health care – Zombies Uncensored

Please Don’t Add Porn Addiction to Health Insurance Coverage

This NRO article, Getting Serious About Pornography – It is ravaging American families manages to get all the anti-porn arguments rolled into a very short piece.

Quick summary of the arguments:

Pornography is an addiction.
Compares pornography to a drug.
Pornography destroys families.
Pornography is an abuse of free speech.
A lot of well educated people are against pornography.
Personal account of marriage being destroyed by pornography.
Pornography is a gateway to aberrant sexual practices.
Correlating pornography with extra-marital affairs.
Pornography increases belief in the “rape myth”
Objectification of women.
Calls it a mental illness.
Pornography addiction should be added to the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
Health insurance companies should provide coverage for treatment of pornography addiction.

And my rebuttal:

People can form psychological dependencies with just about everything–we have workaholics, iphone-aholics, shop-aholics. For every human activity, there is someone out there who has turned it into an addition.
Associating pornography with a drug addiction is to lead people to believe its the same as a physical addiction. A closer comparison would be a gambling addiction.
Destroying families? This claim can be made against anything consuming a large amount time. Work, religion, political activism, and on and on could be said to destroy families.
For every form of speech considered offensive, there is a group considering it an abuse of free speech.
There are also well educated people that are not against pornography. Appeal to Authority fallacy.
Bad feelings are associated with the subject, so the subject must be bad. Appeal to Emotion fallacy.
Interest in a sexual practice prompts seeking it out in porn, not the other way around. Confusing Cause and Effect fallacy.
Sixty-two percent of unfaithful husbands had affairs with someone at work, but I wouldn’t claim working causes affairs. Correlation does not imply causation.
The implicit suggestion is that pornography causes rape. The responsibility for rape is with the rapist alone. Saying pornography causes rape gives rapists excuses.
The process of becoming sexually aroused involves seeing your partners body as an object for sex. If sexual objectification were to cease, so would the human species. People of other gender may objectify others; the cause is a lack of empathy, not exposure to pornography.
Others could just as easily be labeled for fear of pornography: pornophobia.
If pornography addiction were included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, it would be an expression of political correctness. The DSM at one time listed homosexuality as a disorder.
Isn’t health insurance expensive enough?

Now its my turn for my theory about the role pornography plays in relationships. First off; I feel sympathy for anyone whose relationship has deteriorated due to addictive personality disorder. I don’t blame the focus of the addiction for the underlying personality disorder; I blame the disorder.

I don’t doubt there are some people who view pornography like an addict. From my own personal experiences and discussions with others, the conflicts surrounding pornography are more often a symptom of a problem in the relationship, caused by jealousy and lack of communication about sex.

Example–from the article mentioned above.

He (ex-husband) viewed it regularly during high school and college — and, although he tried hard to stop, continued to do so throughout the course of our marriage. For the past few years he had taken to sleeping in the basement, distancing himself from me, emotionally and physically.

Evidently there was conflict when it came to pornography, because the husband felt a reason to stop. The reason to stop might have been religious, or judging from the tone of the article, the husband might have been keeping his sexual interests secret from his wife.

If the reason for stopping was due to religious reasons, odds are that didn’t work out too well. The more you try not to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it. The more taboo a person finds a sexual activity that interests them, the harder they try to suppress those thoughts, the greater the urge becomes to indulge.

If the husband felt the need to keep his sexual interests secret (perhaps going to the basement to view porn), keeping secrets destroy relationships. Keeping parts of oneself hidden away from your significant other is what creates the divide that ends relationships. You can’t feel close to someone if you aren’t open and honest with them.

Another issue that couples run into around pornography is jealousy. Here is an example from a discussion on Porn and Marriage — One Wife’s Response

In a marriage, what one partner does affects the other. That is a fact. So yes, porn is a problem because it affects the person who is supposed to be the husband’s only object for affection.

While I empathize that people feel hurt when their spouse is sexually attracted to someone else, it’s unrealistic to expect your spouse to never find anyone else attractive. It is realistic to ask them to not act upon those attractions and remain monogamous.

Believing your spouse only finds physical features about you attractive is self objectification. Only considering the physical dimension of attraction leads to hurt feelings. The issue is not pornography, but feeling lack of worth outside of physical appearance.

Mutual admiration for one another goes farther in ending jealousy than physical attractiveness. In dealing with personal jealousy surrounding sex, couples can find security when they first find one another attractive as a person. If there is little beyond physical attraction, the relationship won’t last anyway.

Marriage counseling is fine, but please don’t add porn addiction to health insurance coverage, it’s expensive enough as it is.

Bart Stupak Cave-In on Health Care

Bart Stupak Cave-In on Health Care

Sums up the news of the day.

