You Can’t MAKE Me!

Yep. you’ll get no argument from me on this one. The healthcare system in America has some real problems. What those problems might or might not be are not the subject of this post.

The biggest problem you’ll be HEARING about constantly in this current election year is that people lack access to healthcare and so we need to change to a single payer system so that all will have healthcare coverage and all can live happily ever after.

In any of my dreams or potential realities does a single payer (read “universal healthcare”) system FIX this particular problem as its proponents would have you believe? No way.

You can give all the free healthcare you want to as many people as you want to, but if you don’t make being on the provider end (hospital owners, doctors, nurses, etc.) an attractive proposition, you won’t have people entering the business. If it isn’t attractive, companies and individuals will leave the business or won’t go into the field in the first place and the ultimate result is a lack of providers. Without providers the access to healthcare is diminished. Hospitals are already closing at a good clip for lack of revenue. Doctors are leaving their profession in droves because the reimbursement (the rates for which are set by Medicare, an already abysmally run government healthcare entitlement program) is so lousy that the risk of being a physician often outweighs the rewards. Read THIS about geriatricians and why they are leaving their profession if you don’t believe me.

Proponents of this system would have you believe that by bringing all the uninsured (and underinsured) into the government fold, that this will increase the reimbursement, thus offsetting these losses to hospitals, etc. Hardly. What it WILL do is decrease the reimbursement further. Right now a provider gets paid, let’s say, $100 to see 10 patients, or $10 per patient. Once coverage is “universal”, then that provider will get paid the same $100, but it will be to see 20 patients, or $5 per patient. Yes. A simplistic look at the numbers, but mark my words, this is what the single payer system will bring us. The doctors will leave, and for awhile the government will sell us the bill of goods that Physicians Assistants, and Nurse Practitioners, and Chiropractors are just as good as doctors, until we find out that that particular emperor doesn’t have any clothes either, and then Canada will be freaking out because now where will THEY go for their healthcare in a hurry, and well, it’ll just be a huge mess.

You can’t MAKE people invest their capital and their lives where they don’t want to. Well, I suppose in theory the government COULD, but do any of us want to live in a country where you are forced into running a hospital or becoming a doctor for the good of the masses? Sounds a lot like communism to me.

But I digressed…

So, then, you can increase healthcare COVERAGE all you want. But increasing an individual’s coverage does not automatically translate to an increase in the ACCESS to healthcare that the individual has.

Without providers, there IS NO healthcare.

A single payer system solves the problem of a coverage. But insurance coverage does not does not does NOT equal healthcare access.

What about this continually escapes the universal healthcare crowd??

You can give away free tickets to the circus, but what happens when the circus has already left town?

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My Old House

No pictures to share. But I used to live in the cutest little yellow and white cottage with a picket fence. The house was built in 1917 and I was only the third owner. There were dozens of types of flowers and an equal number of types of bushes and shrubs in the large garden situated in and surrounded by a very lush and long and soft green lawn. The steps and paths and front porch were slate. The undulating fence was capped off with copper finials which mellowed with a verdigris patina. My house was, for sure, THE cutest house on the block. I had a gardener who came regularly and always had the place looking bright and cheery and kept. The sprinkler system insured that all stayed green and in bloom. In the back yard was a peach tree, a plum tree, a loquat tree, some other trees I can’t remember the names of, and a fenced off garden filled with with blackberry bushes. The front yard sported a profusely flowering Jacaranda tree and another tree with flashy peachy-orangey-red blossoms. In the spring the whole 7,000 square feet of my garden and yard was a riot of colors. Even in the winter it was a beautiful collection of evergreens and grasses and winter blooms.

It is spring now. My brother’s yard is exploding with roses and hibiscus and, well, you’d have to ask him the names of all his plants and flowers!

I sold the house and moved to Colorado going on three years ago.

I am visiting my family this week back in Southern California. My brother lives but five blocks or so from my old house. I drove by it yesterday. I wondered what beautiful things were happening in MY old gardens!

The man who bought my house is a well known local real estate developer. There is a for sale sign in the front yard with his name on it. I guess his plans for the property didn’t pan out.

The lawn is dead.

The plants are dead.

The flower beds are dead or dying and overgrown with weeds.

The roses bushes are shriveled and brown.

