Day: July 14, 2009

Random Thoughts

As a regular feature of Info Ink I post the notes that I have taken that do not make it as a post by themselves…..I take way too many notes….I need a life…….

1–Illinois Senator Roland Burris, who was appointed to Barack Obama’s Senate seat by impeached former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich amid a cloud of controversy, has announced that he will not seek election to the Senate in 2010–how many did not see this coming?

2–Billionaire T. Boone Pickens has pulled the plug on his wind farm idea….seems like his hedge fund has taken a big hit and the price of oil is low enough as to be more attractive than trying to solve the import prob………looks like my page,  “will the addict return?,  is more insightful than I had imagined.  That is way cool!

3–The CIA lied…but that is a given……

4–Palin is a renegade?  Time sez so….so it must be true….I still do not see her as a renegade.

5–Running Of The Bull—nope…not talking about Pamplona, Spain…but rather the whole Palin drama that is unfolding.

6–A new term has being added to the English language….Pulling A Palin……basically means, “when the going gets tough, Quit!”….a cowards way out.

7–Yes there is more Palin drama, Johnston says he lived with the Palin family from early December to the second week in January. He claims he heard the governor several times say how nice it would be to take advantage of the lucrative deals that were being offered, including a reality show and a book.  If true it is all about the money.

8–Military suicides soar–Suicides in the US Army are on the rise with 88 suspected cases in the first six months of the year, compared to 67 in the same period in 2008, according to Pentagon figures issued.

The latest figures confirmed warnings from top US military officers that the number of suicides among active-duty soldiers this year was on track to surpass a record level set in 2008.

Last year 128 soldiers took their lives, up from 115 in 2007, amid increasing strain on Army troops serving repeated combat tours.  This is just wrong!

9–Is it just me or does the whole “reverse mortgage” thing sound like a scam?

10-Dems!  Get over yourself and move on from the CIA “told you so” BS…there is too much to be done to keep harping on crap!~

11-Sarah Palin has called on Alaska to make a “new” set of ethics laws–I guess so with about 12 or so filed against her….she would be interested in changing things.

12–Damn!  Rep. Boehner of Ohio has a helluva tan…..either he does little to no work or he lives and sleeps in a tanning bed.

13-Latoya Jackson sez MJ was murdered and she knows by whom…but she did not name ….this from a well documented whacko.  What a snooze!

14-Would the Sotomayor ruling be as important to the Repubs if the firemen had been black?  This and the CIA crap is noting but cable news catnip….the important stuff is health and the economy….but the other is used to divert attention from important issues.

Insurance Could Compete With The Public Option

The Public Option is taking a lot of heat in the current health care debate in the Congress….of course many are saying that the insurance companies could not compete with the option and that they would lose all their money if the public option is adopted.

On the BNET Healthcare website I found the following suggestion:

So how would the private health plans compete with the government-backed plan? “Offering a public health insurance plan as an alternative choice should be a catalyst for private plans to innovate in the way they operate and pay for care,” the report states. “It would help them reduce their administrative costs and implement payment and system reforms that lead to more appropriate utilization, better care, and slower cost growth—and, in the process, contribute to reduced premiums.”

The authors suggest that “community health plans” that partner with integrated delivery systems would be in a good position to reduce costs through joint preventive and chronic care programs. But even if truly integrated hospital-and-doctor systems were more widespread than they are, health systems and health plans have not had a good track record of working together when they’re not fighting over rates.

The Commonwealth Fund has another bright idea: “Private plans could also be given the authority to adopt public plan payment methods and rates.” Whoa! If that means what I think it does, the government and private plans would jointly decide what they wanted to pay providers. I don’t think that idea would go down very well among hospitals and physicians — although in the long run, we may have no other choice.

Finally, the report predicts that if private plans adopted effective cost-control measures “sufficient to slow a rise in their premiums relative to trends in public plan premiums,” the private and public plans would be charging about the same within five years.

If these other “options” were considered then could the insurance industry truly compete with the proposed public option?  If so, then argument that the insurance company is spending $1.4 million a day trying to defeat would be a waste of money, IMO.

Could “Family Values” Help Gay Marriage?

This subject has nothing but dynamite attached to it…..but the party of “family values” is losing its hold on the term.  Repub after Repub is caught in the act of marital infidelity, so how can they keep spouting the crap they spout?

Attorney Evan Wolfson has made some very compelling observations:

Wolfson doesn’t believe the central issue is Sanford’s infidelity. “It’s his abuse of power, his hypocrisy and his dereliction of public duty.” He paints all the “family values” politicians who commit marital infidelities with the same brush.

“They are all self-proclaimed moral crusaders who demonize and discriminate against some of their constituents because they’re gay and then turn around and flout the so-called morality that they invoked against gay people,” he said. “To me, the really unpardonable part is not their personal failings; it’s their political and policy choices that turn out to be so hypocritical and destructive.”

So, then, why do social conservatives insist on linking marriage and religion when same-sex marriage advocates are not asking that religious institutions must marry lesbians and gays, Wolfson says there are really two different groups at play:

He believes that there are some among the opposition who are truly “theocratic” and would like to impose on others their biblically derived laws in defiance of the U.S. Constitution. But others use religion as an excuse because they are still uncomfortable with gay people and conflicted about the freedom to marry.

How, then can marriage equality advocates use the “family values” politicians committing marital indiscretions to their advantage? “I think that their hypocrisy speaks for itself and helps move the case for legalization forward,” Wolson said. “Because many of them have been the bomb-throwing leaders of the anti-gay campaign, every time one of them is taken out it allows for the fair-minded to think anew and move in the right direction.”

Advocates aren’t just sitting by watching the conservative hypocrites self-destruct. They are reaching out to those who are religious and remain on the fence about supporting same-sex marriage.

I really hate to be a buzz kill….but the religious right will not get off the marriage thing…no matter how many of their “flock” stray.