My Stance on Abortion

I was reading my own blog (I know, lame…) the other day and realized that I had made statements on the Dr. Kermit portions of the blog that would have people believing that I am anti-abortion and pro-governmental restriction on abortion, and that has prompted some to claim that I am a hypocrite and not a true libertarian.

I think I need to clarify a bit.

My stance on abortion is more nuanced than being strictly “for” or “against”. I will start by stating emphatically that I do not believe that the government should be involved in the decision at all, until 25 weeks. It is a valid function of the government to protect an individual from harm by another individual. At 25 weeks, the baby is viable and can live outside the womb, and so should be treated as an individual and protected against being murdered just as the government would protect any individual against being murdered. There is no issue with the baby trampling the mother’s rights at that point, either, because the mother is the one who made the decisions that got her pregnant, and is living with the consequences of HER choices, not the baby’s infringement on her rights.

Before 25 weeks, however, abortion is none of the government’s business.

My personal stance on abortion is that I think it should be avoided at all costs, whenever possible. There are other options, and I think that we could virtually eliminate it as a problem by teaching our children differently about sex and its consequences. The problem is that many people want to ONLY teach our kids about abstinence, and then we teach them about how their lives will be ruined – RUINED, I say! – by an unwanted pregnancy. This stuck with my wife for so long that we were thirty before she even wanted to try and have kids, because she was convinced that a baby would ruin her life by the after-school specials and the darkened-face “horror” stories told by her health teacher in High School.

If we were to throw out abstinence only education, and welcome an education that teaches that there are ways to keep from getting pregnant in the first place, and failing that, alternatives to abortion, like adoption, which are more upstanding and less destructive to life, then abortion may not be so prevalent. If we were to let our kids know that there is support, and a pregnancy won’t ruin your life (just change it), and it may be a blessing, well, then, abortion might just become quite a bit more rare. What I’m saying is that instead of scaring the hell out of these kids, lets educate them, so that they aren’t as apt to get pregnant (my wife and I lived together for 12 years without getting pregnant, and did not get pregnant until 4 months after we chose to do so – it is possible!) in the first place, and if they do get pregnant, they aren’t so scared by the prospect of it that their first reaction is to kill their unborn child.

My suggestion is that parents stop having these unrealistic expectations that their sons and daughters will remain celebate (did you at their age? Really?) until they are married, and take a more proactive approach, including helping them acquire contraception prior to finding out that they are sexually active, and also by talking with them about the parent’s expectations and what they would like to see the child do, while making it clear that they love them no matter what.

I think that the greatest crime of all is that we have 17 year old kids making life altering decisions out of fear or sheer terror instead of based on rational fact, because they have been taught some perverted version of the truth, and as a result, they will have to live for the rest of their lives with the horrible decision that they made at 17 years old, because they were scared shitless instead of informed.

And finally, no, I do not support any attempts by any governmental fiat, legislation, regulation, or otherwise, to prevent or regulate the provision of abortions to anyone who wants one prior to 25 weeks. It isn’t their place, and they need to be taught their place.

Unsolicited Medical Advice

What is it about illness that opens a person up as a free-for-all repository of the worst, most condescending advice imaginable? You find out you have cancer, and you go to work the next day and tell your co-workers about it, and suddenly, you are getting “drop-bys” from people you hardly know and e-mails with links to every type of “alternative” medicine that you could possibly imagine, all of them breathlessly guaranteeing you that if you don’t do it this, that, or the other way, you are surely going to die – oh, and don’t listen to those “medical professionals” that say you need “medicine” or “radiation therapy” because those don’t work, but if you change your diet to only nuts and raw meat, then your cancer will miraculously and spontaneously die. Oh, and don’t ask why the actual “medical professionals” don’t know about this, because they are in the pockets of “big pharmacy” who apparently single-handedly have decided that we will not do things that actually work and save lives because it doesn’t sell as much drugs because these are evil companies without question because, well, you know… profit.

My favorite thing to do is point out that no drug company has a patent on the drug “radiation”, so if it is the case that “big pharmacy” is killing us all (because, well, profit) then how does a technique like radiation therapy, which makes them no money, slip through the cracks, but nuts and raw meat didn’t?

I do not believe that this is coming from any attempt to help (for the most part, anyway). I’ve paid attention to the types of people that provide this type of unsolicited advice, and have found in general that they are the same people bragging about the things they’ve owned, done, or how many people they’ve outsmarted. It is an ego trip. It is them assuming that you are not smart enough to have done all the research yourself. It is an opportunity to stand in front of someone and say that you are smarter than not just them, but the entire medical establishment, and that your way is better because their way… well… profit!

