IceWolf's Ramblings » world news

Health Care Reforms

Alex — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:00:35 +0000

The impetus for this post comes from a discussion on the topic over at 20SB that was started by Heather over at A lust for Words. Also of note, I wrote this post yesterday and held it for today, just because. Much of the text is is the same as the response that I posted in the discussion linked to above.

By now I would imagine that most Americans know that the Health Care Reform bill was passed. The question on most people’s minds seems to be: “Is this a good thing?” While I am pretty sure that this bill does not fix all the issues in the current system I do think that it is a step in the right direction. It is unfortunate that we have not made the dramatic changes that really need to be made (like just throwing out the current system all together), but maybe we will get there eventually.

People are concerned with a number of things that this bill may effect. One being the drive for medical students to become general practitioners going away. Why? Well, as with all things American, money. Heaven forbid our doctors can’t have their second homes and sailboats. Another concern is the cost to the public. Isn’t that cost worth your health though? It has to be less than needing to go to the doctor when you don’t have insurance.

We, as Americans, have dug ourselves into this hole. Healthcare is expensive because of the insurance companies. Doctors and hospitals make lots of money because they know that the people are not paying for it, the insurance companies are. In some cases there are clear double standards where the people who are uninsured get larger bills than the people who are insured for the same procedures. It will ultimately cost you more to go without insurance if you ever need serious medical treatment that it would to buy government subsidized insurance. Of all the things that my tax dollars could be used for, keeping people healthy seems to be on of the better choices. Certainly better than fighting pointless overseas wars simply on the basis that the USA has a bigger penis.

The real question is this: “Why are we so resistant to actually changing to a universal health care model?” I mean seriously, it seems to work very well in the countries that do. Would it really be so bad to kill off some of the insurance companies and HMOs who are guilty of creating the issues that plague the system now? I suppose one of the questions is whether people in this country think of health care as a right or a privilege. Frankly I think that people should have the right to lead a healthy life no matter what their financial status.

Reforms like this have some of the same principles as the health care benefits offered by many of this nation’s [labor] unions. Many unions offer a health care pool, every member of the union pays in X% each month and is therefore covered. Every member pays the same percentage no matter how many jobs they are working or how much money they make. On the flip side though, a member of the union cannot forego the union coverage in favor of private insurance even if the private insurance is better coverage and cheaper because of the obligation to the other members of the union and the communal pool. So, the union would let you get private insurance as long as you still paid your insurance percentage to the union pool. As I understand it, this is pretty similar to how most universal health systems work, you can elect to get private coverage to make up the deficit in what the government covers, but you are still required to pay into the communal pool.

I happen to have been lucky in that I got a job that has great benefits, but I see many of my friends who are worried about getting even the slightest bit sick because they can’t afford to see a doctor let alone buy a prescription drug if they needed to. How is this OK?

If you don’t currently carry insurance, what value do you place on your health? Without insurance I would imagine you probably don’t regularly visit the doctor or go to the dentist. So, is your health only worth something to you when you are ill or injured?

As a member of the 20SB community I think that it is important to recognize that this reform does a lot for the twenty-somethings who are in college or just trying to star making it on their own. It mandates that non-dependent children can continue to be covered under their parent’s health care plans until the age of 26, which is three more years than currently available. This is a great thing for people, especially right now when it is hard to find a good job with good benefits.

So where does this leave us? The system is still not perfect. In the end it sounds like it won’t really affect people like me who have good coverage at a decent price already. Some argue that the people on the low end of the totem-pole may be “tricked” into thinking they are covered for things that they are not, but maybe a little education for such people would be in order. In fact I am sure that a little education for the American populace as a whole on the subject of health care would be a good thing. I believe that most Americans blindly stumble through life in this country without really having an understand of what is going on. I probably fall into that category myself every now and then.

It may not be the best step or the best foot forward, but it is a step in the right direction I think. Change can’t happen overnight, we are probably one of the most stubborn nations on the planet. It is that stubborn-ness that founded this country in the first place. I suppose we shall have to see how it goes and if we continue to make some progress.

