion impossible. Exercising your constitutional right of free speech, right to dissent, to criticize, and to lay before the government grievances should not mean censoring the other side, but that is what seems to have happened.

Worse, they have let the Republicans come up with all sorts of claims as they try to defend the status quo in their own town halls. With a woman crying that her husband needs more care than she can provide, such as a therapist, to help her husband recover, or at least live a better life, the Republican Senator replies, to applause, that she should ask the neighbors for help because the government of the people should never be the one to help. Nothing for nothing Senator, but as nice as my neighbors are, if I had a traumatic injury like that woman's husband, I'd like to have professionally trained people, like doctors or therapists, help me out. Yeah, the neighbors would be down for watching the kids while my wife drove me to a doctor but I don't think they'd be able to perform the actual surgery.

Or, a better example, there is no way my brother, sister or I could have provided our mother with the therapy she needed after her stroke, plus the pacemaker for her heart, without going to med school first. And, if it weren't for medicare she would be dead several years now as we were sure not in the position to pay for her care out of pocket. Good thing she was 68 and not 58 when she had the stroke that ultimately put her in a nursing home.

For those who are worried about how it will be paid for: repeal the Bush tax cuts, the super wealthy have had enough breaks this century. Yes, there will be tough decisions and compromises, but reform is long overdue, unless you make $800,000 a day. The big problem is no one thinks something catastrophic will happen to their health. And when it does, it is too late. We deserve whatever health system we get.

Our clunker was only worth $50 and a six-pack

Part of my commute to work takes me past several car dealerships. The last few weeks the front of some of these dealerships have wrecked clunkers with the message "worth $4500" spray painted on them. With the cash for clunkers program ending today, that will end soon. Yet, as I see these clunkers during my drive, I think almost all of them look better than the clunker my mother used to drive in NYC.

In 1982 my mother was still driving around a rusting white 1965 Oldsmobile f85 sedan, which we had owned since 1970 when my mother's 1965 Ford Falcon got rear ended by a UPS truck on the Long Island Expressway. This car was the second family car, used primarily to drive my mother to whatever school she was teaching in and to haul us kids around Queens. It was almost always parked on the street as if my parents were embarrassed for that thing to be seen in our parking spot. Though it always felt like a bomb, by the end of it's run it was true clunker.

Unlike my dad's car, which we children couldn't even eat in, my mother's was a rolling mess full of food wrappers and discarded small toys. It had a certain mildew smell, probably due to thetrunk that was stuck closed and full of water. My mother refused to get the car washed because she was afraid the car would fall apart in a car wash. Duct tape held the rear window in and bumper stickers covered rusted holes in the body and probably improved the car's structural integrity. If you picked up the floor mats you would see the street. You knew to be careful if you had to sit in the backseat behind the driver, and not just because that door no longer opened, unless you wanted atetanus shot. Some days the car would start, other days it wouldn't. One day she went to signal a turn and her blinker fell off the steering wheel. Friends of us kids chose to walk over possibly riding in our bomb. At least the radio worked. And the air conditioning worked too, as long as you could roll down the windows (the car never had AC).

That car was a bomb by the late 1970s. However, those 1960s cars didn't go quietly into the junkyard. One day, my mother lost her brakes in the Midtown tunnel and slammed into a truck. Instead of being wrecked, the car still ran. The only body damage was a big dent in the fender. The only reason the car was in the shop for a week was because the mechanic had to wait for a new brake cylinder.

By the end, the car was slowly being stripped for parts on the street; one day the mirror was gone, another day a headlight. My parents got $50 for it when they "traded" it in for another used car. But even then the car did not go quietly to its grave. A few days before the trade in a neighbor rang our bell and asked my dad if any of us kids were in the car, partying and drinking beer. You see, the lock for the vent window had broken a while back and the car could easily be opened by popping the window and reaching in to grab the handle. My dad looked around, saw all of us and went with a bat to confront the intruders and make sure they didn't do anything that would cause us to get less than $50. As soon as the kids saw my dad approaching, they flew out of the car, even getting the door that wouldn't open to open. So, unlike today's $4500 rebate, my parents ended up with $50 and a six pack of beer for our clunker.

