glad to see i struck a bit of a nerve there

with that healthcare thing. you should get mad.

so during this whole process...

i started thinking that private insurance was kinda cool. yeah, you don't get assistance from your employer, but sometimes they don't help much and you can get a better deal without going through the group. ok, some people can get a better deal. if you're healthy, no kind of conditions or issues in the past, oh, ten years, then you can get a steal of a deal with private insurance.

but if you've had anything wrong, they just say they're not going to cover those issues. if you're chronically sick, then just fuhgeddaboutit. now i ask you, kind souls, aren't those that are more likely to use insurance the ones that we, as a society, would like to see be taken care of or at least have some kind of safety net?

here's an example. we tried to get jake private insurance with the same people who had been covering him. they look at his records, see that he's gotten a lot of expensive breathing treatment medicine that's normally used for asthmatics (his was used occasionally to treat and prevent bronchitis-like symptoms) and give him two choices: insurance with no prescriptions or insurance with generic prescriptions only.
our reaction: umm, hello? that's probably what we need the insurance for the most.
the money-grubbing insurance company's probable reaction: umm, exactly. that's why we don't want to cover that part.

the conversation with the next insurance company was similar except they didn't have access to his records. however, when it came up that jake (like a ton of other kids) had tubes put in his ears at 6 months old, they jumped on that. they ended up offering coverage (with prescriptions), but stipulated that they basically won't cover anything dealing with ear infections, etc. for like 2 years. ugh, whatever; at least it had prescription coverage.

ok, so back to my point. private insurance is not cooler than group insurance in the general, grand scheme of things because with group insurance, the insurance company's risk is defrayed by the large number of people insured and the insured can't be singled out and not covered for that which they need coverage the most.

so... does this mean we need the federal government to step in and facilitate healthcare for all people? i dunno. in the past 5-6 years, i may have swung from the right to the left and back towards the middle, but one thing i still don't care for is increasing the federal budget (much) or increasing taxes (hardly any). both would probably be required to accomplish the noble goal of healthcare for all.

what we need is intelligent, innovative solutions to this issue. that's kinda why i'm reading those two opposing books. both have interesting takes on actually solving this issue. i don't know what's best, but i want to support someone who actually has ideas - not someone who just regurgitates the unsatisfactory status quo.

quick hits

alright, i kept a browser window open to here all day yesterday thinking i'd take a few minutes and post a few tidbits. gotta throw it together now. here goes...

- peyton and the colts to the superbowl: woohoo!!!! i was jumping up and down when brady threw the int at the end. i figured the nfl was going to quickly create a new rule where the pats could kick an extra point after a field goal so they could get 4 points and go to overtime. i'm so sick of the pats. sorry, chris.

- we did absolutely nothing this weekend. literally. church was cancelled. the only time we left the house between friday night and monday morning was when i went outside and put a couple of netflix in the mailbox. (speaking of, i really wish the service would speed back up by a day or so. i must have had awesome connections with the woodbridge post office.)

- i got the hardball times annual 2007 with a christmas gift certificate. if you like baseball, need some offseason reading, and think stats can give us some more info about the game, then you'd like this book. a bunch of short articles that might be perfect for ... umm ... a particular setting for reading. buy direct from the publisher in the link if possible. they lose a ton of money when selling thru amazon or bookstores (sorry! i had a gift certificate!)

- i finally went to the local public library and got an account (card will be mailed). we have a cool library! they even have a lot of dvds and cds (including new releases!) that you can check out for 3 days (yes, for free). i checked out a couple of new political books that i wanted to skim, but had no interest in purchasing. barack obama's the audacity of hope and newt gingrich's winning the future. funny combo, eh? both have some interesting ideas of how we can fix some of the problems in our country, including healthcare which leads me to my last tidbit.

- i'm one of those 45+ million without health insurance right now. lindsay's work switched insurances to something that was twice as much for the family plan and gave them 1-2 weeks to take it or leave it (no, i'm not bitter). it was reasonable for the employee only plan so we had lindsay just get that after we talked to anthem (previous insurer) about getting private insurance (walk-up, no employer assistance) for me and jake. then, two weeks into january they counter offer with different (i.e. worse) terms and we feel like we're in limbo again. we've got it just about worked out, but it's incredibly frustrating. if anything happens to me and jake, we're technically covered by anthem since we're in conversation with them. however, that doesn't change the fact that something dramatic needs to be done about the sad, expensive state of healthcare in this country.

another good week rolls by

nothin' much to report; just another good, normal week. work went well and i made some good progress. a different team is heading off to china and we got them all squared away for success. lindsay had a busy week at work and almost every night involved making some dinner, playing with jake, and plopping on the couch for a rest before heading to bed.

we received 3 netflix movies in time for the weekend and i tried to crank them out over the weekend. we only have half of one left, but that's ok because the mail doesn't run today (happy mlk day! i'm at work!). if i haven't mentioned it, i'm trying to watch all of the afi top 100 movies (well, 99 of them. there's this one from 1915 that's a 3 hour glorification of the kkk that i don't care to see) and then i'll continue on with the imdb top 250. according to the number of movies i've rated on netflix, i've seen over 830 movies, but only 26 of those are on the afi top 100 list. anyways, this weekend, i watched duck soup with the marx brothers and city lights with charlie chaplin. i got them both at the same time because they were pretty short and easy to knock off the list. my response was pretty polar to them - i disliked the marx bros. flick and really liked the charlie chaplin flick. looking back, i realize that it's just the style of humor in the marx bros. flick that annoyed me and that people in 60 years will probably be annoyed with jim carrey in the same way. the chaplin flick was silent, but even jake was laughing at some parts. without words, there is more physicality in chaplin's words, but not too much of just being silly. this flick is a love story and it was fun to see those emotions played out without words.

next up: finish chinatown - from 1974 with jack nicholson at his finest. (though i recently saw one flew over the cuckoo's nest and he was pretty incredible in that too.)

happy new year!

ok, that makes two people who told me to get on the ball. i'd say i've been busy, but i guess we were just tired after traveling home. i've been busy at work, but i don't bring that home with me.

we had a really good time in nashville, but we're also glad to be done traveling for a while. the only traveling we currently have planned is to be in nashville around memorial day for dad's 50th b-day. we may go on up to knoxville after that for lindsay's b-day (3 days later). who knows?

anyways, i had a great week at work and finished up a huge project that i'd been working on for two months. well, minus the two times i had to take time to work on other projects for a couple of weeks. still that's about a month of work on this one big project. its completion now directly leads to work on other stuff and a busy week ahead.

i hope you had a good new year's and a great week! i haven't been able to much winter reading lately - i really need to crank it up!