A Mind is a Terrible Thing

Palin to quit as Alaska governor at end of July | McClatchy
ANCHORAGE — Gov. Sarah Palin announced today that she will resign in a few weeks. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will take over at the Governor’s Picnic in Fairbanks on July 26.

There’s something here she ain’t saying, and I don’t think it’s the 2012 presidential election.  It’s way the heck too soon for that, and Palin’s 1st term would’ve run out in 2010 anyway.

Then again, none but her most ardent and besmitten supporters have accused her of having an abundance of good judgment.  Or political savvy beyond a propensity to betray her mentors and benefactors.

To put it another way: If Palin really does plan to run for president, she’s making the tyro mistake of giving us three full years to discover all the reasons why she’s manifestly unqualified and ethically compromised for the job.  Like perhaps starting with her close association with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.

I’m with a lot of the other bloggers out there: We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.

(On update:  In retrospect, maybe it was the Vanity Fair article?  Possibly in combination with the scorn and ridicule currently circulating the ‘Net over Palin’s exceedingly cheesecake-y Governor Trollop rendition in the latest issue of Runner’s World?)

Great piece over on AlterNet.  I highly recommend reading the whole thing, as it describes in clear, everyday language what it’s like not to worry about healthcare or health insurance.

We’ve Been Trapped Inside a Bad Health Care System So Long, We Don’t Even Know How Much We’re Missing | Health and Wellness | AlterNet
Sometimes, when you’re up to your chin in alligators, it’s hard to focus on the fact that there’s a big, broad, alligator-free world waiting somewhere out there, beyond the edge of the swamp.

In this case, it’s hard for most Americans to even imagine that nobody in the rest of the developed world lives this way. We’ve been living inside the restrictions and making the trade-offs required to hang onto our all-important health care coverage for so long that we don’t even realize that we’re cutting those deals, or what we’re giving up, or how thoroughly those choices have come to dominate and limit our lives.

If you’re an American under 40, you can’t remember a time that the health care system didn’t work this way — or that keeping coverage wasn’t a dominant factor in making your life choices. If you’re older than that, the memory of another, happier era beyond the swamp is dim, and fading fast.

This was one of the things that struck me hardest when I arrived in Canada five years ago. The swamp-blindness was so dark and deep that it took a while to adjust to a world without alligators. It’s almost impossible to describe to folks back home how different life is when health insurance simply doesn’t factor at all into how you choose to live your life.

The rest is at the link.  But think about it:  How different would your life be, if you didn’t have to factor health insurance into your decisions.  You could quit a bad job.  Go back to school.  Start your own business.  Take a long sabbatical.  Move anywhere in the country.

It’d be Freedom.

Suppose one day you’re taking a shower and notice that a mole on your arm seems larger and more irregular than you remember it being.  What you do about it will likely depend on your personal situation:

• If you’re an American with really good group insurance through your employer and have no plans to leave your job in the foreseeable future, you check to see if you can cover the co-pay and/or deductible for a doctor’s appointment.  They’ll biopsy the mole to make sure it’s not melanoma.  Still, if cash is short, you might not go.  If follow-up treatment is required, you can expect to spend a lot of time on the phone with your insurance company getting pre-approval and fighting for payment coverage.  There are reams of paperwork to fill out, and for your doctor’s office to fill out, and the lab and so on — and if any of those involved make the least mistake or omission on the paperwork, payment will be delayed or outright denied.  You’ll learn in painful detail just how high your deductible is, how most of the specialists you need to see are not "in-network", and the truly disgusting practice known as "reasonable and customary charges" (as in you are 100% responsible for all charges above the insurance company’s R&C designation, no matter how ‘unreasonable’ it actually is)  You will discover your insurance is not nearly as good as you had been led to believe.  Oh, and now you have a pre-existing condition on your medical record, hooray for you.
• If you have good employer-provided insurance but think you may be leaving your job or get laid off soon, you check to see if you have the co-pay cash…but you also think maybe it might be best not to go, because having this on your medical record will make it difficult to get new coverage in the future.   This is in addition to everything in the previous bullet point.
• If you’re self-employed and self-insured, or on COBRA, you don’t do anything about the mole, because (1) if the mole is benign, you didn’t need it removed anyway or (2) the mole is cancerous, it’s a pretty near certainty they’ll find a pretext to cancel your insurance or deny coverage in the future.  Besides, you need to save your money just to pay the exponentially increasing premiums for this "health insurance" you dare not use.  If they learn you might have melanoma, your rates will skyrocket.  Plus, even if you did try to get coverage…well, see the previous two bullet points, only with a much higher deductible and out-of-pocket maximum, higher co-pays, less actual coverage — and you also get to worry about a "lifetime maximum cap," after which you have no insurance and will never have it again.
• If you have no insurance, you don’t go, because there’s no way you can afford treatment anyway.  You just hope for the best. 
• If you live in Canada, the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, France, Denmark, Switzerland, or any other major modern industrialized nation on the planet, you go to the doctor, show them your medical card, and they remove the mole.  If it was cancerous, they refer you to a dermatological oncologist where you receive superb follow-up treatment.  It’s all paid for through taxes, and everybody’s covered.  Paperwork is minimal.  You don’t worry about whether the mole will bankrupt you or cause you to lose all future health insurance coverage, because that only happens to those poor fools in America, most of whom have no clue things could be far better if only they had the huevos to demand it.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

