Okay so I just got to thinking about health insurance and the problem the United States seems to find in insuring 40 million people and how another 30 million are under insured.
I am in the first category because I am going to school and just don't have the money to afford over a hundred dollars a month on insurance plus it would be shit coverage so I'd pay for most of my doctor's visits and most of my perscription anyway. So I have chosen to forsake it until I get a job that pays well. And today I needed insurance because I have an ear infection that needs antibiotics.
Like every other person I know what Obama is proposing and I know how everyone is waffling because they don't want socialized medicine. However, I don't think it should ever even come down to socialization anyway. I just read some jackass's analysis of healthcare and it said and I quote: "Competition Lacking Among Private Health Insurers". Um forgive me but DUUUUH! Why in the holy HELL do you think there are so many people uninsured?! I didn't need their brilliant analysis however it did get me to thinking.
Capitalism is supposed to be so great because it allows anyone to step in and fill a need that is not being met and make money. Right? So there are forty MILLION people that would jump at affordable health insurance. There's a market out there to also hit up another thirty million people that are underinsured. So what's the problem? Why has no one decided to step up and fill in the need?
I understand that insurance is an expensive business and when you're actually trying not to be fair and reasonable it can be risky. Until you consider the fact that you have a forty million pool to fish from to make your money. Think of this, $1.00 of profit x 40 million clients = $40 million in your bank account. It makes me wish I had some money to start up an insurance business!! Does no one else see this? What is so hard to understand about it and why doesn't forty million (let's be honest it'd probably be a couple hundred million) sound good to someone, good enough that they would remember the poor people and make insurance coverage for them as well?
This country has gone to hell in a handbasket. I'm rather ashamed of our cynical outlook and ME! ME! ME! attitude. But even with that sort of personality, there's a huge market of people you could help and also help your bank account.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Final Tapestry
I have always been fascinated with stories of how a race of people came to be. I love history in all its misery and gore and beauty. You would think that such things are contradictions and yet I have found even in the most miserable, nasty and desolate moments in history there are tiny seeds of hope sewn. Waiting to grow, wanting to be harvested. It is up to those that come after to see those seeds and nourish them so that they may be a gift to us and to those that died.
Why am I waxing poetic about history? I am thinking about how America began. How proud we are as a nation of this red, white and blue country. And yet, the colors on our flag symbolize something we forget too often now that savage viciousness has given way to polished lies of civility.
The white man, the red man and the black man. All righteous in their hopes and dreams, all lost in a storm they never saw coming. And all of us - guilty for the things we would have done and still do today.
The blood, the sweat, the very breath of life. Red, white, blue. For a land that is so big, so full of promise - it wasn't quite big enough and it didn't hold enough promise. People were hurt, people were killed. All for owning a square piece of land that none of us truly will ever own. This is God's land for it is God's earth. Yet we will righteously fight and then pick apart our enemies and feed off their pain like carrion. The land of the free, the land of the brave. The land of broken promises and pain.
If we could have seen the destruction would history be different? Some would say yes but the cynics will always say no. I hold in my heart a seed of hope sewn by God Himself that if we had known, if we could have felt and seen with eyes of love - history would be different. So even as I look with sad eyes in the mirror and see the guilt and shame that has been passed down to me, I feel inside me that seed grow to a tiny little plant, hoping to flower.
I pray someday our children will carve out a new history for us to look upon. One that is full of what God intended. A land not of red, white, and blue - separated and alone, but a land where the red melds with blue and then white and we see a country of one color. The individual strands woven so closely together that from far away all we see is purple, but when examined closely each color is there, lending a hand in the final tapestry.
Why am I waxing poetic about history? I am thinking about how America began. How proud we are as a nation of this red, white and blue country. And yet, the colors on our flag symbolize something we forget too often now that savage viciousness has given way to polished lies of civility.
The white man, the red man and the black man. All righteous in their hopes and dreams, all lost in a storm they never saw coming. And all of us - guilty for the things we would have done and still do today.
The blood, the sweat, the very breath of life. Red, white, blue. For a land that is so big, so full of promise - it wasn't quite big enough and it didn't hold enough promise. People were hurt, people were killed. All for owning a square piece of land that none of us truly will ever own. This is God's land for it is God's earth. Yet we will righteously fight and then pick apart our enemies and feed off their pain like carrion. The land of the free, the land of the brave. The land of broken promises and pain.
