A Billion for a Billion – United Nations World Food Programme

Help stop hunger! Volunteer at a local soup kitchen, donate to the World Food Programme, the local food bank, or the church on that street corner that feeds the hungry, or post this video and other messages of support for the fight against hunger on your blog, facebook, myspace, twitter, anywhere. I’ve done all three. Have you?

The Truth About Insurance Reform: Why the Current Bill Isn’t Enough

People on both sides of the aisle are raving about health insurance reform. They’re bragging about the end to the anti-trust exemptions and the regulations preventing companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, or dropping people who get sick. But the big fat hole in the center of patients’ safety net is this: there is no clause in the bill preventing an insurance company from charging one person  four times what they charge  his neighbor with the same plan. Without a pricing cap, patients can still lose their coverage when they are unable to pay their premiums.

The reason the system is so disheveled  is because insurance companies are insistent on maintaining even profit margins for each person, rather than having a high profit margin for healthy people, and then mild profits or even mild losses on those with medical emergencies. Companies would still make a healthy profit, but the exact numbers would be unpredictable until the bills come in at the end of each month.

Insurance companies, as well as the entire medical system have such a glut for money, that the priority is cash flow, not patient health. Doctors are ordering extra tests, prescribing overly costly treatments, and attempting to increase the number of hospital admissions, not for the benefit of the patient, but rather for the benefit of their wallets. Our health care system is wired such that doctors profit for each treatment they give a patient rather than for the recovery of said patient. In simpler terms, our health care system is motivated by spending on patients rather than healing them. With that motivation to spend, doctors are charging more to insurance companies than ever. Insurance companies, in turn, are raising premiums to unaffordable levels.

But the public option could combat unreasonable prices and the inability to afford care. It would provide constant and rational competition, forcing insurance companies to be rational, for fear of loosing customers. and if a customer couldn’t pay, he or she would be able to join the public plan, and not be left uninsured.

Our current health care bill, stripped of the public option, holds little potency in the long run. While no one can be denied coverage, if a person cannot afford to pay what the insurance company is asking, insurance is no more available than if it was outright denied to her. Essentially, without a public option, health reform is a failure. Only a few more people will actually be able to afford coverage under the new regulations than under the previous ones. Therefore, congress must pass a bill that includes a public option. If passage requires using the budget reconciliation method in order to preempt filibuster, then so be it. In the last eight years, no  one let a lack of bipartisan support stop an agenda. The Republicans are trying to use a desire for bipartisan support against the Democrats. Back in September, several senators suggested that a bill would only be successful if it got between seventy-five and eighty-five votes. such a margin is nearly impossible, even for quite popular and overarching legislation. We who support healthy Americans over insurance corporations, we who would like to see that every american has access to health care, we who think patients should come before profits, mustn’t let senators in the pockets of big business get in the way of claiming what is rightfully ours: reform.

The Man, His Son, and the Democrat

Of his many works, the fable of the man, his son, and the donkey, has to be among Aesop’s finest. It goes like this:

A Man and his son were once going with their Donkey to market. As they were walking along by its side a countryman passed them and said: “You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon?” So the Man put the Boy on the Donkey and they went on their way.

But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said: “See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides.” So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn’t gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: “Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along.” Well, the Man didn’t know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Donkey.

By this time they had come to the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point at them. The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at. The men said: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey with you and your hulking son?” The Man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey’s feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders.

They went along amid the laughter of all who met them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the Donkey fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied together he was drowned.

“That will teach you,” said an old man who had followed them: “Please all, and you will please none.”

The moral is, at the moment, good advice for the democrats to heed when making decisions about what to and what not to put in the health care legislation Obama is working so hard to put through. Everyone in the nation is saying something different on what ought and ought not to be in the bill. But I, and like-minded Americans have confidence in the intelligence and perceptive nature of the Democrats in our legislature, and believe, that no matter who is shouting, to them to tweak the bill this way or that, they should stick with it.

A teacher said once, when addressing his class, myself among them, that as a parent, if one is to do anything, most of all make a mistake, he or she must “believe in the mistake he or she is making; make it whole heatedly,” or else risk “confusing the child.” Such is the same for the Democrats on Capitol Hill. Even if this latest legislation doesn’t succeed, even if the public option dissolves, and we are left where we are now, at least they will have made an effort. And the metaphorical children, the voters, will know that they embraced something, which will stand up better in primaries and elections. So, closing with Aesop’s eternal words, please all, and you will please none.