Oh boy…this ain’t gonna go down well

Sanford compares himself to King David, returns to work | McClatchy
Gov. Mark Sanford apologized to his cabinet today but did not resign – comparing himself to the biblical figure of David.

“(David) fell mightily, he fell in very significant ways, but was able to pick up the pieces,” Sanford said at the start of the meeting. “It began with a larger quest well expressed in the book of Psalms on the notion of humility.”

As commenter Ishml on Talking Points Memo notes:

Governor Sanford neglected to note that God did not let David off the hook for his transgressions. Bathsheba and David’s child died in childbirth. David’s son Amnon rapes his sister, Tamar, and then Amnon is killed by his brother Absolom, who later challenges his father, David, as king. Absolom dies a tragic death as well. If this is what King Sanford calls "picking up the pieces", he should reread his Bible.

Sanford is really not helping himself at all by comparing himself to King David.  Just my opinion, but I really get the feeling he hasn’t gotten over his feelings of self-entitlement.  There’s not one bit of humility in Sanford’s attitude.

Sure, during his first press conference he was contrite and surprisingly forthright — but that seems now to have been a passing phase.  My guess is that upon getting off the plane from Argentina and being confronted by the reporter (who had the email proof about the affair), he panicked and stumbled into confessing.

As the current accounts have it, the same day Mrs. Sanford threw him out of the house, he went online and got himself a 10 day reservation to Argentina.  On his way out of the country, he made some crude and ineffective attempts to give the appearance he’d impulsively gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail.  He seems to have thought he could disappear from his duties as governor of South Carolina for a week and a half, and that no one would know he’d actually left the country to see his South American honey.  Five days later, learning about the uproar, he flew back, but again seemed to giving every indication ("a long drive on the 2-mile coast in ‘exotic’ Buenos Ares") of trying to continue the lie.

Sanford’s attempts at hiding and misdirection were so amateurish, even Inspector Clouseau could have sussed it out.

Actions have consequences.  His marriage is likely over for good now.  His sons will know daddy was a lying philanderer.  His political career is dead — the only question is whether he has the courage and awareness to realize he ought to resign and get on with facing what he’s done.

It’s been thunderstorming here in Tijeras this morning. 

Actually, the last few days we’ve had a few pretty big ones, including one torrential downpour two days ago, which we drove through on our way into the city.  That one washed a road construction truck into the I-40 arroyo, and several workers needed rescuing — but fortunately no one was badly hurt.

The weather continues to be exceedingly volatile — sunny, windy, rainy, sunny, stormy, sunny, all in the space of a few hours.  Compared to this, California central coast weather was exceedingly boring.

I’m loving it.

Sanford admits affair with woman in Argentina | McClatchy
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford acknowledged Wednesday that he was carrying on an affair with a woman in Argentina when he disappeared from his office last week, only to resurface this morning.

I was saying as far back as Sunday that a guy just doesn’t disappear like this for purely vanilla reasons… 

At the very least he’s guilty of dereliction of duty, and because Sanford just proved he is unstable and unable to keep personal issues separate from his sworn duties as Governor of South Carolina, he really ought to resign.

(Aside: Didn’t pass my notice that AGAIN, Fox (faux) News initially mis-identified Sanford as a Democrat.  They seem to do this every time there’s a scandal involving a Republican…of which there has been no shortage in the last few years.)