If we could have seen the destruction would history be different? Some would say yes but the cynics will always say no. I hold in my heart a seed of hope sewn by God Himself that if we had known, if we could have felt and seen with eyes of love - history would be different. So even as I look with sad eyes in the mirror and see the guilt and shame that has been passed down to me, I feel inside me that seed grow to a tiny little plant, hoping to flower.
I pray someday our children will carve out a new history for us to look upon. One that is full of what God intended. A land not of red, white, and blue - separated and alone, but a land where the red melds with blue and then white and we see a country of one color. The individual strands woven so closely together that from far away all we see is purple, but when examined closely each color is there, lending a hand in the final tapestry.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Big Ben in Big Trouble
Okay so this all began while I was in solitary for two weeks so I just found out about Ben Rothelisberger's trouble last night on the news.
I am a huge Steeler fan. I also really like Ben because his first year in 2004/5 when Hurricane Katrina hit he donated his game day salary to helping the victims and got the rest of the team to do it too. I like that about a person - and he wasn't making enough money (then) that giving up his salary was easily done. He has also become a great leader and when he screws up on the field he owns to it. Often he takes the blame for a blown game completely on his shoulders and I admire that. He doesn't shirk from responsibility.
However, I have heard he was a wild young man at times. He's definitely impulsive - it's one of the things we all like - when he breaks from the pocket to sprint down the field and dives to get those six extra yards that gives us another first down. So did he rape some woman while drinking in Vegas a year and a half ago? My instinctive answer is no because I like the kind of guy he SEEMS to be. Especially since on the field he seems able to own his mistakes but is he the same man off the field as he is on it?
I don't know him. Never met the guy. Fame does funny things to a person. Could he rape a woman? I hope not. But I don't know. As much as I love the Steelers and like him as a quarterback there is no way I can or will say he's completely innocent. It doesn't stop me from hoping he is and that the truth comes out in his favor. But if that woman was really raped and not just looking for a get rich quick scheme, I hope that he goes to jail. I hope that he has to pay out his ASS and then he goes to jail. Because rape is a horrible injustice that too many people don't pay for.
One out of every FIVE women in the world have been sexually abused in some form. That's a staggering and disgusting fact. A worse fact is that most of those abuses never get reported because the women/young girls are frightened and think it was their fault. They are told it is there fault. And when they get the courage (perhaps a year and a half later??) some people think they are lying, scheming moneygrubbers. Maybe this woman is just after Ben's money.
But what if her story is true?
I am a huge Steeler fan. I also really like Ben because his first year in 2004/5 when Hurricane Katrina hit he donated his game day salary to helping the victims and got the rest of the team to do it too. I like that about a person - and he wasn't making enough money (then) that giving up his salary was easily done. He has also become a great leader and when he screws up on the field he owns to it. Often he takes the blame for a blown game completely on his shoulders and I admire that. He doesn't shirk from responsibility.
However, I have heard he was a wild young man at times. He's definitely impulsive - it's one of the things we all like - when he breaks from the pocket to sprint down the field and dives to get those six extra yards that gives us another first down. So did he rape some woman while drinking in Vegas a year and a half ago? My instinctive answer is no because I like the kind of guy he SEEMS to be. Especially since on the field he seems able to own his mistakes but is he the same man off the field as he is on it?
I don't know him. Never met the guy. Fame does funny things to a person. Could he rape a woman? I hope not. But I don't know. As much as I love the Steelers and like him as a quarterback there is no way I can or will say he's completely innocent. It doesn't stop me from hoping he is and that the truth comes out in his favor. But if that woman was really raped and not just looking for a get rich quick scheme, I hope that he goes to jail. I hope that he has to pay out his ASS and then he goes to jail. Because rape is a horrible injustice that too many people don't pay for.
One out of every FIVE women in the world have been sexually abused in some form. That's a staggering and disgusting fact. A worse fact is that most of those abuses never get reported because the women/young girls are frightened and think it was their fault. They are told it is there fault. And when they get the courage (perhaps a year and a half later??) some people think they are lying, scheming moneygrubbers. Maybe this woman is just after Ben's money.
But what if her story is true?
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