Otolaryngologists Are Fun!

Who could have known that otolaryngologists are such a happening bunch? First, I called my regular doctor and tried setting up an appointment. The secretary kept mumbling that the doctor wasn't there and seemed weirdly reluctant to answer my question as to when the doctor was coming back. Since then I discovered that the doctor had been arrested for Medicare fraud, so the right answer as to when he was coming back was probably, "Oh, he'll be back in five to fifteen, right after he serves out his sentence. Will your ailment keep till then?"

My ailment couldn't keep, so I went to another doctor who practices in the same building complex. Of course, all that doctor wanted to do was gossip about his colleague who'd been arrested.

"He is a nasty guy," the new doctor told me. "I never say mean things about colleagues, except for this guy. He also puts tubes into people. Did he put anything in you?"

"No," I said, feeling very fortunate to have escaped the sad fate of having things put in me.

"So," the doctor said while glancing at my papers that listed my university as the provider of the medical insurance I was using for the visit. "Does your Mommy work for the university?"

"No," I said, while suffering shooting pains in my ear. "I work for the university."

The doctor looked at me in a way condescending adults look at precocious children and drawled,

"Really? And what do you do for the university?"

"I teach Spanish literature," I responded, losing all hope of ever being taken seriously. 

"And what would your date of birth be again?" the doctor asked in a kindly tone. 

Since speaking was very painful, I let him scan my papers on his own.

"Oh," the doctor said. "Huh. OK, ma'am, I will now give you a prescription for some medication and we will be done here."

The ear drops I got are very good and I feel much better already.

Healthcare Bill and Selling Out Women

Aimée Thorne-Thomsen, Executive Director of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, says:

Many of us who believed in the ideals of hope and change thought that we could achieve universal health care, if not in policy, then certainly in practice. That didn't happen. Poor people, immigrants, and women, among others, were all used as bargaining tools from the very beginning. As often is the case, women's bodies and health, was the ultimate battleground. The Stupak Amendment and then the Nelson Amendment in the Senate banned the use of public funds for abortion. Both were unnecessary and redundant because the Hyde Amendment, which has been renewed every year since it was first introduced in 1977, remains in place. But that wasn't enough. Stupak and Nelson went further by also barring women who would use the exchanges from getting insurance that would cover abortion. When that still did not satisfy Stupak and his anti-choice cronies, the President agreed to sign an executive order barring public funding of abortion in return for their support for the overall bill. Women's health was traded away for a handful of votes.

I've heard it said that the Democrats love women, unlike the Republicans who obviously hate us, so that's why women should vote for the Democratic candidates. Well, of course, they love us. If it weren't for women, they wouldn't have anything to trade off for votes in case of need. Today, whenever you need some conservative support for your legislation, all you have to do is to humiliate women and deprive them of their rights even more.

I keep wondering what would have happened in this respect if Clinton had been elected instead of Obama.

Healthcare Bill Has Finally Passed

And a good thing, too, because I couldn't take the suspense any more. The whole process of waiting for the news and seeing the struggle for the votes has been brutal. Of course, the bill has been watered down like crazy since its initial version but I guess at this point it's better than nothing. But finally one can think and read about something else than the bill.
The main reason why I'm happy about it is because I really wanted something to work out for President Obama. With Congress and Senate filled to the brim with corrupt politicians, he has not been able to make anything work. It will be good for the morale of his presidency to win something finally. We'll see how well this bill works. Of course, anything is better than the horrible system that was in place before.

Why the US cannot go the way of all developed countries (for example, Canada, which is close enough to be learned from and imitated) and institute a normal, nationalized healthcare system, is beyond me. But this is something.

Kudos to President Obama for not giving up. I have a newfound respect for the perseverance of this admirable man.

Birth Control Held Hostage

Getting a prescription for birth control pills is an incredible pain in the neck. Normally, you are required to see a gynecologist once a year to get a year-long prescription. Even that is stupid because there is absolutely no reason to make birth control into prescription medication. But the doctors need to make money and this is one way of making sure women are forced to see them and pay exorbitant sums for these unnecessary visits. Now, even that silly system doesn't often work the way it is supposed to.

Since I moved, I went to a new doctor for my prescription. I was only given one for 3 months and asked to come again for a new one because I am a new patient. My health insurance paid the doctor $132 for this 10 minute long visit. The entire visit consisted of me engaging in the following idiotic conversations with the nurse (I didn't even get to see the doctor):

Nurse: Have you had any pregnancies?
Me: No.
Nurse: Any abortions?

I don't know what she thought I could have aborted since I had already said I'd had no pregnancies. This mystery remains unsolved. Then we had the following exchange:

Nurse: Have you been married for a long time?
Me: A month.
Nurse: Huh! That's strange.
Me: Why?
Nurse: You look like you have been married a long time.

I still don't know whether to take this as a compliment or an insult.

Now I have to go back for more inane conversations in the same style. I swear to God, it's easier to get access to heroin than to simple harmless birth control. Of course, nobody is interested in making these unnecessary visits to a doctor disappear as part of this so-called healthcare reform.

Even with prescription insurance, a packet of pills (that lasts a month) costs $28. It is so frustrating to hear all the anti-abortion propaganda in a society where access to legal birth control is so painful and expensive. How can anybody expect a teenager from an underprivileged background, for example, to have money for this prescription and the endless visits to the doctor to get it in the first place?

Idiocy Rules

The reason why brainless, giggly, ignorant people like Sarah Palin are so dangerous is that their total lack of intelligence prevents them from upholding any moral norms whatsoever. As political opponents such people are truly lethal. Their one-track minds allow them to say or do anything because the ends for them always justify the means. Since this clown came out with her lies about President Obama's healthcare plan, many people have been gullible enough to believe her disgusting prevarication. Normal, kind and compassionate people who believed Palin are simply not cynical enough to even imagine that everything she says about the plan (and anything else, for that matter) is a baseless invention of her sorry excuse for a brain.

President Obama has now been forced to explain his healthcare reform plans on the pages of the New York Times. A huge part of his op-ed piece is dedicated to dispelling the idiotic myths that disgusting losers of Palin's ilk have been spreading around in order to scare people: "This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies." Isn't it sad that Palin, who has been inept both as a Vice-Presidential candidate and a Governor, should have this much power to make people scared and the President nearly apologetic just by spewing forth some insane stupidity?

Obama tries very hard to bring the scared victims of Palin's cynicism back to seeing reason: "In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people. That is not a future I want for my children, or for yours. And that is not a future I want for the United States of America. In the end, this isn’t about politics. This is about people’s lives and livelihoods."

The sad reality, however, is that for immoral cynics like Palin it 's about politics. She wants power, she wants to be important, she wants to think that politically she hasn't been a total flop. So she will continue lying, prevaricating, cheating, faking, etc. This empty shell of a human being has nothing but her greed and resentment to guide her. Just as we finally got rid of George W., we have to be saddled with a female version of his cynical, immoral, greedy stupidity.

I'm sure that many of my readers will remark that this is a very angry post. I am angry, people. I've been trying for a while to figure out what Obama's helathcare plan is about, what's good about it and what's bad. But Palin and her radio talk-show clowns have hijacked the discussion. All we can hear now are some ridiculous accusations on one side and some feeble attempts to fend them off on the other side. There is screaming and howling, which have left no space for a reasonable, well-informed discussion. This, of course, was Palin's goal from the start. She and her friends feel uncomfortable in discussions where people use three-syllable words and construct sentences complete with the subject, the verb and the object.

The question remains: will the cult of ignorance that culminated with Bush's election and Palin's nomination now rob us of a chance to have the healthcare reform we so deperately need?