I actually agree with Republicans... WTF!

THe healthcare bill has passed and they are now going to mandate that all Americans buy healthcare from a private company. That, my friends, is a load of bullshit.

Today, ABC reports:

The individual mandate is an "unprecedented overreach by the federal government forcing individual citizens to buy a good or a service for no other reason then they happen to be alive or a person," Republican governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty said today on "Good Morning America."

The Republicans are challenging the constitutionality of the healthcare mandate and I agree and I hope they succeed. Some say, "well it's mandated that you purchase auto insurance on your car". Yes, only if you drive. You have an option not to drive. And if you individually refuse to not drive or have a job that requires driving, that doesn't make it something you HAVE to do. You are still choosing to drive. Not like you HAVE to be alive. The healthcare mandate is "you breath, you buy a product from a private, for-profit company". That is a perfect example of something that makes our free country a little less free. If our government wants every American to have health insurance, well they better find a wy to provide us with it.

And the subsidy for people who can't afford health insurance is no answer. It has a crap load of requirements and will be VERY hard to qualify for.

So, if the Republicans are unsuccessful and the mandate stays, I encourage people to not get healthcare if they wouldn't have without the mandate and I hope all of them refuse to pay the fine. I have a feeling that is going to be the case and it's going to cause a whole of problems and cost the tax payers a whole bunch of money. This is yet another one of Obama's great ideas that he royally fucked up on execution. And I'm not being sarcastic. The man has great ideas for making the country better, but by the time it gets passed he's compromised so much it turns into a steaming pile of shit. I have a feeling I won't be voting him into a second term.

I think we should do the opposite. I think everyone without insurance should refuse to get it, and I think people with insurance should start canceling it until they take the mandate out of the bill. We're supposed to live in a free country but we're being forced to do business with a private, for-profit company that's already charging outragous amounts, posting record profits and there is nothing it the bill that makes them lower their rates. They can actually still raise their rates a little more under this bill. It's fucking ridiculous. Everyone should cancel their insurance on the same day and send a message to the insurance companies that we're not taking it up the ass anymore.

But we won't, because we're lazy Americans who seem to have no problem taking up the ass from big corporations. So, good luck with that.

I know, I know, "but what if I get sick with no health insurance". I've lived for the past 10 years with no health insurance. I've been sick, I've been injured and I'm fine. and I'm not overrun with medical bills. If you know where to go, you can survive just fine. And this may come as a shocker, but most people don't need all the shit that they're on. There is no other country on the planet that suffers from as many "syndromes" or "disorders" than we do. And no other country takes as much medication as we do. "But what if I get cancer". Well, you can make all your decisions in life based on fear of what-if's, or you can do something that might actually be good for you and the country in the long run. It's up to the American people. We always want to blame the government for everything, but it's the American people that are responsible for everything that is going on in this country. You want more jobs: stop using companies that ship all their jobs overseas (Facebook being the newest company to do that), you want better banking rates: stop using the big private banks and switch to a credit union, you want better treatment of employees: stop shopping at Walmart and stores like it, you want better healthcare rates, refuse to pay for expensive insurance. We decide and we have decided that making a difference takes too much work. So screw the unemployed and screw the workers and screw the uninsured and screw ourselves, we don't want to put in the extra effort.

23 Weeks 3 Days: Legal Drug Dealers

I got my bill in the mail from my emergency room visit. Just a reminder of what I had done: Cut the tip of my finger almost off, went to the emergency room, had a nurse take my blood pressure, then they gave me an X-Ray to make sure I didn't hit the bone, then I was given a room and another nurse gave me a Tetanus shot, then a Nurse Practitioner came in, numbed my finger, rubbed it with some iodine and put in 7 stitches, she left then the nurse came back in a wrapped it with gauze. I was there for about 2 hours, but I was in contact with hosptial staff for a collective 30 minutes. Grand Total: $1,135.08. And that's after a "uninsured discount" of $463.62 which brings that actual amount they feel they deserve to $1,598.70. Now lets break that charge down.

Mediations: $47.30
X-Ray: $91.50
Emergency Room Services: $608.75
Medications With Detail: $304.15
Professional Fee Emergency: $547.00

Medications is the Lanacane they used to numb my finger. They did have to use twice as much as she planned on so this seems to be the most reasonable charge though still a bit pricey. You know they mass produce this crap dirt cheap and the hospital puts a 1000% markup on it.

X-Ray is obviously the X-Ray. After paying the X-Ray tech and for the supplies and use of the room I guess this isn't horrible, but it did only take about 10 minutes which means this room costs $549 an hour to operate. Seems a bit inefficient.

Emergency Room Services is the fee for just having me use the emergency room itself. Well, is the use of the X-Ray room in this charge? I mean, if it's not, then they charged me $608.75 to have a receptionist enter my info into the computer and sit in the waiting room.

Medications With Detail is supposedly medications that were administered by a medical professional (I guess I gave myself a shot of Lanacane). The only medication I got besides Lanacane was a Tetanus shot. I double checked with the lady at thefinance office and yes, this $304.15 is for one Tetanus shot and nothing else. Again, you know that this is being manufacture dirt cheap, and then the drug company marks it up to make record profits and then the hospital marks it up to make record profits and the patient get screwed. And when I asked the lady, "It costs $304 for a Tetanus shot?" She said, "Yep," like there was no reason for me to question that.

Professional Fee Emergency is the fee for Nurse Practitioner who stitched me up. Again, she was in the room for maybe 15 minutes which means this lady makes over $2000 an hour. And supposedly, people get into the medical profession to help people... Really? And I know she's got expenses to pay (insurance, ect.), but this charge is ri-god-damn-diculous. I'm going to find a job where I install one door and then send the person a bill for $500 just for labor. They would call and question that bill.

