Can I Lift My Head Out of My Arms...

[alyrthia]

Hi guys--which means beautiful women, and powerful ladies, in the case of my flist.  Hi.  :)

I think most of my friend's list are non-Americans. Can that be right??? I don't know. MY flist isn't very big (my dear KD friends with ljs)  But anyway, if it is, most of you can be smug while the rest of us can be shaking out heads.

You all know I work as

Comments

[ms_banazira]

Well, Golden_Berry made one of my points for me already; I blame the insurance companies, and the stock holders in them who demand to make a profit. It's greed plain and simple.

And then we have the drug companies, advertising their product on expensive TV ads, and sending the doctors who push their drugs on golf vacations to Hawaii. Some of those drugs may actually have benefits that outweigh the risks of constipation, tooth loss, dizzyness, dry-mouth-eye-colon, etc., but believe me, it's all marketing. Drug reps are by and large nubile women, because the men just can't sell enough of the stuff to keep SmithKlineGlaxoJohnson&Johnson in the style to which they've become accustomed.

My own son has not had medical insurance for the past three years, nor has he seen a dentist in that time. This worries me immensley.

I wonder if we oughtn't be attacking this problem from both ends? Yes, the government could be providing more help to those at the lower end of the economic scale. But couldn't we, as consumers of the insurance cartel's product, demand more accountability, less profit-taking, and more help to those the purport to be there for. (Good Hands, indeed!) It is they, after all, who put your friend in the dreadful position of opting out of her kidney treatment. It is they who made that poor man who exemplifies insurance corruption and beauractic decision-making in Sicko, choose which of his severed fingers to have reattached!

Also, I'm not really so sure that I want to pay more taxes so that hubby-darling can have a four-week vacay every year. For reasons that are probably impossibly tangled France is suffering terrible unemployment woes right now, and really what good is four or five weeks when you don't have a job, and can't go anywhere?

[alyrthia]

...couldn't we, as consumers of the insurance cartel's product, demand more accountability, less profit-taking, and more help to those the purport to be there for.

Right you are!!!!! (if I do say so myself) :)

In Washington State--during our last legislative session, a bill narrowly lost that would have given the Insurance Commissioner authority to regulate insurance rate increases. The Commissioner was furious when, as soon as the session was over (and the bill lost), Regence Blue Shield raised rates on individual policies 19%-40%. This is supposedly a non-profit company and yet it is the most profitable insurance company in Washington. THey had a surplus of $890,000,000 last year. Instead of putting it back into health care for their policy holders, they raised prices--particulary on older clients. Generally what they do is you pay insurance all you life, but when you get older and might truly begin to need it--they start pricing you out of the Market. Thus another friend of mine whose business gets better every year, works harder and harder (80 hours a week)--the business gets richer, but she gets poorer because her health insurance rates get hiked up again and again.

So, yeah. It would be nice if the industries, seeing change coming, would change themselves. It would seem like self-preservation, wouldn't it?

And yeah, I can't speak to the unemployment situation in France. YOu may be right. But I do know that a lot of Americans would rather pay more than have to work as much as they do. I don't mean just the poorer folk who don't earn alot, and also don't get time off...but in our area I think there is something akin to white collar slavery going on sometimes: highly skilled people who get a lot of pay, but HAVE to work overtime or they lose their jobs. I'm not sure if it's the exact same now, or not, but I used to have close contact with lots of microsoft people who were swimming with cash, but who were barely ever had time for anything but work. Same thing in other companies. My brother works as systems coordinator for an international law firm--no he doesn't get the same money as someone from Microsoft, but he does decently--people get fired right and left in his work environment. You are gone if you refuse to work weekends and overtime when you are asked--and sometimes that means months on end.

So what of the 40 hours work week? Yeah, they get paid for overtime, but they have no choice but to work more than 40 hours.

I don't know the best solution, but I do think so many Americans are kept so busy that they often have no time for community involvement or for family.

I also think that our own employment situation isn't so great...so many jobs are going overseas. Even movie crews are being hired because there is cheaper labor in Romania (for example) (heh heh, a certain director and producer I know spent a bit of time together in Romania recently--I can guess what for!!)

But I DO go on!!!!! (Knock me over the head, girl!! Stop me!!)

But yeah, America needs an American solution. We can't just copy other countries because we are set up differently and have different cultures. We have to come up with American solutions.

Thanks so much for your commentary. AS always, I loved it!!

Did you go see Sicko, by the way? you knew about the fingers!! Or did you read that in a review???

Have a lovely night!!!!!! Sleep tight!!!!!!