Health

O Canada


I have a confession to make. When I lived in the United States, I was a have. My teaching position provided me and my family with Lexus like health benefits. The co-pays were manageable and even the prescription drug package worked more or less within the budget.

My doctor was actually a nurse practioner, but she was fabulous. She listened and accepted my googling and input into my own care. Same day appointments were almost never a problem and the clinic she was attached to even had limited walk-in clinic hours on the weekends. There was never an issue about getting refills over the phone or her faxing the pharmacy with orders.

Now I live in western Canada. The province of Alberta was one of the few that charged an annual fee to its residents for the universal health care they received. I was a bit stunned to discover that for a single person, it was about $525 CAN a year. I don’t think a U.S. citizen could find an insurance company which would charge so little per month. However, most Albertans disliked the fee and come this January, the province is eliminating it completely. Health care will be a right of residency. Read Full Article

Say Goodbye to Self Control


In honor of the Democratic Convention, I am breaking my No POTUS rule to remind everyone (and by everyone I mean women) why Obama should be elected this coming November.

The Bush Administration has decided to unilaterally redefine what constitutes an abortion based on religious tenets rather than accepted medical/scientific fact. The unilateral part shouldn’t surprise anyone. When hasn’t the Bush Administration pandered and subverted in its own best interests?

What should alarm us, even those of us with sincere religious beliefs, is that the definition is so broad that it will effectively bar women from obtaining prescription birth control and will have a profoundly negative effect on research into a variety of health issues from infertility to stem cell therapy to cancer.

I have thought all along that the Pro-Lifers’ real target was the denial of birth control to as many women of child bearing age as possible. The conservative right cannot hope to force us back to the never existed at all hey-day of Reagan’s imaginary America if women are able to control their own reproductive processes.

It’s all about shoving the horse back through a closed barn door, people. It won’t be pretty. And don’t think for a minute that a McCain regime will roll any of this back.

The right in the U.S. are all about stripping women of any and all rights we have gained since the early 1970’s, and McCain especially is hoping that women aren’t looking up his real voting but instead are blinding by his ad campaign. The man is not a maverick. He is a slave to his party and its base – ultra conservatives – and a religious right so fanatical that Islamic jihadists could learn things from them.

Freedom is at stake this election but not in Iraq, ladies.

Happy Shiny People? Not in the United States


Gallup published the findings of its on-going health and well-being survey and discovered that Americans would be happier and healthier if they lived in Denmark. Using the same poll, 83% of Danes are not just happy and healthy, they are thriving. Compare that to the United States were just 49% of people are thriving while nearly as many people are struggling (47%) if not actively suffering (4%).

This probably comes as no news to Americans who are in the middle of a presidential election that likely won’t rid the White House of the Republican menace and enduring yet another slide in home valuations amid economic slow down, sky-rocketing gasoline prices and steadily increasing food prices. Americans know that it sucks to be them, and if they didn’t after Barack Obama set them straight on their “bitterness” problem that manifests in a complusive need to go to church, legally arm themselves and talk smack about immigrants, well now they do.

And if you are thinking that this might be some worthless study that some pointy domed researcher at Harvard will parse into a best-selling self-help tome to secure his tenure and meet Oprah, you would be correct in thinking so as there is plenty of precedent – but still very wrong. The researchers hope that their findings which can be broken down by occupation, commute time and exercise habits, will help employers better understand what they can do to create happier and healthier workers. And if that isn’t enough to give the thinking person nightmare visions of the future, there is the further hope that these same statistics could even be used to compare health and happiness by ZIP code, creating quite a measuring stick for future generations of politicians.

Excuse me? There is happiness to be found as a cog in the great wheel of capitalism while being political pawns of Satan?

And it gets better.

“There’s never been anything quite like it,” said Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in economic sciences.

“You’re getting details about what it’s like to live in this country,” said Kahneman, a Princeton University professor brought in by Gallup to discuss the potential uses for the data. “What is the experience of the weekend? What is the experience of the weekday for someone who is sick and has to go to work in the morning? We are going to learn a great deal about what are the determinants of actual happiness.”

Determinants of actual happiness? Weekends. They make most people happy whereas having to go to work sick – not so much. They need to break down data to figure this out? Yes. The answer is yes because it’s not about people being happy and healthy and thriving. It’s about corporations making profits for shareholders and politicians manipulating the masses sedated with “happiness”. Kind of Matrix-y, don’t ya think? Find out what people want and plug them into it.