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Sex ED

Alex — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:44:13 +0000

So, I mentioned yesterday that Utah lawmakers shot down a bill that would have changed the way that sexual education is taught in public schools. I realize that often this is a sensitive subject everywhere, but it seems like if you are going to be able to teach sex ed at all, you might is well do it right and not leave things out! One of the major purposes of the bill was to allow educators to talk more openly about contraception and contraceptives.

As it stands currently, the law is written in such a way that most educators avoid any discussion of contraceptives because they are not supposed to appear as if they are pro-contraceptives. Why is this a bad thing? Why are people so afraid to teach kids about sex and sexuality?

The amazing thing is the statistics in Utah regarding sexually transmitted diseases. The statistics that I saw on the news yesterday were based on reported cases of chlamydia and this is what they were (from: Planned Parenthood of Utah):

#1 sexually transmitted disease

Five new cases every day

5,000 new cases every year

60% under age 24

30% under age 19

Ironically (at least in my opinion), the bill was proposed by a Republican, but the state senate comittee didn’t even take the time to discuss it. That’s right, all the people that shows up from BOTH sides of the issue didn’t have a chance to voice any opinions. However one of the people who did manage to at least get her opinion on TV and quoted in the newspaper doesn’t even have kids in the public school system.

It seems to me that once again we see the clear lack of separation between church and state. I hate to say it, but whether or not your religion has anything to say at all on sex, sexuality, and contraception has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it should be taught in school. Some argue that it is a parent’s responsibility to teach their kids about sex and sexuality, but honestly, how many people had their parents talk to them about sex, and how many people are really going to talk to their kids about it? The question then becomes: why should the state teach what the parents are not?

Well, as illustrated by the statistics it is a public health issue. In a state where the predominant culture is forcefully preaching no pre-marital sex, no/limited sex-ed in school, and that contraception is a sin how do you explain the high rates of STDs and pregnancies out of wedlock? Might have something to do with the fact that all you have to do is turn on the TV and you get a pretty warped view of sex. Of course you also have the internet and other kids! So, would you rather have a trained educator teach your children how to be safe or should your kids just go out and try out the things that they learned on TV or on the internet? Maybe it is that funny fact that when you tell someone what the are not allowed to do something, they are more likely to go out and do it.

It seems strange to live in a time and place where it seems that people would rather let ignorance rule life. It isn’t just Utah that has issues like this, it happens all over this country. Americans are really prude when it comes to issues of sex and sexuality. It is like people believe that if they ignore it, it will go away. Again, I hate to say it, but ignorance is not bliss in this case. Ignorance leads to issues like disease and unwanted babies!

So, I ask, why is learning about sex and sexuality such a bad thing? Why is it such a taboo subject? It is a fact of life, it is a life experience. American society has made it into a subject that is almost worse than cursing. We don’t have to explicitly teach kids how to put the peg in the hole, nor do we have to encourage them to do it. We should give them the tools and the knowledge that they need to be safe so that when they decide to go experiment. Or maybe you have people who are happily married with kids, but they don’t want more, maybe they should have been taught about rolling out the raincoats so that they can still enjoy life without worrying!

Citius, Altius, Fortius.

Alex — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:00:09 +0000

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver Opening Ceremonies

I am writing this while watching the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, however I won’t post it until the morning. It will probably take that long to really put my amazement into words. I love watching the Winter Olympics no matter what, but this year the opening ceremonies are amazing. This production is amazingly beautiful and it is technically spectacular.

What really takes the cake here are the projections. Turning the entire stadium into a projection surface was just beautiful. From the floor of the stadium to every audience member who was given a white poncho it was a truly all inclusive and all encompassing performance. The integration of imagery and acting and dance was incredible. The special effects that gave three-dimensionality to the 2D elements like the whales were beautiful.

Projected Whales with 3D elements like steam from their blowholes

The use of various fabrics and shapes as projection surfaces was pretty wild. When was the last time you grew trees in the middle of an indoor stadium? Not only were they trees but totem poles as well.

Fabric "trees" provide an amazing projection surface.

Of course how can we forget that they kicked the whole thing off with one man rapping the floor with his staff and rings of “electricity” emanated out along the floor.