Gates and the law

Hopefully, the President's latest comments will put an end to the uproar over the arrest of Professor Henry Gates, a 58 year old black man, in his home. The reason for the officer arresting the professor is that, when responding to a possible breaking and entering call, Professor Gates, tired and ill from a recent overseas trip, was less then nice to the officer and insulted him. The officer decided Gates was disturbing the peace and arrested him. In a nutshell, this all happened because two men were having a really bad day and took their frustrations out on each other.

Some have been crying racism but has been ignoring the bigger question. Since when is it illegal for a man, white or black, to insult a police officer from his own home? If a police officer wants to come into my home or me to step out of my home for questioning, I am perfectly within my rights to ask him for his search or arrest warrant first. Of course, it didn't help when President Obama opened his mouth because, as the President admitted, he doesn't know all the facts and shouldn't have stepped in.

We probably won't ever know what really happened aside from an over reaction by both parties and even this blog entry may be proven pre-mature one day. My problem centers around the arrest, Even looking at it in its best light, it all sounds fishy. The officer, upon finding Professor Gates in his own home, sees an elderly man with a cane. He has a report of two armed men breaking in. He doesn't know if those men are still in the house and possibly holding a companion of Mr. Gates hostage and Gates is being hostile because he is under duress. Gates, ill and probably suffering jet lag, is being cranky. Fine. It is what happened next that is interesting and I find a problem with, not on race issues, but on constitutional issues.

I find it difficult to believe the police department doesn't have training to deal with cranky older people who don't want the police in their home without permission. One would think that a senior officer would have developed a thick enough skin by time he or she is promoted to sergeant. And I also find it difficult to believe that a police officer doesn't know about the 1st (free speech) and 4th Amendments (search warrants) to the US Constitution that let Professor Gates say whatever he pleased and to keep on saying it (or course all bets were off once Gates stepped outside his door). Once Gates presented ID proving the house was his and then confirming that he was the one who broke into his own home the emergency that would have allowed the officer to enter Gates house without a warrant due to the need for immediate action was pretty much gone, except perhaps for the officer the Professor was not saying all was well under duress. Once that was gone, the officer had no business in the Professor's house and that brings me to the second troubling issue: freedom of speech. Since when is it a crime to raise your voice in your own home to an unwelcome visitor? In my house I thought I was allowed to be as disrespectful to a visitor as much as I wanted (or as my wife will let me when a certain visitor comes over with her dog that forgets to go outside when it needs to go outside for some private time)? I would think a man's home is one place where he could definitely say what is on his mind without fear of peresecution by the government. Yet, according to the Professor, the officer who entered the Professor's home without a warrant to ultimately arrest him for yelling feels that is apparently not the case.

That said, I can also see how the Professor over reacted. I find it hard to believe that an officer who teaches officers about the evils of racial profiling and by all accounts is a good guy was really just looking to put a black man in his place. There was a report of a breaking and entering. The officer came to verify all was well which may have included an additional action beyond verifying the house was Gates's home. That is good police work, though, since things didn't go smoothly, it seems pretty clear the officer didn't do a good job in explaining that to Professor Gates (and here I am assuming that is what happened next as it seems logical). For all we know the officer, looking at an elderly man with a cane, wasn't convinced that Gates was the person whoi broke in and believed the emergency situation requiring swift action by him, including checking out the Professor's house for intruders wasn't gone? Now imagine the officer took Gates' word and there really was someone in the house. The next days headlines would have been something like racist cops don't care enough to really protect black people.

If I broke into my house, I'd hope the cops showed up too (more likely my neighbors wouldn't notice, the problem of the suburbs) and I think it would be fair for me to prove that I was the owner of the house and to prove I wasn't telling the officers all was well under duress. I somehow doubt that the officer, once he verified Professor Gates was the owner of the home and not some confused elderly person who broke into a stranger's home thinking it his own, really thought Professor Gates was a danger. But the officer could have felt it necessary to make sure all was well in Professor Gates house even if Gates didn't want him to. It is too bad for the officer that his own report doesn't show this.

An officer verifying an elderly man was in the right house and was not in danger was not a racial thing; it was a safety thing. I believe that the Professor really should have understood the officer was just doing his job, even if the Professor was tired and just wanted to go to sleep and didn't understand why the sergeant wouldn't go away. The sergeant really should also have understood that some people just want to be left alone and that is their right in their own home.

