RANT: The Gooferment’s role in “healthcare”

Friday, April 22, 2011

Don’t Let the Republicans kill Medicare!

act.credoaction.com

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Republicans are pushing hard on a plan to end Medicare as we know it. They’re trying to replace it with a ludicrous privatized system where seniors are given vouchers to try to buy coverage from private, for-profit insurance companies–the very same companies notorious for denying them coverage.

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And, it’s a lousy system. Have you seen the stats on how much goes to fraud and waste. Never mind the “personal mobility” scams. Sorry, but Medicaid is the big hole in the Titanic and Medicare is the second biggest. Now we can stand around and listen to the orchestra play “Nearer My God To Thee”. OR, we can debate how to fix this disaster better, faster, and cheaper. Personally, I never want to have the Gooferment as having any role in healthcare. It can either be the referee or a player in the game. Not both. In the case of Medicare, the Gooferment wants to be the doctor, the insurance company, and the referee. Argh! And, it has a vested financial interest in the decision in both Social Security, Medicare, Standard of Care, and the “overhead in medical care” born by the Gooferment. Still want the Gooferment deciding about care?

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MEMORIES: Days Of Our Lives aka DrOOL!

Friday, April 22, 2011

“NBC has only one soap opera left, “Days of Our Lives.”

Our Girl’s “soap”. She watched it with her Mother growing up. (I believe watching it transported her to a happier place and time. For her, it was a near religious experience.) She watched it every chance she got. When it was bumped by a current event, the Saint Patrick’s Day parade, or anything, she’s get up and watch it at 2 or 3 in the morning.

With the advent of the VCR, she watched it every night. And woe was me, the techie genius, if the VCR didn’t tape. (Luckily, much later in our lives, the SOAPNET channel rebroadcast it at 11PM and 4AM. And on weekends, all five episodes were on in a row, twice. DrOOL overload. A few times I caught her peeking.)

She took a lot of good natured ribbing about “DrOOL” from me, but she never wavered from her devotion to her “television family” The Hortons. Maybe it was the family she wanted to have in her childhood. In the TV realm, everyone is perfect. The men are hunks; the women not a hair out of place. No one is poor. No one is hungry. No one suffers. And, they all look good as they deal with all their “problems”.

When we were flush, I even took her on a “DrOOL” cruise. She was disappointed; she wanted the whole TV family to be there. And, Micky didn’t look to “Micky-ish” in the harsh glare of sunlight and no make up. After seeing him in person, she didn’t want to see anymore “real life” representation of her idealized family. I guess one has to protect the only emotional link she had to her long passed Mom.

DrOOL was that link. And, I hope that she’s with her Mom finally. Finally at peace. And, I’m sure they are watching DrOOL together once again as the did so many decades ago.

I wonder if Micky looks better now that he’s passed too? I wonder if Tom Horton is there as well. She mourned their passing as she would an old friend.

I’m glad NBC never cancelled DrOOL while Frau Reinke was with us. That would have been tragic for her.

I still watch it from time to time. And, I imagine her sitting in her recliner, eating her lunch, usually Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup, Diet Pepsi, and a baloney sandwich. In a time warp, back with her Mom. Watching DrOOL together.

When NBC cancels DrOOL as it eventually will, that will be tragic for me, severing my connection to Our Girl.

Maybe I can buy a DVD of an episode and replay that over and over, when I need to feel her emotionally.

Donna Nobis Pacem.

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