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Pamela Olsen
Coeur d'Alene, ID
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Pamela commented on the article |In my work as a psychologist I have found that women come in fairly often thinking that they have an anger problem, and that their marital problems would all go away if they didn't. When I get them to talk what they are angry about, however, they invariably describe how both she and he work out of the home all day, but at the end of the day, they come home and while he watches the news or takes a snooze in front of the TV, she is making dinner, feeding kids, giving baths, putting them into bed and cleaning house. Men help out some, but women, at least in the admittedly biased sample I see, are still doing most of the in-home work. Men are only too happy to have the added income, however.
Women's liberation has been great about getting women out into careers. But it doesn't work very well for them if they have to come home and do all the work, too. I think they then begin to question whether it wouldn't have been nicer to be able to stay home full time like their moms did.
The grass is always greener somewhere else. Personally, I think careers were a bit over-idealized by women of the 60s who fought to get out into the work world and "be creative." Now they're finding out that no responsibilities are easy or without tedium. Perhaps there is a bit of disillusionment.
I'm not sure I get the difference between happiness and fulfillment, myself.
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Pamela commented on the article |
James, I hate to sound like a broken record, but you're doing it again. Over-generalizing from one example. You think we don't have such problems in our system? When I consulted my doctor about a heart problem, he told me I was just depressed. Turned out, I was right, he was wrong. When I had ovarian cancer, my doctor thought I had a bladder problem. Took him two months (and an angry phone call from the urologist) to get around to referring me to a gynecologist (in those days when we had to have referrals.) I could have died. This is not just a problem in the UK.
Wrong diagnoses are especially a problem when doctors are having to cram so many patients into an hour to make a decent living, thanks to lowered fees by managed care and outrageous billing costs because of our wonderful system.
Check out Japan's system and see if they have the same problem.
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Pamela commented on the article |
James, to say that Obama threw the Republicans a few bones, this assumes that they are not in favor of many things in the Bill, e.g., coverage for all, limits on out-of-pocket expenditures to avoid medical bankruptcies, private plans readily available, affordable premiums, basic prevenative tests for free, etc.
I've not heard anybody opposed to those things.
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Pamela commented on the article |
James, your comments are first, and then I will answer what I know in italics:
So, my example was not so much about the questions themselves, but about the job the media is doing in asking the right questions. I think it is generally dismal in the MSM. They have a huge roll to play in society, and when they do it poorly we all suffer. And then those that ask get attacked.
THe corporate MSM is beholden to their corporations, so although I really like Brian Williams and Katie Couric, they are confined by the requirements of their corporations (as are those who work for Fox). I believe that's why they asked far too few questions about the Iraq war before we went in.
That's why I watch PBS. The only constraint they have is that they must present both the liberal and conservative viewpoints, and they always do. Jim Lehrer usually has Mark Shields and David Brooks on Fridays, and for each special issue. And they're pretty predictable, but I must say, occasionally David agrees with Mark and has some good things to say (and I do believe that both he and George Will secretly voted for Obama....lol) and Mark sometimes agrees with David.
Charlie Rose always has great panels with really interesting people about each and every major issue. Many of the same people come back, of course, so you get to know them a little. None are rabid, all seem pretty objective, and both sides are represented. He often has well known conservatives on for extended interviews, such as Rupert Murdoch.
Bill Moyers has had many conservatives on for extended interviews. Of course, he is very liberal, but that doesn't mean that he considers all conservatives not worth talking to. He has some really interesting analyses made by many different individuals, and he doesn't just support the president. If he thinks he's doing something wrong, he calls him out for it.
How was ACORN able to go for so long as corrupt as it is? The media has not been doing their job. Or pick whatever example pleases you. Where are they?
What I've heard is that it has been a very small number of ACORN employees who have violated the rules. I haven't paid much attention, but that's what I've heard. THere have been members of congress who have been far more corrupt and costly to this nation than anyone at ACORN, and yet you don't dismiss the entire congress as being corrupt and inept or talk about throwing out the whole organization.
So, if they don't do it we have to do it ourselves. It is really that simple.
