Blog of Jeff

I have decided how I want my funeral handled. I want a nice going away ceremony at Chuck E Cheese. I was there the other night for a school party and I decided it would be perfect. Chuck E himself could invite everyone to come down to the Chuck E Cheese TV studio to say a few words and everyone would wander up there with a confused look. Just seeing how everyone would handle the what to wear question would be priceless. “Do I wear a suit? I mean, it’s Chuck E Cheese. But on the other hand, it’s a funeral. There are no rules that cover this!”

There would be a five-year-old just a few tables over having a birthday party. There would also be a lot of crying but that wouldn’t be from the funeral-goers; it would just be the usual kids totally overdosed on sugar and adrenaline that give Chuck E Cheese its special charm.

Yep, that’s what I want. A bunch of really confused people eating pizza and cinnamon sticks while nearby kids go crazy. I want to hear, “Mommy, mommy, can I have some tokens?”
“No, this is a funeral. Sit down and be quiet.”
“But mommy, we’re at Chuck E Cheese and all the other kids are playing.”
“Oh all right, here’s five dollars. Just make sure you don’t bother the other mourners.”

Jeff’s funeral. A place where a kid can be a kid. It’s perfect. And for one short period of time, I will be able to look up from my little corner of hell, see everybody at Chuck E Cheese and think “I am soooo glad that I am not there …”

MSNBC had an article last Friday talking about new changes being proposed by Obama’s team because it turns out that they weren’t 100% confident that illegal immigrants wouldn’t receive services under the proposed health care reform. Story Here. The basic idea was that the original plan said undocumented Americans would not be allowed to participate. However, there was very little in the bill about checking their documenting status so it would have been easy for some percentage to slide into the system. The revised White House plan adds some of the additional verification mechanisms that Representative Joe Wilson wanted.

So, calling the president a liar can get you somewhere.

The sad and ironic part is that we are being completely stupid and short-sighted by NOT covering illegal immigrants. I am a staunch anti-illegal immigrant person, because I believe that undocumented immigration is a security threat and reduces wages of minimum skilled Americans. I want fences and strong enforcement against employers that hire illegal immigrants. With all that in mind though, I believe health care policy trumps immigration policy. Immigrants will still receive more expensive emergency room treatment and they will still spread contagious diseases. Making sure that all the people in this country, regardless of immigration status, have access to basic medical care and vaccinations lowers costs and risks for all of us. Also, they would be paying premiums into the Exchange. If there are any government program where we should be OK with undocumented workers participating, it should be the one that requires putting money into the system.

I’m not normally very religious but in discussing health reform with my aunt, I started to wonder what Jesus would think about the current debate. She is strongly a small-government conservative who wants government to stay out of health care altogether. She also has a very strong christian faith.

To me, it is very hard to reconcile the current conservative love of free-market based health care and the image of Jesus as a person who always promoted reaching out to the sick, regardless of economic condition, and without regard to personal risk. He treated the poor; he treated the contagious; he never asked for payment; and he encouraged his followers to do the same. He also promoted paying taxes and giving Caesar his due.

With all that in mind, Jesus strikes me as a very public option fellow. He did not believe that a person’s income should determine how much or how good of care they should receive. In fact, he sometimes healed the rich just to show how irrelevant income should be and that he believed in helping all people. And he felt that taxes for governmental services were legitimate. Let’s see, what would we call a system that finds all people equally deserving of health care, regardless of income, and involves paying taxes? I believe that term of art is socialized health care.

Helping the sick was a very, very big deal in the New Testament and Jesus specifically helped rich and poor alike to make the point that their lives were equal before the eyes of God. There is no way, no how, that anyone can make the case that Jesus would have approved of a system where access to health care is based on economic status. It is an absolute contradiction to his teachings. In fact, I think it is fair to say that Jesus would have frowned mightily on the whole notion of people making money by deciding who does and who doesn’t get treatment. You can’t “love thy neighbor” and simultaneously cash a bonus for denying his claim due to a pre-existing condition. Jesus would have passed on the bonus and approved the treatment. We all know that’s what he would have done, because that’s the kind of guy he was.

Conservatives are always talking about how we’re a Christian country, but they sure don’t endorse practicing it in our real public policy. They just want the cosmetic Christianity, with the Ten Commandments monument at every courthouse but they don’t want it any real policy, because Jesus was not a big free-market guy and that just doesn’t work in today’s world. Apparently for conservatives, the free-market trumps Christianity, which trumps government in the pecking order. That’s a shame, because I think some liberals could embrace Christianity if they got to see some conservatives approach health care like Jesus did. (I am pretty sure that Jesus would even have treated illegal immigrants, but that’s a fight for another day …)

The uproar over Obama’s address to school children is so crazy that it is somewhat overwhelming. First, other presidents have done it (republican ones at that). Second, he is the American president and should get some respect as a duly elected leader. The fact that he is our first minority president and that his life story is inspiring makes an address to the schools more interesting but the bottom line is that the president should be able to address the nation’s school kids just because he is president. In fact, it would be a fine tradition for every president to address the schools once every year just as a nice civic-minded, encourage education kind of tradition. I have disagreed with many policies of our last several presidents from both parties but I would never block my child’s opportunity to hear any of them talk.

