Don't Want Health Care Reform? Must Be Nice to Live in LaLa Land.

Unlike everyone else on the planet, I am waiting to see what is in the final health care bill before I implode. I haven't seen so many Chicken Little's running about since Harry and Louise (or whoever those terribly concerned people were who agonized over the Clinton health care plan sitting at their kitchen table every single day until they killed the bill.) The anti-health-care camp keeps protesting about big government takeover of medicine, of government bureaucracy getting in the way of the sacred doctor/patient relationship. They obviously have better health care than I've had in many years. In their perfect world, their doctor tells them what they want, and magically, it is done. This drug is prescribed. They get it! This treatment is thought to be beneficial. It is done. Must be nice to live in Lala Land.

In the world in which I live-- the world in which most of us live--bureaucrats tell us every single day what we can and cannot do, what treatments we can and cannot have, what drugs we may and may not be prescribed. Within the past month, my doctor gave me samples of a drug which improved a chronic medical condition for me appreciably. She therefore prescribed it. The group from whom I get my meds-- a large pharmaceutical group that is part of a Medicare advantage plan-- told me they could not allow me to have it because they did not have it on their list for patients with my condition. I purchased a month's worth myself, out of pocket, for $101.00.

Shortly thereafter, I received a letter stating. "X manages your prescription drug benefit at the request of your health plan. Certain non-preferred drugs are not covered by our plan. Your benefit plan requires that we review requests for coverage of certain non-preferred drugs…." It goes on to say that my doctor can further explain why I need this drug and that she had done so. Then they noted that my request for this "is approved." However, there is a huge BUT. "You should know that in addition to being reviewed for coverage eligibility, every prescription also undergoes a professional practice and safety review. (And now in bold print) If this review results in any concern, you might receive a quantity of medication that is less than what your doctor prescribed." (This medicine is not a narcotic, but they were treating it as though it were.)

These Nay-Sayers in Congress and pundits who talk about all the choices we have and all the non-interference we now have with our plans certainly don't have any idea what people like me experience. I have no choice in the insurance I have. (And so, for many of us, it matters not how many insurance companies there are in this country, does it?) My teacher retirement plan put all Medicare eligible retirees into a Medicare advantage plan, and the advantage has been for the insurance company, not to me. And, as the above narrative reveals, it doesn't matter what my doctor feels is best for me, my not-very-advantageous plan and the big pharma reviewers decide what is best for them and their bottom line, according to what is on one of their charts. None who make these decisions for me after my doctor's initial diagnosis and prescribed treatment have ever met me, let alone taken my vital signs.

So, when I hear these people bemoan what a horror it will be for Big Government to get between my doctor and me, I long for the days when I only had big government with Medicare (and no advantage) between me and my doctor. Now, I have the government, an insurance company and big pharma between us. Who are they kidding?

Guns, Guns Everywhere! Why Don't I Feel Safer?

I don't know about you, but I feel as though I've awakened in the middle of a real-life episode of Gunfight at the OK Corral, or worse yet, a gangster flick starring multiple Al Pacino archetypes wearing assault weapons as though they were the new bling of the new Gun Toting Fear Monger Coalition. Even now, I cannot believe what I've been seeing and hearing, and I marvel that some of these people can't even recognize the insanity of what they are saying and doing.

So many of the pistol packers express feelings of safety and security for themselves when they have a conceal-and- carry permit, when they get to cuddle their very own gun where no one else can see it. I don't know about the rest of you, but fearing that someone with a hidden gun is standing behind me, waiting in a long and slow grocery-store checkout line while they do a price check on an item I have to have makes me very nervous these days. Let's face it, people do snap from time to time.

Listening to the Second Amendment proponents justify the carrying of loaded guns, even those AR-15 assault rifles, anywhere near our president just baffles me. First of all, nearly all of these gun lovers fail to mention the initial part of the Second Amendment, the only amendment in the Bill of Rights that appears to be less unequivocal than the other nine.

Amendment II reads: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

None of the Second Amendment proponents ever forget words like right, bear Arms, shall not be infringed. However, I have yet to hear any of them even whisper the words well regulated.

Let's get my bona fides straight right now. I grew up south of the Mason-Dixon Line and live there still. All of the men in my family for generations were and are hunters. Many were champion trap and skeet shooters. Heck, I bird hunted myself until I had my third child, and in my twenties, I won a turkey at a trap shoot. So, I am not anti-gun. I no longer have my 28 gauge, but my brothers own more than one gun, and I want them to be able to keep them.

But, who needs an assault weapon? And why? How much sense does it make for anyone to suggest that it would be perfectly all right for a gymnasium full of people to be armed while listening to the president? To John Veleco, speaking for Gun Owners of America on Hardball with Chris Matthews August 19th, it is a lovely idea. He knows that gun owners are all "law-abiding citizens." How in the world does one tell the difference between a law-abiding person with a gun and a killer or a madman with a gun? (Having taught hundreds of young adults over the years, three young men-- that I know of-- were convicted of murder a few years after graduation. I can tell you that it is not always easy to spot the person most likely to kill, I don't care what anyone says.)

And those Senators and Representatives who are currently proclaiming the rights of these people who are carrying their guns into areas near the proximity of President Obama need to revisit the wording of the recent Supreme Court decision (District of Columbia Et al v. Heller 2008) that did allow handguns in D. C. and read the entire decision. After maintaining the right "to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home," Scalia writes, in the majority opinion: "Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose…." He then goes on to list many of the now existing regulations on firearm ownership, sales, and use. Again people, right to bear arms comes after the term "well regulated militia." Let's not forget the well regulated part.

I have fond memories of Saturday afternoon cowboy matinees at the local theatre, but I don't enjoy it one bit when I see a bad version of the Old West alive and in living color today in the 21st century. Granted, some people are angry. That's fine. But aren't we a century plus beyond a gunfight on Main street over health care, the deficit, or TARP?

Holster you guns, cowpokes! Our Founding Fathers did not walk around armed and dangerous. They wore tights and ruffled lace blouses for Pete's sake. Leave the Old West mentality in the 1800's where it belongs, and let's try to be as enlightened as the Founding Fathers were, an enlightenment based on reason and not fire power.