Archive for the ‘Life goes on after stroke,’ Category

David Brooks recently wrote this article [which I edited] and I find that I must agree with him. Read for yourself and let me know what you think.

 

The Politics of Solipsism
By DAVID BROOKS

Over the years, the democratic values have swamped the republican ones. We’re now impatient with any institution that stands in the way of the popular will, regarding it as undemocratic and illegitimate. Politicians see it as their duty to serve voters in the way a business serves its customers. The customer is always right.

A few things have been lost in this transition. Because we take it as a matter of faith that the people are good, we are no longer alert to arrangements that may corrode the character of the nation. For example, many generations had a moral aversion to debt. They believed that to go into debt was to indulge your basest urges and to surrender your future independence. That aversion has clearly been overcome.

We no longer have a leadership class — of the sort that existed as late as the Truman and Eisenhower administrations — that believes that governing means finding an equilibrium between different economic interests and a balance between political factions. Instead, we have the politics of solipsism.[ extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.] The political culture encourages politicians and activists to imagine that the country’s problems would be solved if other people’s interests and values magically disappeared.

The democratic triumph has created a nation that runs up huge debt and is increasingly incapable of finding a balance between competing interests. Today, the country faces three intertwined economic challenges. We have to make the welfare state fiscally sustainable. We have to do it in a way that preserves the economic dynamism in the country — that provides incentives for creative destruction. We also have to do it in a way that preserves social cohesion — that reduces the growing economic and lifestyle gaps between the educated and less educated.

These three goals are in tension with one another, but to prosper America has to address all three at the same time.

Voters will have to embrace institutional arrangements that restrain their desire to spend on themselves right now. Political leaders will have to find ways to moderate solipsistic tribalism and come up with tax and welfare state reforms that balance economic dynamism and social cohesion.

Over the past months, there has been some progress in getting Americans to accept the need for self-restraint. With their various budget approaches, the Simpson-Bowles commission, Paul Ryan and President Obama have sent the message that politics can no longer be about satisfying voters’ immediate needs. The public hasn’t bought it yet, but progress is being made.

There has been less progress in getting political leaders to come up with compromises that balance dynamism and cohesion. Republicans still mostly talk about incentives for growth, and Democrats still mostly talk about economic security. The breakthrough, if there is one, will come from the least directly democratic parts of the government, from the Senate or some commission of Establishment bigwigs. It will be enacted when voters realize we need to build arrangements to protect ourselves from our own weaknesses. It will all depend on reviving the republican virtues upon which the country was founded.

For my handicapped readers, I thought I would tell you a bit about me. I found handicapped in 2005. I suffered a stroke. One day I was fine, and the next day I was handicapped. It took me many months to move on from feeling desperately worthless to become anything that I was going to make something of this new life. I thought that the results of this stroke would be over soon. I know, I know, you must think I’m crazy!

It’s now 2010…[5 years later]… yeah here I am writing. I wanted to tell you what has helped me. First and foremost God himself. My daughter encourages me so much. Her children too have accepted me just the way I am. I live in a convelsent home because I can’t walk and need constant care but I see them at least once a week.

I found out that the more I work on my problem IT GETS EASIER to cope with it. I used to like to shop and now I shop on Amazon. I never have to leave my desk. I have to exercise every day..[use it or loose it].

I used to drive everywhere. Of course now that I’ve had a stroke I can’t do that. I do miss that. I started driving a 16 and now I am
72.

Thomas sowell hits this whole health care thing on the head!

Thomas Sowell: Alice in health care
By: Thomas Sowell
Examiner Columnist
March 1, 2010

Most discussions of health care are like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

What is the biggest complaint about the current medical care situation? “It costs too much.” Yet one looks in vain for anything in the pending legislation that will lower those costs.

One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians’ answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government.

Back when the “single payer” was the patient, people were more selective in what they spent their own money on. You went to a doctor when you had a broken leg but not necessarily every time you had the sniffles or a skin rash. But, when someone else is paying, that is when medical care gets over-used — and bureaucratic rationing is then imposed, to replace self-rationing.