So in this case, I naturally ask myself when a politician says something; Is that true? And when I read the CBO reports, for example, I find that what the President has been saying is in many instances untrue.
In my opinion, the CBO report is only one opinion.
Many of the criticisms are also untrue, but my bigger concern is just the truth. I can ferret out the lies OK. If everything the President said was true, I would be very happy.
He says the Plan will not add to the deficit. That doesn't seem possible, and the House Bill adds hundreds of billions of dollars to it per the CBO.
Obama has long wanted to reverse the tax cuts to the rich. They would pay for 2/3 of the plan. Remember, those cuts WERE NOT ASKED FOR by the rich, Bush just gave them away. "A solution for which there was no problem." He's having an amazingly hard time getting congress to go along with the reversal. Once again, they are protecting their campaign contributors, and not the public.
If you would read my website, you would find that there are actually situations where they can see pretty clearly where the waste is in Medicare. He outlined some of that in his speech, except that he focussed on the folks doing things more cheaply, instead of pointing out where some institutions and regions of the country are doing things badly.
And despite the arguments I received above when I suggested we could all adjust our lifestyle, most people could avoid many of today's diseases if they normalized their weight and exercised more, and ate less meat, less sugar, and more vegies. That's been demonstrated over and over and over again. Prevention is not useless. Teaching our kids better eating habits is not useless.
Personally, I would hope that the government will become more open to alternative treatment options, so that we can get away from expensive tests and treatment modalities. The alternative doctors know a lot, some of them.
He said originally that everyone could keep their insurance if they wanted. The CBO says not true.
According to HR 3200, even if an employer decides to change plans, an employee will have the right to stay with their old plan if they want to. Personally, I would have to ask: why would someone want to, if there is a cheaper one available with the same coverage? This, to me, is not a deal breaker. And I think obama was being honest, according to what I read in the Bill.
He said we would find savings in preventative care. The CBO said studies show that, in the aggregate, you lose 90 cents on the dollar spent. For the individuals it helps, that is great though.
I would have to see what the CBO is talking about. Let's just consider that if someone gets diabetes in their 40s or 50s, how much are they going to cost the system over their lifetime with complications, medications, office visits, and associated problems like heart disease and cancer. This is not just a genetic disorder. If it were, frequency would not be increasing radically, and our children would not be getting it. Just getting this one disease controlled, preventatively, would save this country billions, if not trillions.
Heart disease and diabetes are rampant in my family. My father, his brother, his father and my grandmother all died of heart disease. THere is diabetes on both sides of my family. But of the six cousins in my generation in my father's family (now in our 60s, 70s and one is 80), not one of us has had diabetes or heart disease (maybe my brother) because we take better care of ourselves. And when I went to a reunion in Utah a couple of years ago, I was amazed to see that in our HUGE extended (mostly LDS on that side--lots of kids) family, not one individual under the age of 40 was overweight. We are outdoorsy and not afraid to exercise. So, most of us could do better if we wanted to be more disciplined. ANd that would save us lotsa money.
He said abortion would not be covered. Whether that is good or not, the website www.factcheck.org says actually not the case.
They get around this by saying that the individual's share of their medical care would pay for the abortion.
We were told unemployment would not go above 8%. Not true.
THat's something no one could have predicted. In any case, things are beginning to turn around. Bush said we'd be out of Iraq a long, long time ago. Do you dismiss anything he says because he was wrong?
He kept with the 40-plus million uninsured AMERICANS figure when I knew that wasn't true and now starts using a more realistic number presumavbly excluding illegal aliens.
Today again, according to the Census Bureau, the number was 47,000,000. So it depends on who you are looking at. I don't think it's the illegal aliens that change the numbers. Its the folks who could afford it but simply don't want to buy it that make up most of the difference, or so I've heard. THey are still uninsured, and so can be counted. But they're uninsured by choice.
So when they tell us how wonderful this complicated and expensive piece of legislation is, I am not encouraged because the track record on truth has been so bad.
The track record on truth, or different ways of looking at things? Please, read The Republican Noise Machine before you decided that Obama is the liar.