Even the trees are brown, and drooping.

The property looks pitiful.

It doesn’t look or feel at all like I ever lived there.

It doesn’t appear that anyone at all is living there.

Why would someone let a place go like that?

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“Juxtaposition” – Photo Friday

Today’s Photo Friday is entitled: “Juxtaposition″

jux·ta·po·si·tion

–noun

1.	an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, esp. for comparison or contrast.

2.	the state of being close together or side by side.

This week was my choice for the topic!  I picked “juxtaposition” because 1) I absolutely LOVE the word, and 2) I thought it was a challenge that could be interpretation in a bajillion ways.  I had no preconcevieved idea of what I was going to do for it.  The word just came into my head when I read that the choice was to be mine this week. 

I took this picture this past weekend in Denver.  When I took the picture I was only taking it because it tickled my fancy.  I thought it would be way cute to have my little friends copy the big blue bear’s pose, all lined up.  Only after I got home and was going through and catalogueing the photos from the weekend did it strike me that this would make an excellent and FUN submission for this weeks “Photo Friday”.  So, here is “Big Blue Bear and Little Friends Peeking”!

From L to R that’s the Big Blue Bear, Abner, Stephanie, Colin, and Clare — in juxtaposition! 

This Big Blue Bear is peeking in the windows of the Denver Convention Center.  His body is made up purely of planes.  Pretty cool.  Designed by a computer.

The sculpture was unveiled in June of 2005 and is called “I See What You Mean”.

They are all interested in what’s going on in there! 

Please visit the other participants’ work!

 Sky Windows 

Idea jump!

A Curious State of Affairs 

Just For Fun

Welcome to CordieB of the blog “Looking Through The Window“

(Jan’s entry – A Curious State of Affairs - uses a cool online tool called a Hockneyator to create a collage.  You should check it out and snag that link to try this tool yourself!)

I’ll add anymore links should I find that there are any more new players out there!

Next week’s topic comes to us from Tina of SkyWindows and is “Religion”. 

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Blog Bling

Jan, mastermind behind the “Photo Friday” posts you see here, has given me some new jewelry for my blog!

I was given this Gold Photo Award for my entry titled ”Black and White“.  Click HERE to see the other winners of this award.  And please consider coming out to play with us!  It’s a fun group of divergent thinkers and we’d love to have you part of the movement! 

Thanks, Jan!  I appreciate the work you do to make “Photo Friday” all that much more fun.  And thanks to the other ladies who participate for sharing your thoughts, your creativity, and your lives with me in this strange world of the blogsphere.   

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The Beach Bot Update

My nephew Richard’s robotics team took second in their division, and 8th overall in the FIRST nationals in last week’s competition in Atlanta.  Not bad for a little team of homeschooled kids from the beach cities of Los Angeles!

Congrats team 330!  Well done!

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The Prom – Something I’ve Learned From Teenagers About Love

“If he really wanted to be with you, he’d be with you” — Phil

This was pretty much the only thing my brother had to say about the struggles I was having in my last serious relationship.  The guy lived a thousand miles away, and had only come to visit me a single time.  I had visited him a couple of times and we had made plans for him to come and visit me again on Valentine’s Day last year.  Things were getting very serious between us.  At least I thought they were.

It didn’t take long after my getting back home after my last visit for him to back away from his plan to come on Valentine’s Day.  He was going to come some other time in February, after all “It doesn’t need to actually be ON Valentine’s Day”.  And shortly after determining that a Valentine’s Day visit wasn’t in fact necessary, he backed off from the visit entirely.  At the same time professing his love!  I didn’t get it.  I believed he wanted to be with me, but his actions certainly didn’t back that up.  I kept making excuses for him.  I soooo wanted to believe he wanted to be with me, but that there was something about him and his unknown struggle that seemed to make it difficult for him.  So I excused his behavior and lamented what seemed to be an insurmountable chasm between us.  And, my brother quietly and matter-of-factly said “if he wanted to be with you, he’d be with you”.  When the guy decided to bail from the relationship pretty much without any warning, and with a set of very odd explanations as to why, and after having done this to me already a number of times in the past, I finally decided I’d had enough and said, fine, you want to walk away, walk away.  To myself I finally admitted that I was tired of the games he seemed to be playing with me and that I couldn’t take his inconsistency and the incongruities of his words and his actions any more. 

