National Healthcare

There is so much fear and anger about President Obama’s call for healthcare reform in this country. The “Party of No & Status Quo” wants us to believe that things are just fine. No need to change a thing. Doctors in large practices with vested interests in expensive test equipment businesses are doing just fine. Drug manufacturers who pass on their cost of research and development to American consumers so they can offer discount prices to the rest of the world could not be better. Large insurance companies that can raise their premiums at will, “cherry pick” those customers with the least risk and exclude ones with preexisting conditions are doing very well. What’s to change? They are happy with the way things are. Big business is happy. Why rock the boat?

It will cost the taxpayers billions! And do we want the federal government running our healthcare? Look at the countries that have government run healthcare, like Canada and England. Hell, we have enough problems with doctors getting paid for current Medicare and Medicaid patients! We have heard it all before…all the problems, all the fear, all the reasons why we can’t provide affordable healthcare in one of the greatest countries of the world.

I say, how can we NOT provide affordable healthcare for our citizens? Our congressmen and senators have one of the best healthcare plans in the world, yet they choke at the thought of spending billions on healthcare for the rest of us. They can pass bills to fund two wars on the other side of the world. They give billions of dollars to bailout the banks, AIG, GM and Chrysler but when it comes to the rest of us…let the free market prevail. Let us be at the mercy of the large health insurance corporations and their cherry picking. Let us pay the highest price for life-saving medicine that the rest of the world gets for only a fraction of the cost. Let the hospital costs of those who cannot afford insurance continue to be passed on to our hospital bills and the cost of our care. Leave us to the profit-driven practitioners and big business in a system that no longer works for most Americans living from paycheck to paycheck. The rich and powerful will always have their healthcare, but as for the rest of us, we are one major illness, one more premium increase away from disaster. We cannot go on with such a broken system.

As I understand it, President Obama’s plan would put in place a Public Healthcare Option at an affordable premium. It would compete with (not eliminate) private insurance plans. There would be no exclusions for preexisting conditions, no “cherry picking” and it would be available even if you just lost your job (unlike COBRA insurance which is expensive and only lasts for 18 months). His plan would have the ability to negotiate much better prices with the big drug companies. He would help fund this plan by reducing the cost of overhead (no highly paid CEO’s with golden parachutes) and administration of paperwork by using uniform electronic forms and filing. Doctors would be rewarded for the outcome of each patient’s health, not by the number of tests they can prescribe (whether needed or not).

Yes, we can keep the system we have…or we can make it better, more competitive, more efficient and more affordable. Find out what’s going on and contact your congressmen and senators. This may be our last chance to get real healthcare reform. The time is NOW.

FOOD for THOUGHT...

Same Sex Marriage

I grew-up in a time of TV shows like: Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. All I knew was the picture of a traditional marriage. There was a dad who went off to work and a mom who stayed home, kept house, raised the children and baked cookies. That’s the way it has been for thousands of years, a husband (male) and a wife (female) in a committed relationship. The purpose of that relationship, defined as marriage, was to be fruitful and multiply according to the Bible and other religious texts from around the world. It was God’s plan for us when we grew-up and became adults. One man and one woman would find each other, fall in love, marry and have children. That’s the way it has always been and should always be. I accepted that.

As I got older, I discovered that people got married for a lot of different reasons other than love and to have children. In fact, growing up in the 60’s, the free love generation of Woodstock, I learned that men and women didn’t even have to be married to have children. Many women were living as single moms, with children out of wedlock or as a result of one or more divorces. The fathers were out starting new families or creating more single moms. The traditional view of marriage was starting to disappear, leaving some very controversial hybrids in its place. Our concern over the institution and sanctity of marriage was growing, especially among the religious, conservatives of this country.

What I observed was that people were still getting married (or seeking to marry) but now the model and the purpose of marriage were changing in some cases. These committed relationships were no longer exclusively between one man and one woman, but now we were seeing men and women pairing off in same sex couples and wanting to raise children as a family. It seemed completely against the NATURE of things. It was against God’s will. By religion and tradition, marriages had to be between a man and a women or they could not be fruitful and multiply and carry on the human species. Same sex couples could not biologically produce offspring so what would be the purpose in allowing them to marry?

There arose a ground-swell of opposition by well-meaning, but fearful, men and women in their traditional heterosexual marriages to this “alarming trend” in our society. Many saw it as a further breakdown of our country’s moral foundation, much as it must have seemed in the Deep South, before segregation was outlawed, when many states passed laws to prevent interracial marriage. God forbid we should have a mixing of the races! Today, the cry has become God forbid two people of the same sex seeking to be married. It must not happen. So laws are being passed and debated on both sides of the issue in each state and across the nation. The definition and the very sanctity of the institution are at stake. It has become a fearful issue that further divides and hurts many Americans.

It is interesting that in Nature, a certain percentage of different populations in the human and animal world display homosexual behavior, a preference for, an attraction to the same sex. Now why is that, especially in the Animal world? Are humans and animals born that way or did they just decide to be different and go against the Laws of Nature? Does it even matter?

So, if some men and women are born that way, find each other and fall in love and want to marry and be in a committed relationship and, God forbid, want to raise children in a stable home with two loving parents…is there harm in this? Should we pass laws that only one man and one woman can be married for the express purpose of procreation of the species as it says in the Bible? If so, I suggest that a whole lot of heterosexual couples would also find themselves in violation of such laws. What about the couple who marry after the age of childbearing? What about the couple who do not want children? What about the couple who have trouble conceiving children? Should we ban them, too? Should we pass laws that deny these couples the rights and protections of a lawful marriage? Are they any less capable of adopting, parenting and caring for children than same sex couples in a committed relationship?

There are some who might say, well okay, same sex couples can have a “civil union” that will give them most of the rights of heterosexual married couples, but DO NOT call it marriage. Marriage is a sacred union in a church before God. But it seems to me that marriage is a combination of not only civil rights and protections but has a deeply spiritual component as well. Would we still deny same sex couples this spiritual component to their loving and committed relationship by only allowing civil unions at City Hall? Can we know that their bonds are any less deep or deserving than that between a man and a woman? Those who come from a religious faith and a tradition that sees same sex unions as perverse, an abomination, have every right to deny such unions from THEIR church, THEIR congregation, THEIR religion. They have that right. But I suggest that there are still many churches with a belief in the same God that would and do welcome such marriages with or without the protections of a civil union.

As a middle-aged man with two grown children and a wife who loves me and cherishes our marriage, I have come to change my view about marriage and who should be allowed to marry. We do not live in an Ozzie and Harriet world, if in fact we ever did. The world today is filled with “drive-by pregnancies” and casual “one night stands” that leave poverty and crime in their wake. Why not honor and welcome those who seek a loving and committed relationship regardless of their sex?

If I were God, I think I would want to know the couples’ hearts…rather than their gender.

FOOD for THOUGHT...