What a surprise! (Not.)

Even though I already knew this, it disgusts me:

Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released [Wednesday] by the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee.
...
At a committee hearing yesterday, three health-care specialists testified that insurers go to great lengths to avoid responsibility for sick people, use deliberately incomprehensible documents to mislead consumers about their benefits, and sell "junk" policies that do not cover needed care. Rockefeller said he was exploring "why consumers get such a raw deal from their insurance companies."

The star witness at the hearing was a former public relations executive for major health insurers whose testimony boiled down to this: Don't trust the insurers.

"The industry and its backers are using fear tactics, as they did in 1994, to tar a transparent and accountable -- publicly accountable -- health-care option," said Wendell Potter, who until early last year was vice president for corporate communications at the big insurer Cigna.

Yes, I've had claims denied that most definitely were supposed to be covered under the plan I was on. I'll bet that's happened to a lot of you who are reading this.
~~~

Our ridiculous culture

Yep. This pretty much captures the reporting of the last 24 hours or so:

Energy, landfills and that sort of thing

As I write, I just got home for lunch. On the way, I stopped and picked up three aluminum can and two plastic bottles that had been thrown on the side of the streets. Then I put them in my recyling bin in my garage upon arriving at my house. Did you know that:

-- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.

-- An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!

-- Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.

-- Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60-watt light bulb for up to six hours.

I also carry along a canvas bag and pick cans and bottles when I'm out walking my dog. It's easy and I'm paying for curbside recycling pick-up anyway.

I have trained myself that when I spot an aluminum can on the street, what I really "see" is three hours of TV and when I spot that plastic bottle, what I really "see" is six hours of light. That really helps motivates me to go to the trouble to pick them up.

Please consider adopting this really simple practice that will help save the earth as well as cut down on the unsightly litter that is thrown around by the careless and thoughtless citizens among us!

Oh, that party of family values

Yeah, I know Democrats cheat on their wives too. But Democrats, as a party, don't set themselves up as self-righteous arbiters of everybody else's morals. This is from CNN:

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, just back from a secret trip to Argentina unknown to his staff or his wife, admitted Wednesday he has carried on an extramarital affair with a woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
...
The South Carolina governor had not been seen in public since June 18. When questioned, Sanford's staff told media outlets Sanford was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. But Sanford was spotted Wednesday in Atlanta, Georgia's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
...
[T]he Republican leader in the South Carolina Senate questioned Sanford's abdication of responsibility for leaving without notice last week.

"I'm deeply disturbed that no one knew where Gov. Sanford was over the last five days," state Sen. Harvey Peeler said in a statement, adding: "We cannot let the governor's personal life overshadow his public responsibility, or in this case, his negligence of gubernatorial authority."

It's not the sex; it's the hypocrisy.

(Just sayin'.)
~~~

The problem with that "public option" option

Here's part of a reader's comment I found over on OpEdNews underneath an article entitled "The Simple Answer to America's Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All":

A public option that would "compete" with private insurance would be doomed to fail unless private insurance companies were compelled to accept all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions. Good luck getting that to happen. Because private insurers would continue to cherry pick only the healthy to insure, the public option would be the only entity insuring those with pre-existing conditions and would require massive subsidies.

The primary reason single payer could take on the 50 million or so people who have no insurance in this country without raising the overall cost of health care in the U.S. is because single payer, like Medicare, has only a 3% overhead compared to 25-35% in private insurance. That extra 22-32% goes to marketing, lobbying, investor return, CEO pay, etc, all items that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH PROVIDING HEALTH CARE.

That's why even if private insurance companies were compelled to accept all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions, the whole system would continue to have these huge cost inefficiencies, because the insured are not a single group, but instead are split into thousands of small groups with no financial leverage.

Why isn't the "cherry-picking" inevitability not being talked about among the mainstream pundits? Why isn't the outrageous level of CEO salary being talked about? Would we even enjoy a sporting event if there were a different set of rules for each side? Of course not! Competition is not the real thing if there's not a reasonably level playing field.
~~~

This is urgent, folks!

Check out the Health Care '09 website.
~~~

That election

Just in case you've forgotten or weren't really paying attention in 2000, read this.
~~~

Too many people are forgetting this

Or maybe some of them never knew it. The article I'm calling to your attention is entitled "Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away" by Chris Hedges and I give you just the first paragraph:

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.

When will we learn? When will we ever learn?
~~~

Quotes of the day

From Sojourners:

"Years ago, there's no way we could do this. It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell, and '1984.'"

-- Keith Sadler, police chief

"No one has the right to know who goes in and out my front door. That's my business. That's not what America is about."

-- David Mowrer, a local laborer

Both commenting on the 165 closed-circuit TV cameras that “will provide live, round-the-clock scrutiny of nearly every street, park and other public space” in Lancaster, PA.
***
This is very, very, very disturbing.
~

Oh noes!!!

Just a couple of obvious comments:

Health care is already rationed - by profit motivated insurance companies.

Bureaucrats already get between patients and their doctors - they work for insurance companies.

