My Healthcare Take

I've been kind of avoiding political news lately. Still listening to my NPR and AM Conservative radio in the morning and evenings respectively, but it's kind of carried over to my not keeping any sort of blog lately. I could swear I've written about health care before, and now I'm thinking I'll go back and check again. Ok I haven't. Good.

The catalyst for writing this was an email I got from my mom. Her email forwards are pointedly against any Democrat and Obama is the devil in her mind. Still love my mom dearly, and she may be right to feel the way she does, I just don't know. Anyway the latest email was about an interview he gave where he was asked if he would use the health care plan that he's proposing. He dodged the question implying that he would not and he would keep his own Presidential plan. It went on to say that the proposed legislation adds verbiage exempting the president and senators from using it.

I'll add the quote and apologize for the all caps.

SO, THIS GREAT NEW HEALTH CARE PLAN THAT IS GOOD FOR YOU AND I... IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR OBAMA, HIS FAMILY OR CONGRESS...??

WE (THE AMERICAN PUBLIC) NEED TO STOP THIS PROPOSED DEBACLE ASAP !!!!... THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG !!!!!

PERSONALLY, I CAN ONLY ACCEPT A UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE OVERHAUL THAT EXTENDS TO EVERYONE... NOT JUST US LOWLY CITIZENS... WHILE THE WASHINGTON "ELITE" KEEP RIGHT ON WITH THEIR GOLD-PLATED HEALTH CARE COVERAGES.

This misses the point if you ask me and makes an assumption about health care that's erroneous. It assumes that everyone is as valuable as everyone else. We're not. The harsh reality is this. Some jobs are more important than others. It's the whole reason that Capitalism works the way that it does. If you have a job that is more important, influential, or are in some other way irreplaceable, you will be compensated more handsomely.

Senator and president fall into the influential group, and in some cases irreplaceable. Health insurance for anyone is so that they can continue to provide the service/function that they do for their company. It has nothing to do with elitism as this email claims.
The whole idea that the president should use the health care system that he's proposing kind of weakens the argument of those who don't want it passed. These are the same folks that are against socialism in any form. Pick a side folks. Either you admit that his job is more important and stick to your capitalist view that his insurance should be better, or accept that socialist medicine is preferable. You can't have it both ways. Wanting him to use the health care he's proposing is a socialist mindset.

There's one other point about the health care debate that bothers me and that is this. I don't go to the doctor. I haven't visited a doctor for myself in easily over a year. My family is a different story of course. The insurance I have is for them. This isn't because I'm incredibly healthy or anything either. I do what I can to stay healthy and to avoid needing the doctor. Don't drink or smoke for example. I've quit coffee, and even sugar for the most part.

The whole health industry is geared toward treating sick people and not promoting wellness. There is no motivation for doctors to get you healthy other than their passion for solving a problem, or feeling like a hero. Monetarily it makes more sense to keep you alive, but not well.

The Primary Care Physician idea was supposed to fix this, but ended up having the problem of denying treatment to stay solvent instead of promoting wellness.

So here's the problem. Policies are being decided by doctors, politicians, and sick people. Where are the well people in this equation? Paying for sickies which is either incredibly altruistic or completely unfair depending on your point of view I suppose.

Church Yesterday

Wrangling kids during church can be a headache. Especially when you move from 'man-on-man to a zone defense'. Luckily with Grandma to help, we do a decent job of keeping all the kids occupied and attended to. Ah who am I kidding? It's a struggle every week.

Usually, one child will be asking to go to the bathroom while another needs a drink, and the third needs your focus every second to keep him occupied. And if the baby didn't get to eat before sacrament, you can bet mom will need to take him out at some point. When she leaves, #3 will be inconsolable leaving me with the no win decision of either leaving a 7 and 9 year old alone in the pews trusting that they won't get into a spat, or letting the crying 2 year old disturb everyone in the chapel.

Now that you have an appreciation for what it's normally like, let me give you a run-down of what it was like yesterday.

Andrew was not feeling well, and neither was Meg, so they stayed home. The baby of course needed to stay with momma since he's still nursing. This left me to go to church with the two older boys. I opted to not take the Sun. bag with Friend magazines, and church coloring books, just to see how the boys would do with paying attention to the speakers.

It went surprisingly well. Hyrum was attentive the entire time, and Sean was not disruptive at all. He did get bored and laid his head down to nap, but at least he was quiet. It was actually a pleasure having them sit with me. I was a very proud papa indeed.