The media keeps interviewing people who kept their kids home and are all bent out of shape over this. I just wish the media could drop the whole “fair and objective” piece of the story and call these people stupid to their face. Anyone who kept their kid home to avoid the speech is teaching their children what exactly? That our president deserves no respect, that our president is evil, that black people shouldn’t be on TV, or that the president and his ideas are so dangerous that exposure to him may cause instant, uncontrollable changes in behavior? I can’t think of one positive message that comes from telling your children that they should not be exposed to their president. It’s a close-minded, “we don’t agree with him, we don’t like him, and we aren’t going to listen to him” message of stupidity/bigotry. For all of those people always complaining about biases in the media, this was an opportunity for the children to hear Obama’s message without CBS/FOX/ABC/CNN tilting the message in any direction. And some people took that opportunity away from their children, an opportunity to learn. What kind of quality parenting involves taking opportunities to learn away from their children?

The only people who are indoctrinating our children with anything are the ones that are “protecting” them from hearing our president’s message and ideas. Those kids get to hear their parents’ views of the world for the other 99% of their childhood. Education ought to be about learning and learning comes from being exposed to new ideas, whether we agree with them or not. I can fully respect a parent that sits down with their children and tells them why they don’t like Obama’s policies and ideas but hiding their children from those policies and ideas like they are an infectious disease is disrespectful and unpatriotic. You can be a patriotic American without agreeing with the president but you can’t be a patriotic American if you don’t know who your president is and what he believes. Neither can our children.

We got a different type of toothpaste at the store the other day and I am now wondering if the world needs this many different types. There is toothpaste for smokers, toothpaste for people with sensitive teeth, toothpaste with whiteners, toothpaste that fights plaque, toothpaste that fights gingivitis, toothpaste with mouthwash, plus all of those different flavors.

Do we really need all those types of toothpaste? I mean, I like the new toothpaste. But I also liked the old toothpaste. In fact, I don’t remember ever having a type of toothpaste that made me go, “Wow, that is totally unacceptable.”

Despite all the conventional wisdom about humans not liking change, apparently people like changing their toothpaste every time they buy a new tube. My guess is companies do this is because 99% of the ingredients in toothpaste are the same in every type, brand, and flavor. And those ingredients probably cost less than a nickel, leaving dollars of pure profit for every tube of “new and improved, mouth-whitening, germ-killing, plaque reducing, sensitivity reducing, kiss improving” variety they can bring to market.

By the way, I would really like some chocolate toothpaste …

The past several years have shown the senate has a hard time doing anything without the threat of filibusters. I like the idea of filibusters in general because there’s something somewhat romantic about a minority standing up to a majority with a marathon speech from the heart. There’s also something funny about the picture of a guy reading from the phone book. But what sucks these days is the use of a purely procedural filibuster and how easy it is. It used to require the physical presence of a quorum for the entire thing.

One interesting not is that the senate majority leader has the authority to require a traditional filibuster. My question is why he doesn’t make the filibuster the complete pain in the ass that it used to be. If republicans and centrists democrats are really willing to hold the senate hostage with a filibuster and allow the media to record them doing it, then I say let them.

When it comes to the filibuster, there is too much civility and convenience. It should be a desperate act during extreme circumstances, not a casual everyday occurrence.

One of the good things about all the health insurance policy discussion is that it is an opportunity to learn about aspects of the American health care system that a lot of people don’t know. Today, there was an article on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2227082/) about how Medicare and private insurers slant towards specialists instead of primary care physicians. The reform in Massachusetts is cited as an example of how those incentives play out. MA has great hospitals, almost everyone is insured, more medical professionals per capita than other states, and yet has a shortage of primary care physicians.

The bottom line is that they system is built to favor procedures performed by specialists over face-to-face care by a primary care physician. So, the med schools are filled with medical students that see huge financial reasons to take a specialty. I didn’t realize that the body that determines payment rates for medical services is comprised primarily of specialists or that budget caps in Medicare maintain those relative values and squeeze the already thin primary care profit margins even more.

This is the kind of important information that can easily get lost in the debate. Both sides talk about maintaining the relationships between patients and their primary doctors. But all of our current incentives say that’s the least valuable part of the whole system. It won’t do much good to give everyone coverage if there aren’t enough good primary care physicians to serve them. If was building a system from scratch, I would invest heavily in primary care physicians since that’s where preventative care and early detection is going to happen.