As the days turned into weeks and months, I kept making excuses for him.  And Phil’s words kept coming back to me….If he had wanted to have been with me, he would have been with me.  If he loved me enough and there truly WAS some unknown struggle that was keeping him from me, he would have addressed that issue…

Then “Colin and Stephanie” and “Clare and John” happened, and I realized that not only were Phil’s words true, but that I NEEDED to have a guy show his intent by pursuing me…by wanting to be with me.

At sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen years old, these four teenagers have shown me that love does what it takes.  Colin, who lives in Northern California, has worked and saved and has traveled to Colorado to visit Stephanie three times since November!  Clare’s John also lives in Northern California.  Both John and Colin have flown in this weekend to take Stephanie and Clare to their prom.  What fun!  And what message does their coming here send to these girls?  That they are valued.  That the boys recognize the importance of things like the prom and that if the girls think its important, so do they.  It tells these girls that they want to be with them.  That they want to spend time with them.  And that they will do what it takes to make that happen, even though they have no idea what the future holds for them.

Don’t they look amazing??  Thanks for the love lesson, kiddos.  I needed that.  Have a GREAT time at the prom! 

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A Day in LoDo

A couple of weeks ago I met my friend Abner up in Denver to spend the afternoon.  It was a lovely day.  We’d been threatened with snow, but there was barely a cloud in the sky and it was warm in the sun.  We decided to meet at the Breckenridge Brewery.  It’s one of the local microbreweries and I’ve heard they have some good offerings.  I tried the Agave Wheat.  It was a murky looking glass of darkish amber stuff.  But it tasted awesome! 

The area of town that is host to the Breckenridge Brewery is known as “LoDo”, or Lower Downtown.  It’s an historical district, also known as the ballpark district.  The brewery is right down the street from Coors Field where the Colorado Rockies play.  I love baseball (I believe I have mentioned this before).  I used to adore the Dodgers, but fell out of adoration with them in the 90′s.  I tried to fall in love with the Anaheim Angels, and things were going sort of okay, but then they became the Los Angeles Angels, which, even removing the absolute redundancy of the name from the equation, was just wrong.  End of that fledgling relationship!  And then I moved to Colorado.  I wondered if I could become a Rockies fan.  Well, after seeing the Rockies “house”, I think I could very well do so.  I drove past Coors Field the last time I was up in Denver and I wanted to explore it further by walking all the way around the stadium.  Of course that took us into a couple of restricted access areas, but despite passing a number of empty security vehicles, we were successful without even being approached.

What a great stadium and wonderful location for it.  On the 20th street side there was a pedestrian walkway which brought you through an archway of sorts.  The supports had a collection of “ball” tiles on the fronts and backs.  Here’s one of the panels:

One day I’ll go back and try to individually photograph each and every tile in these columns.  Some are mighty clever.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

Through the archway and a there’s a perfect “out in left field” gate upon which to take a foot picture, which of course, we did.

In the process of meandering around town, and laughing hysterically at this and that, we passed by a number of buildings which had either been, or were being converted into lofts and condos.  Of course, with my love of 1)  cities, 2)  buildings, and 3)  real estate, my heart was pretty much palpitating.  There was one small row of loft-type spaces in particular that caught both of our attentions.  The units were three stories tall, and on the backsides there were balconies off the second and third floor.  Rising from the third floor balcony was a spiral staircase leading to rooftop terraces.  From those rooftops I bet you could see the entire downtown skyline as well as Coor’s Field.  And I bet you could easily hear the roar of a baseball crowd from there, too.  I was imagining being up there on a hot and sticky summer day basking in the fierce high altitude sun and BBQ’ing with friends while hearing the crack of bat on ball.  Perfection.

I have longed to buy a property in a city center for decades now.  Chicago has always been my city of choice for this, and Dublin would be pretty amazing, too, as would London.  An apartment in Syracuse, Sicily or Kinsale, Ireland has been a dream floating around my head.  I even looked at lofts in Los Angeles which were pretty spectacular, but after being in this area of Denver, I think Denver could suit me nicely!  Pipe dreams!! 