10th Amendment: Might Does Not Make Right

Virginia And 34 Other States To Block HealthCare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUYY4RB3YA4

The three cases mentioned in the video from Wikipedia: Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

In United States v. Lopez 514 U.S. 549 (1995), a federal law mandating a “gun-free zone” on and around public school campuses was struck down because, the Supreme Court ruled, there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing it.
In New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) Obliged states to take title to any waste within their borders that was not disposed of prior to January 1, 1996, and made each state liable for all damages directly related to the waste. The Court, in a 6–3 decision, ruled that the imposition of that obligation on the states violated the Tenth Amendment. Justice O’Connor wrote that the federal government can encourage the states to adopt certain regulations through the spending power (i.e., by attaching conditions to the receipt of federal funds, see South Dakota v. Dole), or through the commerce power (by directly pre-empting state law). However, Congress cannot directly compel states to enforce federal regulations.
In Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)). The act required state and local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on persons attempting to purchase handguns. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, applied New York v. United States to show that the law violated the Tenth Amendment. Since the act “forced participation of the State’s executive in the actual administration of a federal program,” it was unconstitutional.

What I’ve gathered from this is:

When the federal government passes a law, they can’t force states to enforce their laws.
The federal government can punish states that refuse to enforce federal laws by withholding federal funds.
The federal government can act directly and enforce the law themselves if the state refuses, as in Gonzales v. Raich.

Gonzales v. Raich(2005). In this case, a California woman sued the Drug Enforcement Administration after her medical marijuana crop was seized and destroyed by Federal agents. Medical marijuana was explicitly made legal under California state law by Proposition 215; however, marijuana is prohibited at the federal level by the Controlled Substances Act. Even though the woman grew the marijuana strictly for her own consumption and never sold any, the Supreme Court stated that growing one’s own marijuana affects the interstate market of marijuana. The theory was that the marijuana could enter the stream of interstate commerce, even if it clearly wasn’t grown for that purpose and it was unlikely ever to happen (the same reasoning as in the Wickard v. Filburn decision). It therefore ruled that this practice may be regulated by the federal government under the authority of the Commerce Clause.

In my public education, I was never taught about the tenth Amendment. The education I received left me with the impression that Federal law always supersedes state law. I guess they didn’t see the need to teach about something that has, for the most part, been ignored.

I do remember something about the Civil War starting out over some similar issues. The Civil War settled the issues of slavery and which was the most powerful–federal or state government. It left me with the false impression that because the federal government always wins, they must always be right.

In the video, Robert Marshall said “this is a forced contract.” In any other aspect of your life, were someone to force you to sign a contract or go to jail, it would be easy to distinguish that might does not make it right. The forced aspect of the healthcare bill has made it clear to me the federal government is not always in the right, and that’s why there is a tenth amendment.

10th Amendment: Might Does Not Make Right

Virginia And 34 Other States To Block HealthCare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUYY4RB3YA4

The three cases mentioned in the video from Wikipedia: Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

In United States v. Lopez 514 U.S. 549 (1995), a federal law mandating a “gun-free zone” on and around public school campuses was struck down because, the Supreme Court ruled, there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing it.
In New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) Obliged states to take title to any waste within their borders that was not disposed of prior to January 1, 1996, and made each state liable for all damages directly related to the waste. The Court, in a 6–3 decision, ruled that the imposition of that obligation on the states violated the Tenth Amendment. Justice O’Connor wrote that the federal government can encourage the states to adopt certain regulations through the spending power (i.e., by attaching conditions to the receipt of federal funds, see South Dakota v. Dole), or through the commerce power (by directly pre-empting state law). However, Congress cannot directly compel states to enforce federal regulations.
In Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)). The act required state and local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on persons attempting to purchase handguns. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, applied New York v. United States to show that the law violated the Tenth Amendment. Since the act “forced participation of the State’s executive in the actual administration of a federal program,” it was unconstitutional.

What I’ve gathered from this is:

When the federal government passes a law, they can’t force states to enforce their laws.
The federal government can punish states that refuse to enforce federal laws by withholding federal funds.
The federal government can act directly and enforce the law themselves if the state refuses, as in Gonzales v. Raich.

Gonzales v. Raich(2005). In this case, a California woman sued the Drug Enforcement Administration after her medical marijuana crop was seized and destroyed by Federal agents. Medical marijuana was explicitly made legal under California state law by Proposition 215; however, marijuana is prohibited at the federal level by the Controlled Substances Act. Even though the woman grew the marijuana strictly for her own consumption and never sold any, the Supreme Court stated that growing one’s own marijuana affects the interstate market of marijuana. The theory was that the marijuana could enter the stream of interstate commerce, even if it clearly wasn’t grown for that purpose and it was unlikely ever to happen (the same reasoning as in the Wickard v. Filburn decision). It therefore ruled that this practice may be regulated by the federal government under the authority of the Commerce Clause.

HealthCare Reform: Going into Details, People Would Support Slavery

Jake Tapper of This Week interview David Axelrod about the healthcare bill.

