One summer not too many years ago a former colleague of mine spent a lot of time and energy trying to get his mother’s health insurance issues resolved. His mother lives in Oregon, but one of her relatives lives in Michigan. She travelled there for a visit that included a wedding – or perhaps a funeral – and while she was there she suffered a heart attack and had to be hospitalized. As a result of sitting close to her son, I now know that having health problems outside of your coverage area is a problem. A big problem. Day after day, my colleague explained in painful detail to the insurance people that even though the insured party lives in Oregon, the charges on the claim forms were from a hospital in Michigan. That’s because the insured party was in Michigan – not Oregon – when her heart failed. What I have written in this paragraph is simple enough. Explaining it to the insurance company, on the other hand, took an entire summer.
At times overhearing the conversations was heartbreaking, but at other times it was actually funny. “I’ll tell you what,” said my colleague, who speaks very deliberately. “The next time my mom has a heart attack we’ll be sure to schedule it so that she’s in Oregon when it happens.”
Unfortunately, I cannot find any humor listening to Harry Reid weasel in and out of one issue after another while trying to reform, allegedly, our healthcare system. What an ass. It’s not fair, but I cringe whenever he comes on the news and stammers through one of his proclamations, almost always read from a script on a podium. I react to him the same way I’d react to a church elder, or a senior member of a school board or a zoning committee. When I see and hear Harry Reid I want to throw a pie.
His public option non-statement yesterday was a perfect example of the half-assed triple talk that I’ve come to expect from Democrats. We’ll have a public option, he announced grandly, but states that don’t want it can opt out. That way the people who vote in favor of it can blast that sound bite around when they’re up for reelection. At the same time, they can pull the opt-out card when they need to appease the other side. And the rest of us can keep spending entire seasons on the phone, or on e-mail, explaining geography. We can keep sending forms back and forth, many of which will be lost in transit, so we can send some more. I thought, very naively, that we’d either have a public option or not. But I suppose that if we have one, we’ll have sort of one, kind of, something like a public option, but that depends, of course, on where you live, and on a few other factors we’ll all be able to easily reference in the “schedule of benefits.”
And best of all, just as we’ve done with all the gay marriage hoopla that is a direct result of Bill Clinton opting out of taking a firm stand and handing the whole mess over to the states instead, we can look forward to spending lots of time and money on local campaigns that will trick people in and out of voting for or against a version of what they really want that’s so confusingly worded and implemented that I’m starting to wish they’d drop the whole issue. That would be an ideal option for the Democrats, who really need to get busy campaigning. I’m not entirely sorry to say that I predict most them will be voted right out of office in 2010, which is almost here. I hope their forms are in good order.
At times overhearing the conversations was heartbreaking, but at other times it was actually funny. “I’ll tell you what,” said my colleague, who speaks very deliberately. “The next time my mom has a heart attack we’ll be sure to schedule it so that she’s in Oregon when it happens.”
Unfortunately, I cannot find any humor listening to Harry Reid weasel in and out of one issue after another while trying to reform, allegedly, our healthcare system. What an ass. It’s not fair, but I cringe whenever he comes on the news and stammers through one of his proclamations, almost always read from a script on a podium. I react to him the same way I’d react to a church elder, or a senior member of a school board or a zoning committee. When I see and hear Harry Reid I want to throw a pie.
His public option non-statement yesterday was a perfect example of the half-assed triple talk that I’ve come to expect from Democrats. We’ll have a public option, he announced grandly, but states that don’t want it can opt out. That way the people who vote in favor of it can blast that sound bite around when they’re up for reelection. At the same time, they can pull the opt-out card when they need to appease the other side. And the rest of us can keep spending entire seasons on the phone, or on e-mail, explaining geography. We can keep sending forms back and forth, many of which will be lost in transit, so we can send some more. I thought, very naively, that we’d either have a public option or not. But I suppose that if we have one, we’ll have sort of one, kind of, something like a public option, but that depends, of course, on where you live, and on a few other factors we’ll all be able to easily reference in the “schedule of benefits.”
And best of all, just as we’ve done with all the gay marriage hoopla that is a direct result of Bill Clinton opting out of taking a firm stand and handing the whole mess over to the states instead, we can look forward to spending lots of time and money on local campaigns that will trick people in and out of voting for or against a version of what they really want that’s so confusingly worded and implemented that I’m starting to wish they’d drop the whole issue. That would be an ideal option for the Democrats, who really need to get busy campaigning. I’m not entirely sorry to say that I predict most them will be voted right out of office in 2010, which is almost here. I hope their forms are in good order.