The other day I read about a young woman in her 20s who died of untreated gall stones. She had a job and was insured but her co-pay for the necessary surgery was $5,000. Can you believe that? $5,000. She could not get anyone to do the surgery because she didn't have the co-pay. And she died. Justify that, Republicans. I just dare you. Justify that.

Happy Father's Day!

Image from Wikimedia Commons

From the article entitled "Obama's 'national conversation' on fatherhood":

President Obama, who barely knew his own father, devoted his afternoon Friday to promoting the importance of being a good dad, saying he wanted to start a "national conversation" on the subject.
...
He spoke in deeply personal terms of "the hole in a child's heart" left by an absent father and of the powerful influence his Kenyan father exerted during the only visit the senior Obama made after he and the president's mother had divorced. Obama noted that during that visit -- when he was 10 -- his father gave him his first basketball and took him to his first jazz concert, stirring lifelong interests.

"Fathers are our first teachers and coaches, they're our mentors and role models, they set an example of success and push us to succeed," Obama said at the White House. "When fathers are absent, when they abandon their responsibility to their children, we know the damage that does to our families."

No further comment necessary.

~~~

Don't miss it!

This is so touching:

In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year... Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.

~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ah. But it's not in two weeks. It's today! Don't miss it!
~~~

Sustenance and encouragement

Dear Readers,

I apologize for the lack of posting the past few days. As you can imagine, I have been grieving the loss of my position with the Diocese of Oklahoma and experiencing a lot of pain from the sense of rejection that has gone along with it.

I want to share with you a couple of quotations I found today that are very encouraging:

"Fall seven times, stand up eight." ~ Japanese Proverb

"If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again." ~ Flavia Weedn

Now let me tell you what has been going through my mind a lot this week:



I grew up on this song. Even though he was a tenor, my father loved to sing this and he sang it wonderfully. I absolutely love Frank Sinatra's interpretation. Riveting.

I also grew up on the Mississippi River. The "Mighty Mississippi". Paradoxically ever-changing and always very much and very reliably there.

And so the song has sustained me. May it also sustain you, whatever your life challenges may be at the moment.
~~~
UPDATE: And another truly great performance is the one by Judy Garland.

UPDATE 2: Yes, I know (before anybody hollers!) that Paul Robeson is the singer who put this song on the map. And nobody can touch him. But Frank Sinatra reminds me of my Daddy (they even looked a lot alike) and Judy.... well, Judy Garland paid her dues in suffering and she had a RIGHT to sing this - no question.

Quote of the day

I found this in the comment section of an article on Alternet. It's really hard to argue with:

The remedy to a broken healthcare system is universal, single-payer healthcare. The "public option" will be set up to fail, as adverse selection will direct those who propose the greatest risk into the public plan while the healthiest will remain in the private sector. When the costs for the public plan become too high, we'll be told once again that government is wasteful, doesn't work, and can't compare to the sacred and almight private sector. Obama seems to be leaning toward taxing employer-provider health benefits to pay for the public plan, creating taxpayer resentment against the public plan before it even starts. And since many will remain with their employer-plan, they'll be paying taxes to help subsidize the public plan, handing conservatives a hot-button issue for the next round of the politics of resentment.

As you all know (if you've read the post directly below this one) this issue is now affecting me personally.
~~~

A current challenge I'm facing

Dear Readers,

Here's an email I sent out to a number of friends and family members last Friday:

Dear friends and loved ones,

This morning I received a certified letter from the bishop of Oklahoma informing me that, for financial reasons, my position with the diocese is being eliminated and that my employment will be discontinued effective December 31, 2009.

I had already begun the process of petitioning for early retirement and was hoping to qualify for medical retirement. That effort now seems to have been preempted unless there is some legal loophole I don't know about.

I'm confident that I can raise enough money to live on through my work at the Center (St. John's Center for Spiritual Formation here in Tulsa). My big concern, of course, is health care coverage. The law gives me 18 months of extended group coverage if I pay what it costs my previous employer. As of today that cost is $611 a month. After that I am essentially uninsurable privately because of my medical history. I will need to come up with some plan to provide medical coverage for myself until I'm eligible for Medicare when I'm 65. (I turn 60 next month, by the way.)

Well, that's the news, folks! Do keep me in your thoughts and prayers and if anybody has any ideas regarding my predicament, I'll be glad to hear them!

Every blessing to you all,
Ellie

Of course, there's more to this story. The "official" reason the Diocese is giving has to do with budgetary concerns. However the reality is that the new bishop has disliked me from the get go -- for reasons that continue to escape me. It's all very sad.

I will probably say more about this later. For now, this will have to do.
~~~

For some reason, I just love this!

Sent to me by Paul Rogers. Thanks, Paul!!!
~~~

Sunday art blogging

Artist: Edouard Manet
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Back in the "old days" (!) when I lived in the Greater Washington, D.C. area I actually spent many hours gazing upon this painting in the National Gallery of Art. It is quite stunning. This photograph doesn't begin to do justice to the transparency of the little girl's blue shash.

It was my habit back then to visit the Gallery on snow days. It was easy to get into the city center because the metro trains were working just fine and the museums were usually almost deserted. Those were times of quite lovely and peaceful study and contemplation for me.

~~~