I WANT reform. I WANT to have faith in my President. I WANT to believe that the House Bill is the answer or that what we end up with will be. I WANT to believe that there will not be rationing of health-care that victimizes some. I WANT to believe that every attempt has been made to make this bi-partisan.
So you are right. Nothing is perfect. But I think I would be far more confident if we were getting all the straight facts.
Please consider how many times you have given Bush the benefit of the doubt and forgiven his out and out lies.
I would feel better if the President had said that this is a moral imperative and it WILL have a significant cost. But we are in it together; and that he really adopted some significant things like interstate health insurance competition in addition to the other things.
I would have felt even better if her had said that we can't do it all right away. If the most important thing is Universal Healthcare, then there are some things we cannot afford to do right now to pay for it -- and laid them all out. Then he would seem realistic and responsible, even if you disagreed with the cuts.
But a planned 9 Trillion dollar deficit and a stimulus bill with 9,000 earmarks is just "politics as usual" at BEST.
Remember how much he inherited. It is not nothing that Bush ran two or three businesses into the ground before he ran our country into the ground. he didn't veto a single bill for years and years, so who is the over-spender?
I WANT to trust my President. But he has given me every reason not to. So I must ask the questions that his supporters won't. For myself and for them.
He has not given you nearly as many reasons as Bush gave you. Do you still trust him? IN any case, you seem to still trust the Republicans who helped get us into these messes we are in.
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Pamela commented on the article |
THanks, Cherokee....will check it out tomorrow where I have high speed.
James, I certainly did not intentionally misconstrue your position. It just seems like nothing, but nothing, changes your mind. You hold democratic/liberal ideas to a standard that you simply don't apply to conservatives. They can lie 80% of the time to you and if they're right 20% that's ok with you. You'll grab onto that 20% and run with it (that's probably a slight exaggeration). BUt if Obama said a year ago there were 47,000,000 Americans uninsured, and last night said 30,000,000, you're all over it, and wondering why he lied about it a year ago. And you don't hear (or at least aren't influenced by) anything else he says. Maybe he got new information!@!@@
You seem to expect perfection and guarantees out of this plan, and no plan, in a democracy, crafted by several dozen people, in response to what they hear from various "stakeholders" is going to be perfect. That's the price we pay for a democracy. I'm not happy with some of the compromises in the House plan (which appears to be the one that most resembles what might actually pass). But it's a start. Maybe.
Let's take the administrative percentage article you posted a link to. My dad had a book called "How to lie with statistics" when I was a child, so it's an old book. You just pick the numbers you want to look at, and you can make statistics support anything you want to. That's what he did in that article. He picked numbers that would show what he wanted to show, and ignored the numbers that would show anything else.
I am sad that these discussions (it seems that ANY political discussion these days--I'm losing more and more friends in this here mecca of conservatism I live in) eventually erodes to frustration, name-calling, etc. It's as if liberals and conservatives speak entirely different languages. We cannot seem to communicate. To me, this reform stuff is so self-evident, I've been depressed for days that it just might not pass. And why do I even care? I'm 65, and have my health care now.
But I guess I care because to me, this whole "controversy" means that our legislators are still owned by the special interests, and not even Obama can do much about that. They aren't really protecting us in these Bills (or, at least, only in a most basic way). They're not really representing us. Oh, they throw us in there for some points. They know they have to do that. But this entire approach to reform, thanks to conservatives (among them, some democrats), is about protecting insurance companies that have been ripping us all off, letting us die, so that they can fill their own pockets with far more than any human on this planet ever thought of needing. It disgusts me. I'm on the verge of becoming a true socialist, I'm so disgusted by it. And disheartened. And depressed. I mean, the sugar load I've needed these past couple of days to raise the serotonin is more than I've needed for months! LOL!
I believe that our founding fathers would be just as disgusted. I sincerely doubt that they ever intended for freedom to mean freedom to exploit the way the large corporations exploit, and that representation meant representing the people who pay your way into your job.
And I guess what really depresses me is that half of our country seems to think it's all just fine. It's fine that the CEO of Aetna makes $24,500,000 a YEAR while people can't pay their deductibles and their co-pays, and thus don't get healthcare even when they have insurance. And that the CEOs of drug companies make double that, while the elderly choose between food and medicine.
