Let the GOP go without health care and solve the budget deficit
Posted by: msgruntled on: October 1, 2009
Quoting Garrison Keillor from Salon.com:
When an entire major party has excused itself from meaningful debate and a thoughtful U.S. senator like Orrin Hatch no longer finds it important to make sense and an up-and-comer like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty attacks the president for giving a speech telling schoolchildren to work hard in school and get good grades, one starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the healthcare system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off healthcare to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.
Isn’t is shameful that a party so committed to values and patriotism thinks it‘s okay to make their primary goal to bring down their nation‘s duly elected President?
After all, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint was quoted in Politico.com as saying: ”This healthcare issue is D-Day for freedom in America. If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Such patriotism and moral values…
Well-off whiners exposed…bring out the world’s smallest violins
Posted by: msgruntled on: August 11, 2009
Are you tired of hearing the rich bitch about how much they pay in taxes and how the Obama administration is going to ruin them financially and take away all their incentives to make even more money?
Well, you should read a piece by David Sirota at Salon.com. As he points out, the wealthiest 5% of earners in the U.S. make 36.5% of the national income, and they actually pay 38.5% of the taxes, NOT the 60% they use as a figure to whine about. In fact, Sirota notes, this is actually LESS than they paid in taxes, proportion-wise, than they did in the go-go era of the Bush regime.
“I know I should be mortified by the lobbyist-organized mobs of angry Brooks Brothers mannequins who are now making headlines by shutting down congressional town hall meetings. I know I should be despondent during this, the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Healthcare and Tax War. And yet, I’m euphorically repeating one word over and over again with a big grin on my face.
Finally.
Finally, there’s no pretense. Finally, the me-first, screw-everyone-else crowd’s ugliest traits are there for all to behold.”
And that other conservative canard about how small businesses are the engine of economic growth? Another fiction. As Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post, and former senior editor for Inc. magazine, points out,
“Suffice it to say that, in terms of new job creation, the data show that most of it happens in a small number of very fast-growing companies that are no longer what most of us would consider small. There are lots of reasons for the success of these fast-growing firms, among them the ingenuity and hard work of their founders, the availability of capital and a culture that celebrates risk-taking.
But the dirty little secret is that a lot of small-business job growth has also been driven by the decision of big businesses to outsource many tasks that they used to do in-house. In an economic sense, jobs haven’t been so much “destroyed” and “created” as they have been shifted from one company to another. ”
Pearlstein goes on to argue that small businesses make no logical sense to argue that paying for their employee’s health insurance will cripple them.
Most likely, those small businesses today are no longer competing with big companies, but with other small firms with similar cost structures. Requiring all of them to offer health insurance wouldn’t put any firm at a competitive disadvantage — it would simply raise costs for all of them, forcing them to pass those costs on to someone else.
So the next time some well-off acquaintance starts bemoaning their plight while you are trying to survive on Ramen noodles, let them know what the facts are.
Are you happy with your smile? now a part of your “medical history”
Posted by: msgruntled on: June 29, 2009
My last post was about my previous dentist. Previous, because when he determined I needed four new fillings, he refused to offer me traditional amalgams. Instead, he tried to sell me resin composites, which, oh strangely, run about four times the cost to me of amalgams, because my dental plan does not pay for resin composites unless they are in the “smile region” (i.e., visible when you smile).
Well, I already have 3 silver fillings in my mouth, so a few more were not going to mar my pristine smile! It was a tough choice, rent and food verus an additional $300 to spend on resin composites, but I asked for amalgams. I was told the dentist doesn’t do those anymore, but they’d be happy to forward my records to another dentist who did, “If I could find one.”
Thus started my Googling and contacting 6 other local dentists to find one who still does amalgams, which I will note here are still endorsed by the American Dental Association. I got to hear various lines of B.S. on the subject, so the effort was not a total waste. The most astonishing and disconcerting one was the dentist who told me that, in fact, many of his patients have their amalgams removed to get composites. Okay, stop and think about this one: A medical provider, who took the Hippocratic oath to first do no harm, REMOVING functioning fillings to replace them with ones that will make him more money. The reputable research indicates that amalgams are not exposing you to more dangerous mercury levels than eating fish, and they are more durable than composites, even today. And as I said, the ADA still endorses their use; but most of the dentists I contacted will not even offer their patients that option.