Near the end of our LoDo traipse, we crossed a street only to be faced with the biggest set of doors I’ve ever seen that weren’t at the front of an old European church!  Here’s Abner being dwarfed by the doors:

Thanks for another fun day just hanging around, Abner!  Let’s do it again soon.

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“It’s Life Imitating High Art” – Photo Friday

Today’s Photo Friday is entitled: “It’s Life Imitating High Art″

Y’all are going to start thinking I’m totally lazy (worse, with that y’all there, you might start thinking I’m lazy AND country!)    Anywhoooo, it’s been another sort of crazy week in the life of Lou.  I originally had planned on doing my best photographic imitation of Jan Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring“.  However, I just couldn’t pull that off.  Having just taken inspiration from Warhol in my last Photo Friday entry, I thought it would be fairly simple to do my best photographic imitation of one of HIS most simplistic works, his iconic Campbell’s Tomato Soup Can:

It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be!  I originally took about 20 photographs.  Then I attempted some digital manipulation in order to really whiten the background and to eliminate all the shadows.  That turned out to be wayyyyy more difficult than I had thought.  So I abandoned that and thought I’d try my best to recreate it with a pure photograph.  Another 30 or so pictures later, and this is the best I could do. 

I think I’ll still keep “Girl” in mind for another photographic project in the future.  I have the perfect model, BUT the earrings I had thought I’d use I can’t find.  I think maybe I sold them at one of the last garage sales (boot sales for Jan) I participated in.  So, while I look like I’ve been very lazy with this project, I actually worked pretty hard on it!

I’m very excited to see what fab stuff the others have put together!!

Please check out the other participants’ work! 

Sky WIndows

A Curious State of Affairs

Idea Jump

Jan, the brilliant Photo Friday mastermind, has given me the opportunity to pick next week’s challenge.  Pending her approval of the subject, my choice is “Juxtaposition”.

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It’s Robot Time Again!

My nephew Richard’s robotics team has earned their way into the big national FIRST competition in Atlanta again this year!  Way to go Beach Bots!  The team left for Georgia this morning, the competition starts tomorrow.  I hope to catch some of the coverage on the live NASA feed on Friday and Saturday.  Click HERE to check out the NASA TV schedule.  I have no idea what the challenge is this year, but am excited to see just how the robot that the Bots created has risen to it!  Word on the street is they have another real potential winner on their hands!

Good luck Bots, and special shout out to Richard and Dakota!

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Immun-aiyaiyai-zations

This year I needed to update my immunizations for my trip to Malawi and Ethiopia.  My Polio, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever are outdated and I’ve never had Hepatitis A.

Today I met with Becky at Passport Health to discuss just what my travel needs were going to be.

The final list?  Here you go!

1. Hepatitis A injection
2. Polio injection
3. Yellow Fever injection
4. Oral Typhoid series

Still need to get:

1. Tetanus booster
2. TB skin test (last one was over a year ago, will be able to procur this at work)

Declined:

1. Influenza vaccine (I never get this)
2. Meningococcal meningitis vaccine (I’ve been exposed so many times to this I must have some sort of immunity)
3. MMR (measles, mumps, rubella).  I have now had this vaccine three times and while I have converted on my mumps and rubella, my titers continually come back negligible for measles, so I’m figuring no additional attempts will work either.

Definitely don’t need for this trip:

1. Japanese Encephalitis vaccine    TRUE! 

We also discussed malaria and dengue fever.  Since it is winter, the chances of getting these diseases are lower as the mosquitos are fewer and farther between, but, as history has proven to me, I can get malaria from that one mosquito.  The malaria carrying mosquito gets you at night, the dengue carrying mosquito gets you during the day.  When in Zambia I didn’t take malaria meds nor did I use insect repellent.  I will use repellent this year.  I’m still thinking about my options for meds.  The cheap option is doxycycline, but that often leads to an unpleasant other kind of infection.  The other “cheaper” options have given me night terrors and generally creepy feelings which make them very undesireable to take again.  The best option is MUY expensive.  Almost $9.00 a pill!  AND I’d need 60 pills.  I don’t even want to do the math on that.  We’ll just have to see!  For sure I buy some Arinate when I get to Africa.  I want that on hand whether or not I’m pre-treating.  That’s a miracle drug for malaria and I don’t want to be without it.

