Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 132 Editor's Choice: 9
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The question I'd ask yourself is...
[Read the article: Should I tell my new man that I used to date women?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Am I okay with the idea of being in a relationship with someone to whom I could not disclose an important part of my past, a part that has informed my personality and emotional development?"
I really, really don't mean this pejoratively -- I don't think there's anything wrong or strange about landing on either side of the question. But you do need to decide that. Some people are private by nature and like to keep a pretty tight lid on what they reveal even to their most intimate friends and partners. Since you said you don't think it's any of his business, it sounds like you fall into that category. If you didn't -- if you were the kind of person who needed to be able to share all the salient aspects of your past and development with your partner -- then I would question whether the relationship could survive. But you don't sound like that kind of person, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.
Instead, you seem be motivated to tell him out of a sense of guilt -- like there's something morally wrong with concealing it. I don't think there is. He should only know if you want him to know, if you think it's important to him being able to understand you. If that's not the case, then why tell him?
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Innovation!
[Read the article: The return of Karl Rove]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No reason to avoid blunt language here.
The only innovations the health care industry cares about are the ones that help them to fuck us.
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Getting over the hump
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's healthcare 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The health care industry has effectively brainwashed Americans over the last few decades into believing that it's perfectly okay to have independent profit-driven corporations managing our health. This is a broken system and most people on the front lines of medical care (doctors, nurses, etc.) know it. But it's disappointing that after all this time, the best "solution" most of the Dem candidates can offer is to give the same horrible joke of an insurance plan to every American.
This. Is. Not. Coverage. Paying through the nose for deductibles and co-pays and rejected claims is not "being covered." It's like finding someone on the street who's homeless and hungry and doing them the enormous favor of dropping them off at a grocery store. Or requiring abandoned children in an orphanage to pay a certain percentage of their overall living expenses.
A single-payer government plan is coverage. Anything less is not.
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Adding on re: "the dregs of society"
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's healthcare 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Poco, wouldn't it be nice if there was some degree of government oversight on that ER you despise so much? A system that restricted it to true emergencies, and directed all others to their primary care providers? Under single-payer that would actually be possible. Sound good? Of course it does.
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@curmudgeon2
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's healthcare 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We're all "paying for the cost of idiots" now. I have $100 a month taken out of my paycheck for a fancy PPO I barely use; my employer covers hundreds beyond that. That adds up to several thousand a year being paid to my health care provider on my behalf, and I go to the doctor MAYBE twice a year. And when I go, I still pay hundreds out of pocket because I have to meet my deductible before anything's "covered."
So where's that several thousand a year going, besides the pockets of corrupt healthcare administrators? Some of it's probably going to pay for excessive costs of smart and otherwise healthy people, but I'm sure a huge chunk of it is going to pay for the cost of idiots.
So forgive me if, as long as I'm going to pay for the cost of idiots, I'd rather do it through a system I was able to vote on instead of one that was imposed on me by money-grubbing Fortune 500 companies.
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@curmudgeon2
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's healthcare 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not in favor of Clinton's compulsory insurance plan either; it's just subjecting a great many more people to the inequities of the current broken-beyond-all-recognition system.
But there certainly is a way that doctors could be prevented from prescribing unnecessary drugs and procedures under a single-payer system. It's simple: incentivize the docs to get their patients to stay healthy, not to keep coming back for more treatment. Sounds ludicrous but it works in other countries.
My girlfriend is a critical care nurse. Practically every day she works, she sees terminally ill patients receiving expensive care that they don't need, that at best will grant them another few months or years of catatonia. A system based on money encourages doctors and hospitals to keep up this crap; a single-payer government system would have the power to curtail it.
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@poco
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's healthcare 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll ignore the fact that you're dismissing government oversight offhand as some kind of evil thing, though it reminds me of Bill Maher's great line about how the Republicans always run on the platform that government doesn't work, then get elected and prove it.
But I still agree with you that the ER is generally used for all the wrong reasons. My girlfriend was just telling me a story about a guy she saw who checked in to one, was told he needed an MRI, and tried to go out for breakfast while he was waiting. How much of an emergency is it if you're healthy enough to run out and wolf down a Grand Slam?
I think it all comes down to the fact that we've been brainwashed into believing that health care is a commodity, no different from an iPod or a Big Mac. But as long as it's under the thumb of Fortune 500 companies, it'll always be like that. It's going to take an enormous overhaul to change a nation's thinking, but in the long run it will be worth it.