Take my friend Jack. I love Jack like a brother. I enjoy my time with him and we have great times. I see past Jack’s faults, just as he sees past mine, and we accept each other for who we are, as-is.

That being said, Jack is a braggart. He loves to brag about things he’s done, things he owns, and things he knows, and hates to be in a situation where he might be “one-upped.” This personality has lead Jack to be a very successful, highly driven person who simply refuses to come in second. It has also lead him to become the type of person who gives out unsolicited medical advice.

Jack has minor psoriasis on his scalp. It is something he’s dealt with for most of his life, and believe you me, I feel for him. He has been able to control his psoriasis, and even get it to go away, by using a special type of shampoo, which he swears by. He recommended it to me when I was having my very severe problems a few years back. Being as I was 80-some-odd percent covered in the stuff, it was only going to work on my scalp, if it worked at all, but what the heck, I was willing to try anything.

Problem was, I had already tried it. I had tried everything. None of it was working. Jack continued to insist that I try his special shampoo, and told me it would solve all my problems. I told him that I’d tried it and it hadn’t worked. In a display of cognitive dissonance that was startling coming from a guy as smart as Jack, he continued to nag me about it every time I saw him, despite the fact that I’d told him clearly that it didn’t work. He insisted that it did, and that I was either using it wrong or not enough or, or, or…

Yeah, he was so stuck on being right that he was actually accusing me of not being able to use shampoo properly. It was an ego thing, and had nothing (or very little) to do with Jack actually wanting me to get better. He wanted the shampoo to work because it would mean that he was right.

Another person that I know came to me insisting that I try UV therapy. Despite the fact that I told him that I did try it and it hadn’t worked, and that the side-effects were untenable and that a goodly portion of my problem was in body areas where you can’t do UV because of radiation damage issues, he seemed to not hear me at all and insisted that his aunt’s roommate’s brother’s cousin’s psoriasis had been cured completely with only two UV treatments, and went on to tell me that I really ought to try it. I explained again, almost in the same breath as the last, that I had tried it and found it lacking, and he went into his tirade again about how it would cure me and I should give it a shot. At that point, I walked away, shaking my head.

Finally, I had another person insisting that they’d read somewhere that turmeric would cure eczema, and that I should try turmeric because, hey, if it fixes one rash, it would fix another, right? I tried to nicely explain his logical fallacy to him, by telling him that psoriasis is an auto-immune condition, of which one symptom is a rash, whereas eczema is (to the best of my knowledge) an allergic response to a topical irritant, and that there is no cure for an auto-immune condition, and that to make the rash go away, you either suppress the immune system, or use an anti-inflammatory to reduce the effect. It seemed to go nowhere, and the next words out of his mouth were “yeah, but they are both rashes…” Again, walking away.

Like parenting, dieting, and many other things, medical problems will get you a massive ration of unsolicited, condescending advice. It would do everyone some good if maybe you thought about that before proffering your own.

Immortality Lost‏

Look, I nevr thought I was immortal. I always knew that I could get hurt or killed in an accident, and so I was always somewhat creful to at least look before I leapt my entire life. But I never really came to terms with my mortality; never really accepted that no matter how careful I am to avoid accidents and so forth, I’m going to die anyway, until I got hurt and sick a few years back. It was ain interesting process; one which I’m sure all men experience at some point in time, at some event or another when the immoderacy of youth finally catches up to the wisdom of age.

I hurt my back. That was the beginning. There were several steps to the final result, but the final result is all that mattered - Ruptured discs in l4/l5 and l5/s1. The pain was debilitating.

Then, I got stressed out. The project that I was working on at the time was the remodel of a PAC-10 Stadium. $15 million dollars worth of work had to be completed in 7 months, prior to the first football game of the 2008 season. Never mind that this stadium is two hours from my house, and I decided to commute instead of hauling the 5th wheel down and staying there for the week. Four hours of commuting, every day. I had to be there at 7 am, so I left home at 5. Got up at 4 every morning. Yuck.

The combination of stress and pain during this time period caused an otherwise controlled, regressive genetic condition that I have to rear its ugly head. By July, only about a month and a half before Grand Opening, I was covered head to toe in a psoriatic rash that felt like a 4 day old 3rd degree burn. The doctors told me I was 80 some-odd percent covered. My scalp, body, legs, face, and yes… even down there, was covered in a throbbing, burning, itching rash. The disease was auto-immune, so as I went further down the path, my immune system crashed. I woke up for work one morning in the following condition:

1.) It took me 15 minutes just to get stood up straight from bed, because my back hurt so badly that I couldn’t move. I took three Vicodin and waited for them to kick in before I could get into the shower.