Then there’s avian (bird) flu and cholera.  Since I’m in control of food preparation and water sanitization, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to avoid getting either of these.  Just gotta remember to keep “my kids” away from any chickens and not serve any eggs that aren’t fully cooked!

Lastly, I picked up a prescription for Cipro.  I can take that for traveler’s diarrhea or an upper respiratory infection.

I got the three injections today.  Praying they don’t make me sick.  The last time I got the Yellow Fever one I was sick (gastro stuff and fever) for days and my arm was useless and excrutiatingly painful to the touch for over a week.  That was years ago.  Maybe this time it won’t be so bad.  I’ll wait to see if these round of shots makes me sick before I tackle the week-long regimen of oral Typhoid vaccination.  That one can cause pretty good gastro side effects and I don’t want to pile that on anything else I might be feeling!

AND we (Becky-also a nurse-and I) talked about my working there in the future!  Just to fill-in for her, nothing major.  She took my info and seemed very delighted at the possibility of having someone who could help out there in a pinch, or for vacations, etc.!

This is the first time I have used a traveler’s health clinic.  Very convenient, very easy.  Always before I have had to call around and find this place or that place who could accommodate my needs.  When I showed up at Passport Health, Becky had already prepared a full packet of very useful information and recommendations.  Live in Colorado?  Ever need to discuss travel needs and get shots and scripts?  Consider Passport Health.  I guess it’s another Unpaid Service Endorsement from me!    It’s a pay up front business, so I need to look into filing a claim with my insurance to see what they might pick up.  Never done that before.  New skill to learn! 

I haven’t been really great at posting lately, but if you don’t hear from me for awhile, you’ll know why!  (Because I’m curled up sick in my bed not far from a bathroom!)

Now, as I am expecting company in a few days, I’m off to clean my house, just in case I’m not feeling up to it later!

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02/18/09, an update:

I should have updated this post long ago!  I had absolutely no side effects from any of my shots, not even any arm soreness.  I ended up choosing doxycycline for my malaria prophylaxis and was diligent about taking it as directed and diligent with my bug repellent.  Despite being chewed alive at dusk, I did not contract malaria (which was a great relief, having had it twice before).  I had only some minor gastro-intestinal side effects from the oral typhoid, but nothing hardly even to mention.  It could have even been coincidental.  The next time I travel to a place where meningitis is recommended, I will probably get that vaccine.  And, if it is available, I am considering getting the rabies series as well.  But as of this update, rabies is only available post-exposure as there is a shortage of it.

Bye for now!  And remember, traveling smart includes getting your vaccines!

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Taxes…Filed

For years I’ve had the same gentleman do my taxes in the LA area.  Because I was more than happy with his services, I continued to use him after I moved to Colorado.  But this year I decided to bring the business home, as it were, and hire a local CPA to do the deed for me. 

I found an ad offering a special price and so I called.  I stood to save about 75% so I went out on a limb and called.  Frank of Raspberry Mountain Investments doesn’t have an office, “I’ll come to you” he said.  What the heck.  Why not.  Having my taxes done in the comfort of my own home (with access to all my paperwork in case I forgot something) sounded really convenient.  My taxes aren’t horribly complicated (too complicated for ME mind you, but not too bad in general) so I guessed I’d be able to tell if the guy wasn’t doing things “up to snuff”.

I had friends tell me they thought I was taking my chances having a strange man come to my house.  One of them was considering coming over and bringing her Glock with her just in case I had invited some sort of predator!!! 

Welllll, I needn’t have worried.  He was so thorough and I didn’t feel rushed and I’m pretty sure we maximized my deductions.  And he electronically filed those taxes right there at my dining room table and printed up my copies of everything.  I asked him why his prices were so low, and he told me that after spending many years with a major national firm, he struck out on his own this year and he was using the low prices to build a client base.  It won’t be as cheap next year, but still less than half the cost of having my LA guy do them.

He’s got me for repeat business for sure, and I took a bunch of business cards.

Boy, am I glad my taxes are done.  I hate having them hanging over my head like an executioner’s axe. 

Filing tax returns under the current overwhelmingly complicated tax system are PAIN.

I’d sure like to see some reform there…

If you are looking for a tax man in the 719, give Frank a call!  I highly recommend his services.

