Health care: who needs it?

Instead of the usual dueling protests on College Avenue (pro-Iraq war vs. anti-Iraq war), today's topic was health care reform. On the west side of the street, supporters were waving signs. On the other side, opponents were waving their own signs. I wouldn't have noticed, but the east side of the road (whose demonstrators would describe themselves as "anti-socialist") was the same side of the street as the local Safeway, where I intended to buy a few groceries.

These champions of free enterprise had managed to fill the shopping center's parking lot with their own vehicles, making it difficult for both the businesses and their customers. After finding a space elsewhere, I asked one of the managers whether business was slow, and if they knew their parking lot had been monopolized. She said that they were aware of the situation outside, business was awful, and both the police and the organizers had been notified, but I didn't see anyone moving their vehicles out of the lot. Ironically enough, at least half of the people protesting government provision of medical care looked like they were eligible for (and most likely receiving) Medicare benefits. I can only assume that if the protest was advocating the elimination of ALL government assistance in health care (which would necessarily include the elimination of Medicare), most if not all of the older protesters would have been on the other side of the street.

If the demonstrators did not care about the way they were interfering with a private business and their customers, then it is difficult to believe this was really about the protection of the free enterprise system. If it was a heartfelt opposition to government provision of health care services, some of the signs should have been advocating the repeal of programs like Medicare and VA hospitals and clinics. If they truly were concerned about third parties getting in between themselves and their doctors, there would have been at least some demands to place restrictions on the power of private insurers to do exactly that.

Was it about protecting the quality of U.S. health care, or maybe about keeping costs down? That is what a lot of the signs said, but the facts and figures say otherwise. The United States has the highest per capita health care costs ($5,711 in 2003) and spends the greatest share of its GDP (15.2%) on health care. By far. If we are shelling out that kind of money for health care, we must be the healthiest nation on earth, right?

Wrong. We are 46th in infant mortality (6.26 deaths per 1,000 live births, two spaces below Cuba) and 50th in life expectancy (78.11 years, two spaces below Bosnia-Herzogovina). In other words, we spend more on health care than anyone else, and we die sooner and lose more of our children than at least 45 other countries.

So we have protesters, many of whom were happily receiving government-provided health care and retirement benefits, who didn't seem to care that they were keeping some of their neighbors from buying groceries or earning a living (remember the Safeway?), demanding that we keep a system in place that is more expensive and less effective than all those countries with "socialized medicine?" Why were they really out there?

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) was honest enough to give the real reason:
"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

There it is. It's not about health. It's not about money. At least it's not about our money. It is about the GOP's prospects in the 2010 and 2012 elections, and in turn, the prospects of the large corporations who support them. It appears that they would rather see their fellow Americans die before their time and their hard-earned money thrown down an ever-growing rathole than see the GOP lose another election.

What has happened to our food?

A lot, and most of it isn't good.

From Convenience vs. ethics in food choices by Megan Nix at the Denver Post:

Three-quarters of the nation's antibiotics go straight to CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). Recently, the USDA's Agricultural Resource Service engineered a vaccine for sick, shipped cows, licensing it to pharmaceutical giant Schering- Plough. We now have two powerhouses feeding off each other and feeding us problems. All these pills and bills seem to be small bandages over our festering food wound.

...Grass-fed animals (the kind you can find on small farms, in the deli if you ask for it, or in the wild, where it still exists) are higher in all kinds of goodnesses: omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid, Vitamin A. They are lower in fat, cholesterol and calories. The risk of E. coli is nearly nil. According to the American Grassfed Association, if a person switched from their average 66.5 pound consumption of feedlot beef to a grass-fed diet, they would reduce their yearly calories by 17,733.

The list goes on. The lesson is that when meat quality slides, it brings morality — the producers', the buyers', the quality controllers' — down with it. To eat well should not mean to live a privileged life. The FDA needs to make it easier for people who don't sustainably farm, hunt or fish to purchase from those who can.

For now, the solutions are to ask before you eat, to write to your representative and tell him that the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (HR 2749) makes little mention of factory farms or school lunches and should.

This story is part of an ongoing series at the Denver Post. The link will take you to the complete article, as well as links to the other stories.

Cell phones and driving

are a bad combination.


I don't care how much pride someone takes in their "multitasking" abilities. It all sounds a bit too much like the way that some my old friends used to boast about their ability to drive better with a few drinks in them than most other drivers did while sober. It's a nice story until you miss a traffic signal change and hit a pedestrian.

Clean Water Act takes a beating

The Supreme Court has held that mining waste can now be classified as "fill," as long as it contains enough solid material to raise the bottom of the lake, and is no longer the responsibility of the EPA. Specifically, the decision gives Coeur Alaska Inc. permission to dump 4.5 million tons of gold mining waste into Lower Slate Lake at a rate of 210,000 gallons a day, even though it would effectively sterilize the lake. Under a Bush-era expansion of the rules, permission from the Army Corps of Engineers is good enough.

There are two ways to stop this, and to restore the original intent of the Clean Water Act. The most straightforward way is for the Obama administration to reverse the current interpretation of the rule, returning authority to the EPA. A longer lasting solution is for Congress to act.

Something we can all do is contact the White House and our representatives in Congress and let them know what we think:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
202-456-1111
email: president@whitehouse.gov

To contact your Senators, go to this web page.

For House members, go here.

I am dragged further into the web, still kicking and screaming

I should have known it would just be a matter of time after sneering at other peoples blogs as a desperate cry for attention that I would put up one of my own. I will try to spare everyone the long stories about myself, and devote most of the space here to links and articles I couldn't resist sharing, whether profound, amusing, or annoying.

As my friends have said, never trust a blogger.