But, racism aside, how this could lead to the Professor being arrested in his own home for telling an intruder to leave is what is really baffling. Did the sergeant really forget he was in someone's home without a warrant, making a nonconsensual warrantless entry, and felt he couldn't be disrespected by a citizen no matter the cirmcumstances? I don't think being cursed at is one of those offenses so grevious that a warrantless entry for arrest is justified, but it has been many moons since I took Con Law. Did the Professor do something to the officer aside from tell him off or follow the officer outside his home and do something in public that caused the officer to really think an arrest was justified? Again, the facts are not out now and when they are it will probably be a sanitized version of all this.

However, for whatever reason, the sergeant and the Professor didn't exchange their views (making sure all is well v. go away and leave me alone) and then things got so strange that we somehow ended up with a citizen who, just moments earlier, had been minding his own business in his own home being arrested for disturbing the peace. There is sure some stupidity in there somewhere to share.

Work, work, work

Former GE CEO Jack Welch recently climbed out of his cave and told women who want a work-life balance to sew up their uterus as the only balance that matters is work-work. I agree and disagree with Mr. Welch and some of the people who were also quoted. Face time, in an age where many employees, including upper management, telecommute at least part of the time, is not what it used to be. Does it really matter if I'm answering emails at 6:30AM in my sweats at home or in my office 30 miles away? I can easily work and hour or two (depending when I get up) while waiting for the school bus before driving to work (with the added benefit of missing rush hour) and still make any meeting scheduled (and conversely I can attend late night meetings with the west coast office from my home too). The other thing is that a work-life balance is not just for mothers anymore. See, I'm not the mom, I'm the dad and I am fortunate enough to work for a company with a very flexible schedule. Our hours are flexible. We can work at home a few days a week. Some directors with small children are home based. It does help that my company has many offices and face to face meetings are rare even if all are in their particular office.

Of course I am aware that there is a trade-off for this flexibility. I am a highly skilled and educated employee and my compensation and career path are not what they could have been if I had devoted myself to moving up the ladder. I and those like me with young families have turned down promotions because they would have limited our work-life balance abilities. However, my hours are fairly regular and I rarely have to travel meaning we don't worry about child care or missing a school event (since I have the flexible hours and my wife doesn't I'm usually the one who goes to these type of events). I choose life over just work. So shoot me and members of my generation (Generation X for the record), but before you do, remember that this is only for a relatively short period of our career life and, at least for those of us who are highly skilled and talented, if an employer chooses not to place our skills sets back on the corporate ladder, there is usually somebody else who would

Real Americans

Here is another wonder American who thinks anyone who does not live in rural America and swear allegiance to Jesus, Sarah Palin and their version of conservative values is not a real American. Unbelievable. Not so much that he was able to say this on TV; this is America after all and I'm not into censorship. What I find unbelievable is that these evil people have such a following. Yes, evil.

All these "conservatives" who make their living turning one group of Americans against another should be taken out back and shot for treason. It is fine to disagree but to say someone is not a real American because they don't agree with you is a bunch of bull. These terrorists, hiding under the cloak of conservatism, who are busy dividing the country on the basis of religion, urban v. rural or education by pandering to the lowest common denominator, are our real enemy. Yet we allow them to vomit their hatred with barely a peep because "uneducated, socially conservative, gun-toting, Jesus freaks" are the real Americans and the rest of us are not (although we were apparently good enough in 2001 when two of our cities were bombed by terrorists) because we decided to better ourselves in school, have a let and let live attitude regarding homosexuality, don't feel the need to bring our guns to church and are friends with those who may have different religious views then us -- you know, that whole freedom from persecution thing.

As to Sarah Palin, I just don't understand the so called conservatives' love of this woman (not to mention their sincere embrace of Joe the plumber as a party symbol). Her experience as mayor of a small town and as governor of a state with a population smaller than many major US cities has already shown her limited abilities and leaves me with no confidence that she can be anything more than eye candy on the national scene. Is there nobody who has the same general conservative beliefs with a brain and a bit of gravitas? An Alito or Roberts type who wants to run for President? Somebody who can keep Obama and the Democrats from getting too complacent. Taking anti-intellectual (Oh no! Elitists!), anti-science stances to attract a segment of voters couldn't have sidelined all the intelligent conservatives, could it?