Sort of an Unpaid Product Endorsement.  I guess more like an Unpaid Services Endorsement! 

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“Photographic Art-2″ – Photo Friday

PHOTO FRIDAY

(click above for more information)

Today’s Photo Friday entry is entitled: Photographic Art-2 © Jan Marshall 

I was really glad when our latest Photo Friday assignment was to give us another shot at “Photographic Art”.  I call this offering “Petrified Warhol”.

The original picture was of a petrified tree stump at the Florissant Fossil Beds in Florissant, Colorado.  Taking a little bit of inspiration from Andy Warhol, I came up with this:

The colors are bit tamer than the ones Warhol used for his repetitive image silkscreens, but I like the overall effect.  I think it looks more like a frozen waterfall than wood.

Please check out the other participants’ work!

A Curious State of Affairs

Idea Jump

Sky Windows

Just For Fun

I’ll add links more links if any more participants decide to play!

Next week’s challenge is a really good one!  “It’s Life Imitating High Art”.  We are to recreate an actual work of art in a photograph!  Fun fun!

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Good-Bye My Excellent Friend

Many of you have followed my posts on Scott and Joanne “Cuddles”.  I have not updated their story in a long time.  Sadly, this is to be my final update.  Scott passed away on March 24th after a nearly year long tango with pancreatic cancer.  I attended his memorial yesterday and was witness to the impact Scott had on so many people. 

Thank you Scott for your friendship, your guidance, your wisdom, your love, and your acceptance.  Thank you for modeling a marriage that was godly and a life that was filled to overflowing with joy, grace and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Thank you for sharing Joanne (and the rest of your family) with me.  Thank you for always striving for excellence in whatever you put your hands and mind to.   

Indeed, you have brought God glory on earth by completing the work He gave you to do.  (John 17:4)

I am better for having known you…

Good-bye my excellent friend. 

(Click HERE to visit the memorial webpage which has been set up to honor Scott’s life)

“The View Through My Window” – Photo Friday

PHOTO FRIDAY

(click above for more information)

Today’s Photo Friday entry is entitled: The View Through My Window © Jan Marshall 

When I get up early on the days I have to get up early, I am able to watch part of the sunrise through the bathroom window in my shower.  However, since I didn’t have to get up early this week, I have missed every opportunity to photograph the morning display.  And the views from the rest of my windows didn’t do much for me this week either.

So, I trudged to the archives and found a favorite view through a special window in my past.  This is the view from my kitchen window this past summer with Teen Missions in Ispica, Sicily:

That’s wisteria on the lattice, and that’s the Mediterranean in the distance.  The picture doesn’t do its beauty justice, and it doesn’t capture the warm and faintly salty breeze rustling through the olive and almond trees.  My window had no screen and I could see out of the window from pretty much wherever I was in the kitchen.  Sigh.  It was a long hard summer, but this view?  This view refreshed me and recharged my batteries on a daily basis…

Please visit the other participant’s work!

A Curious State of Affairs

Idea Jump

Just For Fun

Sky Windows

I’ll be adding links to any other participants who want to play!

Next week we’re having another go at Photographic Art – “Photographic Art-2″.  I’m already thinking about what I can do! 

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Unpaid Product Endorsement for the Day – Q-tips

Time for another UPE! 

And let’s just say I learned the hard way that it doesn’t matter how great a deal you get on those other cotton swabs.  But I learned FAST!

If they were giving off-brands away, I’d get in the line to pay full price for the real deal!

While looking for an image to put in my blog I came across another blogger’s post about a friend of hers who discovered that her boyfriend had generic Q-tips.  Her potential future life with this man flashed before her eyes — generic food items, plastic covered furniture, cheap clothing, etc.  She broke up with him the next day.

I might do the same thing, but I’d ask 1) if this was the first time he’d purchased them and 2) would he purchase them again.  If the answer to number 1 was yes and number 2 was no, I’d probably stick around.  If the answers were reversed, I think I’d have to bail, too.  Bargain shopping is one thing…terminal cheapness is another. 

So, if I can offer up one little bit of advice…don’t learn the hard way.  Stick to Q-tips.  Use a coupon and get it doubled, that’ll take the sting out of the higher purchase price!

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