Sunday, March 21, 2010

A Sad Day for Us All

Happy Spring! Last week was wonderful with temperatures in the mid 60’s and we were finally crawling our way out of a long grey uninspiring winter season. The warmth of the sun was so welcomed on the face and hope was restored that green grass will soon replace the crusty brown stubble. Then Friday rolls around and the mercury drops into the teens and 6 inches of snow falls is a day long decent into a late chill of winter. The cold white blanket only dampened the spirits for a day because in true Rocky Mountain fashion the sun ruled the sky on Saturday, the warmth returned, and the snow melted. It was warm enough for grab the grandkids and head to the sledding hills. We poked our thumb in old man winter’s eye as we giggled and slid on the snow that hopefully was the final taste of this winter’s freeze. I love Spring.
I believe that our fleckless congress will vote today to condemn your and your kid’s future to a massive servitude to the federal government. They are going to approve the Senate’s Health Care Bill and it is a disaster. I support health care reform, but not this. Obama will win this round on his march to “change” this country. With chilling speed he has introduced the government into so many aspects of our life where it doesn’t belong – finance, auto, health care etc. This is way beyond the scope of the original constitution and the design of this government.
They claim with great pride three major accomplishments with this bill. 1. Covering 30,000,000 Americans who aren’t covered now by insurance, 2. Eliminating pre-existing conditions for health insurance, 3. “Reducing the deficit by $180 billion in 10 years. I like these goals too, but this bill does not accomplish these goals and it introduces huge problems into a fragile system.
1. 30,000,000 new patients when the current system can barely handle the patient load now. Payments to doctors are being reduced and malpractice insurance will rise. There aren’t enough general care physicians now and that number will drop. The unintended consequence of this bill will be to reduce medical services to all Americans.
2. No pre-existing conditions in place sounds great but there are other ways to accomplish this noble goal, and not as described in the bill. Imagine no accounting for speeding tickets or age with car insurance – the bad drivers will pay less and the good drivers will pay more – doesn’t make sense. Or if a life insurance company starts writing life policies on a recent heart attack patient or someone diagnosed with cancer. Let’s pay a $5,000 premium to buy a $1,000,000 policy and then the patient dies within a short time, what happens to the insurance company. It will go out of business and then the government will have to take over. That is what they want.
3. Reduce the deficit….who are they kidding. They are double counting some taxes and banking on cutting $500 billion from current Medicare. They can’t cut $5 billion from Medicare without the Dems screaming bloody murder. They are lying!!!! Medicare and Medicaid are broke now, and there is no way they will cut another Half a Trillion dollars with serious cut backs in medical services. Pray you don’t get sick in the future.

The bill does help with the jobs program – 17,000 IRS agents will be hired to
monthly monitor our lives to make sure we are signed up on this “great” program.
If it is so great why do we need hall monitors to control our lives this way?
If it is so great why is there no bi-partisan support?
If it is so great why does 55% of the American people hate the bill and only 35% support it?
If it is so great why do the democrats have to bribe their own member to vote for the bill with our money?
If it is so great why do the democrats have to be threatened by the party if they don’t vote for it?
If it is so great why are members of congress asked to vote for the party and not what the people they represent want?
If it is so great why have 38 states begun the process to legally prevent the application of the bill in their state?
If it is so great why does the government have to fine people if they don’t sign up for it?
If it is so great why have so many major corporations that had supported Obama, now complaining that this bill will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars?
If it is so great why doesn’t the President feel he has to dirty the office of the President by lying to the American people?

Because it ISN’T great – the price we are paying to insure more American and eliminate pre-existing conditions is criminally high with this bill. We could allow competition across state lines, apply tort reform, remove government red tape, improve private insurance companies, and accomplish those goals without the government take over, but it really isn’t about health care it is about more government control. We are less a country for this type of reform.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

New Camera; New Blog


Our old camera died and so I couldn't blog for a while, but we got a new camera yesterday and so I can start blogging again.

Not much going on here. It is the lull time of the year without too much fun activity. We have a funny little elder as one of the missionaries – Elder Dalton. He is a clean freak and the basement looks brand new. He is incredible. He has completely cleaned and organized the back area in the basement with the food storage. Straighten up the book case and made the extra bed and neatly stacked the games. The entire carpeted are is vacuumed almost daily and the couch is rearranged to give the maximum space to the recreation area. Even the kitchen area is neat and clean and the garbage gets taken out every week. It even smells nice down there. But that is just the surface stuff. He completely took apart the camping and blanket closet and cleaned it up, removed all the dead mice, and threw away the canned apricots that had been there since 1992 and leaked all over the basement floor. The zebra room is orderly and ready for guests with uniform hangers and space in the closet for storage. To top things off he tackled the incredibly chaotic and random storage room where you could barely walk through and now there is enough room in there to throw a party and have room to dance. But I had to stop him the other night. Some banging woke me up at 11:30 at night and I poked my head out of the bedroom to find Elder Dalton with a broom cleaning cobwebs from the ceiling. I told him to go to bed and he just laughed and headed on downstairs. I think I may be able to convince mom for us to move downstairs because it is cleaner there and we may make Elder Dalton a permanent offer to set him up in a house cleaning business in Denver after his mission.