I simply cannot fathom why our entire nation would not be outraged, taking to the streets all over the country, and be demanding a non-profit system. I just don't get it.
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Pamela commented on the article |
Folks, would you please post your comments at the bottom of the page so that they can be easily found? Thanks!
James, in response to your "which one did their job?" I have to say, I watched The News Hour, and Charlie Rose. They both had both conservative and liberal commentators dialoguing in a civil manner.
It is clear that you will not support reform until you have some kind of (impossible to make) guarantee that it will cost nothing and be perfect. So I'm giving this conversation up and reforming my own health by going for a walk.
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Pamela commented on the article |
When employers drop coverage, there will be many, many other plans people can buy into. The price will be adjusted according to ability to pay.
To quote one of my heros, "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Things aren't going to be cheaper unless we all do our best to stay healthy. Prevention is a huge key. The CBO simply cannot predict what things will cost because they cannot predict people's ability or willingness to do more to stay healthy (and they cannot predict the cost of future tests and treatments). They have to figure things on the basis of current conditions.
Nothing is going to be handed to us. When my blood pressure started creeping up and stayed up for several months, I finally started walking again and losing weight. It's now back down to normal, two months later. I have a goal for my old age: live to be 100, never grow old, and do not give the drug companies the satisfaction of buying their drugs. I buy one, generically, occasionally, if I have to. When I can, I change my lifestyle. We are not as powerless as we often think we are.
We all have to work to make this reform work. Personally, having done things my own way in a solo practice for many years, I don't look forward to changing the way I do things. In some ways. I'm glad I'm 65 and might soon be able to retire. On the other hand, if, in relation to demanding "evidence-based" treatments they give training for new approaches, I'm all for learning new ways of doing things.
As for the door not being opened to Republicans, I'd have to read that letter to believe it. I'm reminded a bit of our church, a Greek church where there are quite a few converts like me. The Greeks were angry for a long time that Fr. Stephen was spending so much time with the converts, in study groups, etc., and so little time with the old-timers. We had a huge meeting about it when they tried to throw him out. I pointed out to some of them, "You know, Fr. Stephen doesn't call us newcomers and invite us to participate in things. We, as newcomers, don't have a pre-conceived idea of how he's supposed to do things, and we just participate in whatever is offered. We don't get any more special invitations than the rest of you do. Everyone is invited to the things we attend." "Oh, I didn't know that," they said. Because we were there more, they assumed we had a special invitation.
I sincerely doubt that one needs an engraved invitation to go talk to Obama about healthcare reform.
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Pamela commented on the article |
You're right, I haven't watched either of them enough. I don't get MSM, and didn't get Fox til recently, and other things interest me more.
There's one thing you said earlier that keeps troubling me. You said you're afraid of the government nixing you out of their system for a pre-existing condition. AT least, I think you said that. What I don't get is that the government has NEVER done that, and the private insurance companies have done it routinely. And yet you fear the government more than the private companies. Doesnt' make sense to me.
And I hate to pull the age and experience card, but I've lived with this insane system every working day of my life for the last 23 years in private practice. I've seen what it does to patients, to families, how piecemeal it is, how difficult it is to get any continuity of care, how long people avoid going to the doctor because they can't afford insurance (my colleague is currently dying of breast cancer because she had none and waited too long) and to providers.
It's a stupid system. We need to change it. And I really would like to know what it would take in a reform package for you to support it.
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Pamela commented on the article |
James, re: your comment about Keith Olberman being just as far left as some of the programs on Fox (like Hannity, Beck, etc.) are right, I would just say this: The few times that I've watched Olberman, he is indeed a liberal and has very strong opinions. However, his program is clearly opinion and not presented as factual. And I have not known him to lie in his presentation. Fox repeatedly presents opinion as fact. Facts are repeatedly distorted and/or taken completely out of context.
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Pamela commented on the article |
Folks, after hearing the president tonight, please, if you're not supporting healthcare reform, tell us what would have to be in the package for you to support it.
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