So the hospital is sending me the form to fill out to get a financial assistance discount. That will come in the mail in a few days and then it will take a few weeks to process it. So we'll see where that gets us. Oh and their wonderful cleaning job didn't work because the damn wound got infected. I had to go to my doctor so he could soak it in an iodine solution, took out some of the stitches and put me on antibiotics. I bet if I brought my finger in and asked for a refund they would probably laugh at me.

And this is why I have little faith for any health care reform that might happen. It's not about who pays for it, it about how much it costs. These procedures and medications should not cost as much as they do.

16 Weeks 3 Days: Babies in Politics

Dear Baby,

Don't waste your time on politics. People have always gotten all freaked out of various political ideas that our government may put in place. It doesn't matter. It's not going to "destroy the country" as so many people say. If they reform healthcare, it won't destroy the country. But I'm for health care reform, so I'm biased. Well, I was against the war in Iraq, still didn't destroy the country. The billion dollar financial bailout didn't destroy the country. gays getting married won't destroy the country.

The point is, that 90% of the time, it's business as usual when it come to running the country. Things change here and there and those policy changes work well for some people and don't work for some people. Some people are okay with them and some are morally opposed to them. And sometimes those changes don't work for a majority, or raise our deficit or get a bunch of soldiers killed, but they have never completely destroyed the country. We have been a country for a while and we've gone through depressions and booms and wars and times of peace and law changes and democratic presidents and republican presidents and protests and you name it. None of it has destroyed the country. Short of getting nuked, I don't think anything will.

But people like to freak out. If something is happening that they don't like, they have to spin it so it's going to have the worst possible outcome. Reforming healthcare is going to DESTROY THE COUNTRY! Really? Even if it's not a perfect plan, you really think it's going to turn the US into wasteland. Because that woud be a destroyed country, if that's not what you mean, then stop saying that. You think that a couple of gays getting married is going to destroy the country? Because there is so much sanctity in marriage now with our drive thru weddings and reality shows about bridezillas and who wants to marry a millionaire and wife swap. Right. And if we're so dead set on following god's will, what's up with all the multiple children due to invetro fertilization? God made you infertle, so now it's okay to go against god's will. I see.

Basically, the country is going to keep moving forward. We're going to make some changes. Some will work, some won't. But none will work for everyone. There is no one thing that is going to make 100% of the population happy. We're a mass of different people from different upbringings and different cultures. So there is always going to be an unhappy group. But for the most part, some things will change. Most things will stay the same. And the country and it's people will keep on living. And some of the problems in our country now weren't create entirely by our government. Wall Street dug it's own hole as did the auto industry. Those were huge corporations that got too greedy for their own good and didn't look to the future. Sure, the government could have changed some regulations, but ultimately it was their decisions that got them where they are.

Work hard, plan for the future and have fun whenever you can. Do those things for yourself, because nobody is going to make those things happen for you. Not the government, no matter how much you protest.

13 Weeks 6 Days: $200 For a 15 Minute Dr. Visit

A while back I went to the doctor because my blood pressure was through the roof (couldn't use my normal naturopathic doctor, long story). So I was told, since I have no medical insurance, I couldn't see the doctor until I paid a $150 deposit. Which I did. Then I saw a nurse practitioner (not even a real doctor) for maybe 15 minutes, no tests were done, she checked my blood pressure, listened to my lungs and wrote a prescription. That's it! I figured they would credit me back some of my deposit. Until today when I got a bill in the mail for another $50. It was $200 to see a nurse practitioner for 15 minutes?!?! Are you out of your mind? Our healthcare system is fucked. All you people that say a national healthcare program would ruin our country are crazy. It's already fucked! All you people are either 1. rich, 2. already have some healthcare that is paid for, or 3. not in need of healthcare (ie. young, unmarried, no kids). When you're middle class and want some healthcare to protect yourself, your wife and your upcoming baby and you find out that it would cost $500 a month plus a $5000 deductible (after the baby is born since the pregnancy is a pre existing condition), you open up to new options real easily. But it's easy to ignore if you aren't in a market for healthcare. What we have now is not working, plain and simple. It's time to try something else. So if you are one of those people not in the market for healthcare and you are campaigning against single payer or a public option: you can bite me. I need healthcare for myself and my family and I shouldn't have to pay out the ass for it because the insurance company wants 40% of premiums to be profit. This isn't meant to be an attack on anyone. Everyone is entitled to their views. But so am I and views against healthcare reform affect me A LOT. It's just really frustrating to hear people talk out their ass about how reforming healthcare will hurt the country while at the same time, I'm not able to get any good healthcare to save my life (almost literally). So if you don't need healthcare, shut up. If you have great healthcare that is affordable, by all means clue me in. But if you want to tell me I'm wrong, then you better be ready to tell me about your healthcare or experience shopping for healthcare or how to get great affordable healthcare at the same time. If you can't do that, don't bother. I don't need to hear people talk just so they can hear themselves talk.

9 Weeks 5 Days: Business as Usual

This is one of those lulls where not much new is happening. Things are business as usual. In a week or two Krystal will have another doctor's appointment in which case she'll be able to hear the heartbeat. But until then, not much has changed.

The Oregon Health Plan guy had asked for extra paperwork because, of course, we make too much money to qualify, even though Krystal doesn't make that much and I'm running a company that's going out of business, but whatever. He said that we were close though so if he gets more info he might be able to use different calculations to make us qualify. It just seems ridiculous. I'm making up a bunch of postcards this weekend to send out to all my Senators, House Reps, ect telling them to give us some god damned healthcare. We have a constitutional right to an education, but not a constitutional right to healthcare? You may be dying, but you'll be smart while you're doing it!