Health Care

What annoys me the most about the Health Care debate (and I'm probably repeating myself) is that WE'RE ALREADY PAYING FOR THESE PEOPLE'S HEALTH CARE. Seriously. When someone goes into a hospital and cannot afford to pay the bill, do you think that the costs magically disappear?!? No, in the real world, which is where I live, I don't know about you, my insurance company is mandated by the law to pay hospitals to treat those who cannot pay. And since those people ONLY go to the doctor when they are, well, dying (or at least they feel like they're dying), there is no such thing as preventative medicine (like having a doctor tell you that your cholestoral is too high BEFORE you have a massive heart attack--last I heard, Lipitor is cheaper than a quadruple bi-pass).

So, the question is--do we keep the status quo and keep paying for the dying people, or do we, gasp, mandate health insurance so that everyone will see a family doctor at least once a year, dealing with problems WHILE THEY ARE SMALL AND THEREFORE CHEAP, and who knows, maybe making progress with the obesity epidimic, too.

And if you think like one of my Uncles, and that mandating health insurance will increase everyone's premiums, then let us look at this LOGICALLY:

1. Part of your premium is ALREADY paying for these people's health coverage. This is money that can be moved from the hospitals and into a fund for said BASIC mandated insurance (for those who cannot afford insurance and whose employers do not offer coverage).

2. When people who CAN afford health insurance, but CHOOSE not to have it, will no longer be able to mooch off the hospitals, which will reduce costs to insurance companies and the hospitals (any money not funding the basic insurance, can be invested like insurance companies and hospitals would like to do. This will also increase the monitary base that the insurance coverage pools from.

3. I've already talked about how identifying and treating illnesses while they are small is cheaper than waiting for all the shit to hit the fan.

And finally 4. If after all this analysis your premium does increase, then we need to look at the insurance company and see how their profits are doing compared to their expenses. I understand that the gut reaction is that "if it's mandated, they can charge whatever they want," but car insurance is mandated--do THEY charge whatever they want? And also, we pretend to live in a capitalist society: doesn't that mean that companies CAN and SHOULD charge whatever they want? Because we all have the freedom to start a competing company which charges less, but makes up for it in total number of customers. When we start complaining about companies charging whatever arbitrary amount that we want, we need to start really fearing Socialism.

Tonight/tomorrow morning isn't going to be fun

No, nothing really great to say in this post. In fact, I probably shouldn't even write it. But since I'm stuck writing my thesis (25 pages, history, on the civil war) and can't write a letter to express my thoughts and since no body reads this anyway, I feel safe expressing myself here. And you might even learn a medical trick or two...

I have drunk way too much water over the past few days and today. Why? You might ask. Well, start out with my period and add a cold.

I'd never realized it until I was talking with a girl friend about being incredibly thirsty even though there was no reason for it, that there was a coorelation between my thirst and my period. Actually, I can tell you from now 5 months experience that if you haven't noticed this before, you really should go with it. I've found that drinking a TON of water during the first day(s) of my period really help with the cramps. I don't know if it's a full bladder adding the right amount of pressure to the right areas or just the extra water helps flush out all the crud faster--though given the nature of human anatomy, I'm not sure how well the latter explanation works. Anyway, if you're a guy (and I haven't already scared you off) and your girlfriend is in a similar situation, don't just bring her some Midol, but also a liter of water for her to nurse while you watch a favorite movie. It might help her feel better.

The cold adds to the situation because I've been told by numerous health-nut friends that when you're sick you should drink a(nother, in my case) TON of water. This seems to work, so here I am a few days past the need for menstral water (that actually sounds gross) and I'm still chugging the stuff. I told myself to drink 4 bottles of water today (totalling about 2 liters), though I've only made it through about half that amount (not including 3 tall glasses of orange juice).

For the most part the conversion from water to urine has been slow--caused, I suspect, by that whole water weight gain from my period. Well, I just went twice in 2 hours, and I don't expect it to stop any time soon as my body releases what it's been storing and making me look extra fat. At least it's been hot in here/I probably have a low grade fever, so I've been sweating a lot yesterday and today so that's some water that won't be sending me running for the bathroom. All I want is to not wake up at 3am with an insatible need to pee.