Money is just one of the costs of people seeking more medical care than they would if they were paying for it with their own money. Both waiting lines and waiting lists grow longer when people with sniffles and minor skin rashes take up the time of doctors, while people with cancer are waiting.

In country after country, the original estimates of government medical care costs almost always turn out to be gross under-estimates of what it ultimately turns out to cost.

Even when the estimates are done honestly, they are based on how much medical care people use when they are paying for it themselves. But having someone else pay for medical care virtually guarantees that a lot more of it will be used.

Nothing would lower costs more than having each patient pay those costs. And nothing is less likely to happen.

One of the big costs that have actually forced some hospitals to close is the federal mandate that hospitals treat everyone who comes to an emergency room, whether they pay or not. But those who talk about “bringing down the cost of medical care” are not about to repeal that mandate. Often they want to add more mandates.

The most fundamental issue is not whether treating everyone who comes to an emergency room is a good policy or a bad policy in itself. If it is a good policy, then the federal government should pay for what it wants done, not force other institutions to pay for it. Then let the voters decide at the next election whether that is what they want their tax money spent for.

Confusion between costs and prices add to the Alice in Wonderland sense of unreality.

What is called lowering the costs is simply refusing to pay all the costs, by having the government set lower prices, whether for doctors’ fees, hospital reimbursements or other charges. Surely no one believes that there will be no repercussions from refusing to pay for what we want. Some doctors are already refusing to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients because the government’s reimbursement levels are so low.

Similarly, if it costs a billion dollars to create one new pharmaceutical drug, then either we are going to pay the billion dollars or we are not going to keep on getting new pharmaceutical drugs produced. There is no free lunch.

Virtually everything that is proposed by those who are talking about bringing down the costs of medical care will in fact raise those costs. Mandates on insurance companies? Why are insurance companies not already doing those things that new mandates would require? Because those things raise costs by an amount that people are unwilling to pay to get those benefits.

If not, it would be a slam dunk for the insurance companies to add those benefits to the policies and raise the premiums to cover them. What politicians want to do is look good by imposing mandates, and then let the insurance companies look bad by raising the premiums to cover the additional costs.

It is a great political game, but it does nothing to lower medical costs.

Politicians who want a government monopoly on health insurance can easily get it, just by making it impossible for private insurance companies to charge enough to cover the costs mandated by politicians. The “public option” will then be the only option — which is to say, we will no longer have any real option.

Examiner Columnist Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Thomas-Sowell-Alice-in-health-care-85919882.html#ixzz0h3EhsuuZ

This is going to be weird..

But, when many of were younger, we were taught certain things.
Obey your elders,
REspect those older then you,

Yes, I know Im in that generation now.  But I cant tell those younger then Myself to DO THIS anymore.
Its NOT that kids know TECH better then the elders.  Or any of that.
Our elders are SUPPOSED to protect us, teach us, help us LEARN and make us better.
All I see at this time, AS in the past during the religious revolts in Europe, is CORPORATE leadership that is NOT worried about the Consumer/the nation/anything EXCEPT money..
Profit margins have Soared..
Upper wages have gone to the MOON and back..
Those in charge are the Con men of the 60′s and 70′s..
These folks have instigated the changing of LAWS and made BACK DOORS into our pocket books and taxes.
I dont even need to mention ACTA, and trade agreements be done in Back rooms and under the NOSES of our own congress, to be made into LAWS.
LAWS that Threaten your PRIVACY, and the corps dont PAY for the prosecution, YOU DO.  YOU are paying to be searched at the borders for Pirated Movies and music.  They HAVE the right to take ANY electronic device to be SCANNED and used against you.  Insted of FIXING THEIR PROBLEM of making a better distribution system.
WE are PAYING the corps thru our TAXES not to go BROKE, because they SPENT all the money, on WAGES.
We might as well be run by the Mafia.  and its WORSE then being run by the Mafia.

Have fun with this, its just STUPID how our Corps are taking over the world, and WE PAY FOR IT.