Kicking off the celebration and the amazing effects!

It really amazes me that, given the state of the world today we are still capable of coming together as friends in competition. Sure there are some countries that seem to still hold grudges against eachother, but they seem to put most of that aside to come and compete in the Olympics. It is so great that we can come together as a global community, even if it only for sixteen days. Good luck to all the athletes.

Citius, Altius, Fortius. – Swifter, Higher, Stronger.

War Games

Alex — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:00:44 +0000

“Would you like to play a game?”

Many people around my age or older probably recognize that line from the 1983 film “War Games” starring Matthew Broderick. The WOPR, a military supercomputer puts the US and Soviet armies on high alert when David Lightman (Broderick) hacks into it thinking it is a game developer’s. Needless to say, playing “Global Thermonuclear War” online with an unknown computer might not have been the best idea.

Now this might not be the most recent news, but I just uncovered it and found it kind of interesting. The US Airforce is procuring 2200 Sony PS3s to network together into a supercomputing cluster. As I trolled some of the tech blogs most were making jokes about what kind of gaming may be going on behind closed doors, but apparently the PS3 is actually a very good platform for creating an efficient and inexpensive supercomputing cluster. While I don’t really understand the technology, the PS3 is powered by the “Cell” processor which sounds like it is quite well suited to the task.

US Airforce PS3 Cluster Computing

The Ps3 apparently has become the predomenent platform for distributed computing applications like Folding@Home. In fact, the PS3 holds a record for most petaFLOPS of computing power applied to the Folding project. The PS3 has also provided a platform for cluster computing for the physics department at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Called the PlayStation 3 Gravity Grid, it consists of 16 PS3s used to simulate black holes. So, some pretty cool uses beyond just playing games.

The real question is how does it make you feel that your tax dollars are being used to buy up a relatively huge quantity of console game systems? While they claim to be using them for crunching numbers and processing things like video feeds and radar displays how long will it take for some hacker to find their way in looking to play some high end video games? What about all those military people just itching to break out the video games? Are we in for a real life version of war games in the future?

Haitian Relief

Alex — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:00:52 +0000

While I don’t always pay attention to the news, it is hard to not hear about the relief efforts that have been going on in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. The big interesting news is that the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) sent a huge convoy to Haiti to help. The interesting thing about that is that Israel did it basically completely unannounced. They didn’t file any flight-plans, they just showed up in two 747s and a C130 carrying all the equipment that they needed to set up a mobile field hospital including scanning and diagnostic equipment and satellite links for maintaining digital patient files with hospitals in Israel. Amazingly, in traditional Israeli fashion they literally just showed up with a blatant disregard for any regulations saying: “Hey, we are here to help and we are landing!”

So, while hearing about the entire situation in Haiti, I have been wondering what it has to do with me. I hate to sound like I am not sympathetic, but I am here living my life, seemingly unaffected, but that isn’t really the case. It turns out that my family (my uncle specifically) is fairly deeply involved in the efforts. It started off with a young Israeli woman, Shauna, that he has been sponsoring in her athletic endeavors since the Maccabee Games who is deploying with the IDF to Haiti for the relief. She went to medical school before making aliyah to Israel and has been competing as a tri-athlete for Israel.

Additionally, he is involved in helping to move doctors from Dartmouth College (his alma mater) to Haiti as the Dartmouth medical school has been looking for people to donate private planes to help move the medical personnel.

We also have family friends who are volunteering their time, money and supplies to actually go to Haiti to help out. So, when I actually sit and think about it, this is something that affects me. here I am sitting with my uncle at his beautiful home at Deer Valley in Park City Utah about to go skiing, but we have spent the better part of the morning organizing relief efforts.

Here are two of the organizations that are down there making a difference and doing a good job. I know that everyone around the world is asking for money and donations, but it is a good cause. So check these guys out and do what you can. Don’t feel obligated, but certainly consider doing what you can.

Israaid – This is the civilian company managing the Israeli relief efforts. At the time of posting their site seems to be down.

Partners in Health – A US organization that seems to be doing very well and working very efficiently.