This was particularly welcomed this Sun. because all three speakers spoke on Reverence. I was a little disappointed that no one used the word revere, but whatever. It was some of the best quality time that I've spent with my big boys in a while, and it was great.

Little Man Can

My brother is in school to become an interpreter. I've had a little bit of experience with ASL and I remember when I was on my mission I was amazed by a little kid that was just barely learning to walk, so about 10-14 months old, who could communicate with his deaf parents already. He walked up to a door that he wanted to walk out of and made the sign for open. Amazing. Short of using some vocabulary software that would get plugged directly into their brains, this kind of communication is impossible to expect for a little person that can hardly form words much less assign meaning to the words and messages.

Andrew's most recent love is Yo Gabba Gabba. So he's made up his own sign for it so we know that's what he wants to watch. At the beginning of the show the host D.J. Lance Rock opens up his magic boom-box with his toys in it. Sparkles come out as he says the magic words "Yooooo gabba gabbaaa..". So Andrew says "Yo Dab Dab" as he opens his hands wide. It's pretty cute. The show kind of tripped me out the first few times I watched it. Like most kid shows, it's very spacey, but now after seeing the I'm So Happy I Can Dance video by the Salteens I've become more a fan, and don't mind sitting with him.

Doing pretty well, considering.

My family is not rich. None of us has much education, and that's got a lot to do with it. Even with that deficit, though, we are doing pretty well for ourselves. We have extended family who by comparison are far more educated than we are, but unemployed. The suggestion has been made more than once that it's a matter of feeling 'too good' for a job.

Luckily, we learned our personal finance skills from our mother. Growing up we worked paper routes, kept exchange students to the point that our home was busting at the seams, and we seldom if ever ate out. Everyone contributed in some way or another for as long as I can remember. Our strength has been in our numbers.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I had this idea a few months back. My brothers and I, while employed and supporting our families, aren't doing as well as we probably could be. All of us are mentally capable, we're a lot smarter than the McPrides give us credit for., but haven't made education a priority in our lives. The idea is that it would be really cool if we all pooled our resources to take care of one family, while the dad knocked out his education really quickly. Then, on down the line. Nothing crazy. Maybe $500/mo per brother, and live very meanly. Maybe at mom's house. And just go to Mesa College and do the maximum of classes to get degrees in the shortest amount of time. Then on to SDSU since it's close and easy to get into. I don't think any of us would take more than 2 years doing the fast track classes and going Summers.

Re-Learning Piano

We got an old beat up piano from my brother David. A lot of the keys stuck and it desperately needs to be tuned, but I figured those could be taken care of and a home needs a piano. It also has writing and scratching on the the coats of paint that are on it. I'm sure I've posted about the piano before so maybe I'll just link to the old post to give you that background description.

Last night I got out the "Step by Step" books because I wanted to start teaching myself again, and they're what I'm used to. I started at about 7:30 amidst the boys needing to get their pajamas on, Andrew vying for my attention and Emmett fussing. After about 15 min I stopped and just went back to the bedtime daddy stuff. As I stood up I thought to myself in facebook third person format "Jared really needs to get a nice electric keyboard."

When I get home, there are only about 2 hours before the kids go to bed. That is spent on some or all of the following parts of the dinner ritual. Preparing, setting the table, gathering the children, eating, clearing the table, cleaning the messes the children have made.... Then after dinner getting the older boys into bed. Believe it or not that pretty much takes up the whole time I'm home before the house needs to be quiet. I have some private time to practice then, but I don't want to keep the big boys up, or wake the nursing baby.

Any good story would have an arc at this point and then somewhere a resolution toward the end....

Ha Ha, just going to stay not a good story I guess.

Messy and Stinky

I promised that I would write a little about our two exchange students.  Let me preface this post by saying that despite the drawbacks to having them in our home, the benefits make up for them.  Not only that, but I actually like both of them.  They are both very sweet girls with whom we genuinely enjoy sharing our home and our dinners.