2.) The water stung like blazes on the rash, everywhere it hit, but it was almost like relief, because at least the sensation changed for a minute from dull burning and itching to stinging.

3.) I had gotten 2 hours of fitful sleep that night, because the rash kept me awake. And the back pain. And the Vicodin.

4.) I realized as the pain in my back subsided from the vicodin that I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I checked it in the mirror, and realized that it was glued shut with pus. I had a case of pink eye. Wonderful.

5.) I realized that my other eye was infected, too, just not as far along. I was very sensitive to light at this point, and so I shut off the light to keep the discomfort down.

6.) With no light, I couldn’t see very well, and lost my balance immediately. Until I managed to stumble to the light switch and turn it back on, I had no sense of balance at all. It was about then that I realized that I had a dull pain in my right ear, and figured I had an ear infection. It became excruciating by about 10 o’clock that day, to the point that I had to have my assistant drive me to the emergency room. But more on that later.

7.) I’d had a chest cold for about five days prior to this, and it came back with a vengeance that morning. I was coughing badly on my way to work, which sucked because every time I coughed, it hurt my ear so badly that I wanted to pass out.

I made it to the emergency room for the ear infection by 10:30 that morning. By the time they were done checking me out, the list of damages was extensive. My fever was 103 degrees. I had a skin infection (staph) in one of my rash-inflicted areas, presumably from scratching at night during my fits of sleep. I had double conjunctivitis (pink eye). I had an ear infection in my right ear, which was spreading to the other ear (and did by the end of the day). The kicker? My chest cold was actually a case of pneumonia.

I was admitted to the hospital. My doctor called my office and told them to find a replacement for me because he said there was no way I was coming back to work for – get this – at least a month. I went on short-term disability, and had the strong belief that I would get back to work in a week. 5 weeks later, I finally came back in. I was reassigned to a different project for a month after that, until I was allowed to go back to my stadium project and finish it out.

I learned that day that I was not immortal, for sure and for certain. I’ve since managed to get control of my auto-immune condition, and am living happily (although much, much greyer – people think I’m 45 from how grey I am, when I’m only 30) doing the same job I was before. The big difference is that I appreciate life much more now. I don’t get upset about the little things. I don’t worry about losing my job, or not being able to pay bills, or any of those things because none of any of that matters as long as I’m not living the hell that I lived in the year of our lord, 2007. They say what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger. I agree. I’m not really afraid of anything, because on that day in 2007, I wanted to die. I prayed for it. I hurt so bad, was so tired, so miserable, and had been for so long, that I didn’t care if I lived or died. What could I possibly fear now?

What Does Liberalism Have to Show for 50 Years?

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=557701&p=2

Awesome. Go and read.

Full view||Back to messagesMmmmmmm... Government Run Healthcarey Goodness....

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,594124,00.html

Ever notice how these stories all seem to be coming out of Canada and the UK?

Wherein I Fix The Healthcare System - No Need to Thank Me

I got to thinking about Healthcare reform the other day, and realized something about our overall discussion. Specifically, we all posted some solutions to the healthcare problem quite some time ago, but recently have been more focused on saying “no” to what is being passed than offering up any ideas as to what else could be done – and rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, SOMETHING needs to be done. Here is what I’ve got.

Health insurance used to be quite affordable, and healthcare was once also quite inexpensive. It was the 1970’s or so when the cost started to go up, but they really went up in earnest around the 80’s, and since then, we’ve been paying increasing costs for our healthcare, while wages haven’t gone up a commensurate amount to cover these costs. Here are some of my ideas to fix the problem.

1.) De-couple healthcare insurance from employment. The reason that healthcare is coupled to employment rests on the shoulders of a democratic congress post-WWII. They put price controls on employment, meaning that for any one job, a person could only be paid X amount in actual monetary wages. Thus, the birth of “fringe benefits” in the form of non-monetary compensation packages. Businesses could no longer compete with each other in obtaining the best-qualified people for the job on wages – they were mandated to all pay the same – and so they competed by tacking on additional compensation in the form of insurances and so forth. Thus, the birth of healthcare insurance being provided by the employer. This will help in a couple of ways. First, a person between jobs or unemployed will not lose health insurance with their job. The insurance stays with them. Second, it will help people to realize what the true cost of health insurance really is, which leads to my next points.