Rep. Boehner’s Washington Examiner Op-Ed Is Full Of Falsehoods | Media Matters Action Network
Rep. Boehner Claimed Americans "Simply Don’t Support" The Democratic Health Care Plan. In a June 23, 2009 op-ed in the Washington Examiner, House Minority Leader John Boehner wrote: "Tomorrow night, the President will use a primetime campaign-style event in the White House to sell his plan, but his own party isn’t even buying it right now. The President’s proposal would empower bureaucrats – rather than patients and doctors – to make key medical decisions, limit treatments, and ration care, raise taxes, and kill jobs. The American people simply don’t support it."  (hat-tip, Media Matters)

What I find remarkable is how in Boehner’s universe — indeed, in that of every opponent to reform, especially the GOP — the faceless government bureaucrat is the reason not to have single-payer and/or public health insurance.  They pretend as if the same private insurance industry bureaucrats don’t exist and never have.

The current system already "empowers bureaucrats," rather than patients and doctors to make key medical systems.  It’s companies like WellPoint and Blue Cross/Blue Shield who limit treatments, ration care, raise premiums exponentially, and kill jobs (as well as people).

As I think I’ve mentioned in some other blog posts, New Mexico is a geologist’s paradise — even for those like myself who fall far, far into the "amateur" range on that.  I see pretty rocks, I like them, I collect them.  And fortunately, the landscape around this state is so littered with them, there’s plenty to go around.

Down in Cibola National Forest, I’ve found all kinds of fossils, most of which are shells and watery plant life, a fact I find fascinating given we’re at over 7000 feet in altitude.  That’s some honkin’ big uplift.

There is also a great deal of igneous rock, including near-obsidian, clear evidence of fairly recent volcanism throughout this rift zone.

Then there’s the petrified wood, which I find most fascinating of all (at least locally).  It’s not the heavily agate-ized stuff one might find further west in Arizona.  What I’ve found seems darker, and what crystal is in there is usually fine quartz, looking almost as if the rocks have been sprinkled with refined sugar.

Anyway, some of my friends have been asking for a few photos…so here they are.  These samples come from a hike I made on Sunday, and yes, they’re pretty big and heavy.  I’d estimate about 30 pounds worth…

Closer in…

An end view–

Blue Cross seeks immediate rate hike | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has asked the state to let it immediately raise rates for 400,000 people who buy their own health insurance outside the workplace.

(snip) If granted, monthly premiums for non-group policyholders immediately would increase 44.4%, compared with the 56% Blue Cross eventually wants for those plans.

Interim rate hikes Blue Cross seeks for group conversion policies that extend coverage people once had in a workplace would be 27.8%; the full rate hike pending calls for a 39.2% increase in those plans.

Seniors with Supplemental Medicare, or so-called Medigap coverage, would increase 31.2%.(snip)

"Blue Cross was created to make coverage affordable, yet the opposite is happening," said Joseph Aoun, an Ann Arbor attorney representing Abraham, who has the moderate option of Blue Basic and saw her monthly rates increase from $459 to $562 last year. Now, Blue Cross’s request could send their premiums up another 63 percent to $917 a month.

This is beyond ridiculous.  The lowest ‘interim’ rate increase is only 28%?  A woman with moderate option coverage sees her rates double in just two years?!  To $917 a month!

This is Michigan, one of the hardest-hit states in the current deep economic recession — but also a place where, on the whole, things are cheaper than elsewhere in the country.  Can you imagine what ‘moderate option’ health insurance now costs individuals in places like New York, Florida, or California?

We’re not even talking platinum-plated coverage here.  And all of this in an economy where people are still losing their jobs right and left.  Who the hell has that kind of money to blow on health insurance?  (This isn’t even the actual care & treatment, because there you also have to add in co-pays and deductibles, which nowadays run into the thousands of dollars a year and up.)

This is why we need a public option, one that is completely de-coupled from employment, and which, if co-pays are present, remains affordable even for those people with little or no income (which, by the way, ought to rule out significant deductibles).  When we fill out a form requesting our medical history, it ought to be so the doctors can give us the best and most accurate care — not so some bureaucrat or computer in an insurance company can decide we don’t deserve coverage.  We need medical care that is not rationed by insurance companies whose primary motivation is to make money, not save lives.

Something like 75% of all Americans want a public option for health insurance, many of them believing (and rightly so) that it’ll do away with eligibility requirements, denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and generally treat them better at far lower cost.

And they’re right.

The Democratic Party is ignoring a massive opportunity to put the Republicans in Whig status.  If they actually gave the citizens what 3/4 of us want, they’d win massive majorities in Federal, State, and local governments for a generation to come.  They wouldn’t even need BigMed’s campaign contributions.

Just sayin’.