First is Messy.  She's our little Saudi Arabian.  Messy is Muslim which is no big shocker, but the common sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia is Sunni and she is Shia.  We learned this while her father was staying with us.  One of the benefits to her of living at our house instead of somewhere else was it's proximity to the mosque.  Turns out, it's the wrong denomination.  Oops.  There are some differences stemming from both her culture and religion that we've had to adapt to.  First is the meat.  We can't just go to a regular supermarket anymore for meat.  She only eats 'halal' meats.  Basically it means that the animal has to bleed to death and someone has to invoke the name of Allah while it's dying.  If there's a complete lack of 'halal' meat, kosher is a good alternative.  This turns out to be a benefit, because we end up having a lot more vegetables at dinner.  There are just some nights where meat is too hard to come by and cook.

Now the reason I call her Messy stems from both a cultural and a religious reason.  She's required to wash five times a day, so her personal hygiene is impeccable, but when she uses the bathroom, she must stand in the middle of the floor and dump water over her head because the floor is soaked when she's finished.  Her room is a constant mess with clothes strewn all around and on the floor there are always papers and wrappers and boxes.  Also, back to the bathroom, she doesn't seem to try and put trash into the trash can.  Meg has found trash in the drawers of the sink, in the toilet ... oh and she tries to flush her 'feminine products' which has stopped up the toilet twice.  It doesn't matter much because the water on the floor is already, from what my friend Jeremy says, pooh water.  She has a gardening water pick thing that apparently isn't for her hair.  The water has been so bad in fact, that it's seeped under the door and soaked the carpet so that a water stain has formed in the hall.  Messy messy Messy.

OK now for Stinky.  This is a lot shorter and easier.  While she doesn't keep her room any cleaner, she does do fine with the share bathroom.  Or maybe she just doesn't use it.  She kind of smells.  Whereas Messy has a pleasant scent, Stinky does not.  She must not own deodorant or jut not like the feel of it, but she also showers less often than I do which is saying something.  It's not uncommon for me to go 2 days sans-shower.  And at home, it's even less than that.  I shower at work once or twice a week to save a little $$ on the water bill.  Stinky it seems, might shower twice a week total.  Maybe it's just that she can't get in with Messy hogging it all the time.  Who knows.

Let me reiterate here, that I do actually like both of them.  Stinky is a very caring friend and has been very open to our family right from the beginning.  Messy is very generous and has filled my gas tank at least 3 times, and paid for my parking ticket when I dropped her at the train station.  They both are great with the kids and very willing to play our dinner games with us (Telephone, I'm going to the moon, etc.) and we have shared many laughs with them both.

Services vs. Service

This isn't a fully congealed concept so I apologize ahead of time if the thoughts are kind of random.

Let's go!

We have an exchange student. Two actually. Messy and Stinky are their names. I'll maybe write another post later about why they've been dubbed as such.

Messy, has been with us since the end of February I think. And we took on Stinky the middle of April. Messy we thought, would be leaving us on Sat. and Stinky is scheduled to stay until Sep. Here is the conflict.

Our little French Girl that stayed with us last year, had asked around Jan. if she could come stay with us in July for a month and bring her friend. Meg and I adore her and were happy to agree to it. They'll be sharing a room since we only have 2 bedrooms available for students and only one will be available, so we thought. It turns out that Messy, will not be leaving on Sat. and that she is in fact staying until Aug. 20. So we have 0 rooms available for our French Daughter.

With all that set in place as background, here's the thought that I had. I was thinking about how our sense of community in a capitalist system are based on services rather than on service. See I really like all three of these girls. They're all very sweet, and each has their little quirks, but I wouldn't want to hurt any of their feelings ever. Sharing a home and meals together makes it feel like they are close to family. Really though, they are tenants. Our relationship wouldn't have existed if not for the service that we provide of room and board.

Mulling on this idea while driving Messy to school this morning, it sparked the idea that whole communities are built on this idea of being able to sell goods or services to each other. Even in old agrarian societies (somtimes current ones) the way that people would initially meet was "I have corn you have potatoes, I'll give you some of mine if I can have some of yours". Barter became fruit stands, became farmer's markets, became the town, spawned a need for government, and the next thing you know there's town hall meetings.

By comparison, if all things were equal and everyone has ownership of everything, and personal property is non-existant, the sense of community wouldn't depend on reciprocation at all. Service would be the norm instead of services. One of the great things about churches and to a lesser degree local community organizations, is that money is taken out of the equation. At church, no one get's paid for what they do. All service is provided out of caring for individuals and maybe sometimes from a sense of obligation, and in fact the best of them will pay money for the priviledge of being about to serve the of the group. A peculiar people indeed.