2.) The vast majority of costs for health insurance companies comes from routine care. To me, having insurance to cover your yearly checkup and your glasses prescription is akin to having your auto insurance company pay for gasoline and tires for your car – believe me, you aren’t going to get those tires and gasoline for a lower price that way! Checkups and the like are routine maintenance items to staying healthy, they are not unexpected expenses, which is what insurance is actually intended to hedge against – the catastrophic implications of unexpected, massive healthcare expenses. The cost of health insurance is greatly reduced when you do not expect the insurance company to pay for your gasoline and tires (oops, I mean, routine checkups). This brings me to my next point, because if people are going to start paying for checkups and such on their own…

3.) …they need to know what they are paying up front so they can shop around and make sure that they are getting the best deal. I can’t think of another single service in America where people have no idea what some service will cost until the bill shows up. Can you? These companies need to, for lack of a better way of putting it, have “menus” of services with prices for those services clearly posted, and provide quotations to people for these services when requested. This will bring competition back to the healthcare industry (as this confusing process of billing has virtually eliminated it). For instance, I had an MRI a few years back for my back problems. Prior to having had it, I had no concept of what it was going to cost, and what is more, not a single person could tell me what it was going to cost. All they could do was assure me that “my insurance would cover it” and proceed. The MRI cost something like (if memory serves) $5,000, of which I was responsible for a $750 deductible. I found out that there is a company in town that provides MRI services to the lower lumbar region for $1,200 a pop. If I had been allowed to shop around, I could have reduced the cost of my MRI by almost 4/5. That being said, THE ONLY REASON THAT THE FIRST COMPANY COULD CHARGE THOSE INSANE RATES IS BECAUSE NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY WILL CHARGE UNTIL THE SERVICE IS RENDERED. People do this all the time. They shop around and buy the cheapest available, and my guess is that services would spring up that would shop around FOR YOU for a nominal fee, assuming that this was enacted.

4.) Medical malpractice lawsuits have driven the cost of liability insurance to astounding rates. I spoke with my rheumatologist the other day, and found that his expenses for rent, bills, and staff were approximately 85% of his cost for insurance per year. That means that his insurance costs are 115% of his operating costs every year!!! This is driven, according to industry experts, by the massive reward amounts being given for punitive damages in malpractice lawsuits. Here is the thing – punitive damages don’t work, because they punish the wrong guy! They insurance company pays, not the doctor who cut off the wrong leg! That being said, there should be NO CAP on actual damages, including pain and suffering, loss of consortium, loss of wages, medical expenses, future living expenses, etc. Punitive damages, however, should not just be capped – they should be abolished altogether.

5.) Democratic congresses, under influence from insurance lobbyists, passed a bill making it illegal to sell health insurance across state lines, creating monopolies in many states, and oligopolies in the remainder. Washington state, for instance, is served by two – count ‘em – two, insurance companies. This stifles competition in the industry, which allows prices to be inflated massively. This must be repealed, as it benefits only the health insurance companies.

That being said, here is my proposal for what should be done with the health care problem…

1.) De-couple health insurance from employment. I do not believe that this will reduce costs, but it will make insurance more portable and ensure that people do not lose insurance just because they lost their job.
2.) Provide insurance policies that are just that – INSURANCE against huge, unexpected losses. Routine and preventative care should not be an insured against item, as it undermines the entire idea of insurance. This would reduce costs of an insurance policy by 75% (taken from the difference between “catastrophic care” policies and “Cadillac” policies).
3.) Make healthcare providers compete against each other by mandating that they post prices – just like everyone else. This one is hard to decide how much it will reduce costs, but with one guy in town charging $5K for something another guy charges $1.2K for, I think that you will find that a 25% reduction in prices overall will not be unheard of, and possibly even as much as a 50% reduction is possible.
4.) Eliminate punitive damages in malpractive lawsuits. This will reduce the cost of doing business for healthcare providers by an average of 25%, which will reduce healthcare costs (assuming perfect competition – which is safe to assume given item 3) by exactly that much.

In total, this will reduce costs of health insurance by 75%, and of healthcare by as much as 50 to 75%. That being said, a family currently paying 12K per year on health insurance will only be paying $3k per year for the same amount of services.

Now, here is where I start losing my heartless conservative cred. Since costs will be reduced so much, the average family can now afford to pay a tax on services rendered, and on their insurance policies. I don’t know how much it would need to be, but I can’t imagine that it would be so much that it would put them back up to what they were paying before this plan is enacted. Say, it doubles their cost to $6K. They still save $6K over previous years.

Use this revenue to provide free routine care clinics to those who qualify for them, so that every person in America has access to routine care. Put in a graduated system that gives the worst off folks free routine care, with a graduated system of pay percentages going up from there, so that as many people as possible have at least some “skin in the game” to prevent abuse of the system. That covers routine care.

Then, have a taxpayer-paid catastrophic care insurance policy, either through a private company or through a government setup (although I would prefer competitive bid contracts through private companies) to cover the catastrophic care of people who can’t afford it, with the same “graduated system” in place here. That covers bigger, catastrophic care.

Any comments?