Which gets me back to the title of this post, Are you happy with your smile? This was a question on the Medical History portion of the first dentist’s paperwork. So tell me, doc, how is that part of my medical history? Do you need to know my psychological views of my smile so you can be sure I don’t have, say, heart problems or drug allergies?
So I tweeted this morning about how dentists these days are lobbying mightily to be brought under the insurance tent, because of the importance of oral health. I remarked that the only health many of them really seem to be interested in is that of their pocketbook. And guess what happened then? Suddenly, I get a new follower, a dentist several states away, who clearly has some automated application that “follows” anyone writing about dentists, presumably to find more patients to soak for cosmetic services. Either that, or this man has deep self-loathing and wants to follow someone who castigates his profession.
Hey, doc, my time is valuable too!
Posted by: msgruntled on: May 29, 2009
I just got back from the dentist’s office, and since it had been quite awhile, I had once again to fill out forms. As usual these days, the form on the practice’s policies included the typical clause about you, the patient, needing to give them at least 48 hours’ notice to cancel, because, after all, please understand, it will cost us money in not one but two lost visits, yours and the person who could have filled that slot. (My summary of the wording).
And, as usual, I put in my OWN note: “By the same token, my time is also valuable. I expect to be seen within 15 minutes of my appointment time. Thanks for understanding, but this has to go both ways.”
Today’s health care providers no longer even make any attempt to seem focused on anything but their own wallets. I can appreciate their sentiment, but HELLO, how about throwing in a sop to us “billable hours” and add something like, “At the same time, we recognize that your time is valuable, so we strive to see you within 15 minutes of your appointment.”
Just last week, I attempted to see my foot doctor. He’d done some surgery last summer, and I was having some pain and wanted an X-ray. As always, I made the first appointment of the day and arrived early. The doctor was standing at the reception desk when I arrived. He disappeared. I was left in the waiting room for another 15 minutes, then in the exam room for 15 minutes, at which point I left. The fact is, every single time I had an appointment there, I was kept waiting a minimum of 30 minutes past my time. One time, the doctor was busy schmoozing with a sales rep. Another time, another patient left in visible anger after being kept waiting 45 minutes with no end in sight, and the front desk person rolled her eyes at how “bitchy” the woman was being. As if.
I sent him a letter telling him why I left, recounting the miserable record he has of keeping his appointments, and telling him that this was not an acceptable treatment of patients and I would like an apology. I’m still waiting, 2 weeks later. Well, guess what, doc? There’s a boatload of podiatrists out there.
My chiropractor actually kept me lying on his treatment table, getting cold, while he spent 10 minutes talking to a POTENTIAL patient on the phone. Ever hear of “let me take your number and call you back, I am with a patient”?
The rudeness of the health care profession just gets more astonishing by the year. I urge everyone to do what I do, and make it known that your time is valuable too and you won’t stand for being mistreated.
Class warfare in America: the elephant in the room
Posted by: msgruntled on: April 3, 2009
I’m just going to quote from a letter to the editor published in the Washington Post when the first stimulus bill became law February 17th:
The Reaganomics axiom that the rich were too poor to pay taxes and the poor were too rich to need support from the government was a transparent mechanism in a class war won by the rich. Even in this economic meltdown that has resulted from this axiom, the class war continues, as some experts and political leaders continue to ask for still lower taxes for the rich.
The writer, Kalyan Singhal of Columbia, Md., opened her letter with the acknowledgment that while she is someone who is subject to the AMT, she “would be happy to pay higher taxes so that low-income people can [benefit].” A true American hero.
rants about rampant stupidity, hypocrisy, bad customer service, and other annoyances that are thinning my hair out
- Ex AIG chairman joins Hall of No Shame « msgruntled: [...] About Class warfare in America: the elephant in the room Introducing the Hall of No-Shame; Nominations welcome [...]
- jm: I just got the message from the Jack Stone dickhead.
- msgruntled: No he didn't pay penalties, he paid interest. There is a difference. The Washington Post covered this story in detail including several interviews wit