This bill is important to the American people, Jake, and when you get underneath the numbers and you ask people, do you support giving people more leverage against insurance companies so that they — if they have preexisting conditions, they can get coverage, so if they get sick, they don’t get thrown off, so they don’t have these huge premium increases of the sort we’ve just seen announced in states around the country, they say yes.

But again, when you go underneath, they support the elements of the plan. When you ask them, does the health care system need reform, three quarters of them say yes. When you ask them, do you want Congress to move forward and deal with this issue, three quarters of them say yes. So we’re not going to walk away from this issue.

David Axelrod’s arguement is most people are in favor of the details in the bill, therefore it is a good idea. One detail Axelrod left out–the majority of people are opposed to making health insurance mandatory. Leaving out the “mandatory” part is no small detail to be ignored, and here is why:

If polled most Americans would probably answer yes to all these question.

Would you like the cost of food and clothing to go down?
Would you like the cost of your housing to never go up?
Do you want to prevent people from ever going homeless?
Would you like not having to struggle to make ends meet?
Would you like to live in a country that was more organized?
Do you want congress to take action to make your life simpler?
Are you in favor of the federal government regulating work place rules?

Using the same rational as David Axelrod: If you leave out the detail of losing your freedom, we can conclude most people are really in favor of slavery.

No Universal Insurance from Overreaching Government

This section of John Stossel’s “Hands Off My Meds” has a clip with physician Dr. Frank Fisher. Prosecutors indicted Fisher for the deaths of several patients by prescribing pain medication. The Doctor spent five months in jail and spent all of his money on legal fees before finally being acquitted. The doctor mentions he is fifty-six years old and is basically starting over because the cost of defending himself left him with a net worth of zero.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb9hkoJ1RR8

The clip from didn’t fully explain just how unfairly Dr. Fisher was treated by the legal system. Here is a bit from Stop the Drug War (stopthedrugwar.org) on Dr. Fisher:

It was Medi-Cal fraud charges that were at the core of Fisher’s latest legal case. Prosecutors originally charged Fisher with 99 counts of medical fraud regarding Medi-Cal claims and improper prescribing, but a state court judge dismissed all but eight misdemeanor counts of improper billing earlier this year. Now, he has been found innocent.

“Over five years ago, Attorney General Bill Lockyer came to Redding and declared that by arresting and detaining Dr. Fisher, his prosecutors had shut down the biggest drug ring in the history of Northern California,” Reynolds continued. “Apparently unaware that aggressive pain management had become a widely recognized imperative of mainstream medicine, Lockyer sought to characterize Dr. Fisher’s practice as sinister. Most of Dr. Fisher’s patients have been unable to obtain the quality of pain care they’d received from him, hundreds have deteriorated unnecessarily, and several have died as a result. At the time of Dr. Fisher’s arrest, for example, twenty-five people who had been working, with Dr. Fisher’s help, were forced to apply for full disability. In response, PRN intends to hold the State of California and participating counties and municipalities accountable for their wanton and reckless conduct.”

Here’s what one juror had to say to Dr. Fisher in an e-mail he received after the trial: “I was juror #1. Now that I am home and can read about you on the Internet, my heart really goes out to you for what you have been through. I was upset that the prosecutor wasted my time and the court’s time on such a weak case. But now that I know what you have really been through I feel embarrassed and selfish to be thinking about my own time. I hope you can reopen your clinic some day and get back to practicing medicine, in your office or back room or anywhere you choose. Thanks for doing the job most doctors won’t.”

What caught my attention with Stossel’s show was the discussion about fairness and medicine. In the health care debate the argument is often made that it is unfair for someone to lose all their life saving do to an illness. It a tragedy when someone loses all their saving do to an illness, but its not an injustice and has nothing to do with being fair. What is unfair, is when someone loses everything due to an injustice. Life is fair, and only people can choose to be unfair and unjust.

What is unfair is there is no call to protect people who have had their life savings destroyed by acts of an overreaching government. There is no call for a universal insurance policy to cover individuals like Dr. Fisher from the reckless conduct of zealous prosecutors. No charts or graphs to show the increasing costs of defending yourself in a free country. Not a word of debate over how people can continue to afford living free when the cost of freedom has risen to everything you own plus time in prison.

There is no comparison between wanting the government to be concerned about helping its citizens when the randomness of life deals them a tragedy, and the callousness of government causing a tragedy, because the first is about charity and the second really is about fairness.

If the government is concerned about protecting people from unfairly being wiped out, it should start by looking at itself.

Congress: Just Gimme Two New Parties

Here is Senator McCaskill arguing for extending unemployment benefits. The speech starts out with McCaskill pointing out Republican senators voted for prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries without paying for it. It is not very clear, but the argument seems to be if it was OK in the past to avoid worrying about debt, we shouldn’t be worrying about debt today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBAzOEq9r-M

Senator McCaskill mentions cosponsoring PAYGO, but seems to be saying pay as you go can be ignored because of Republican hypocrisy of not paying for programs. All I can gather from this is its OK to be hypocritical, as long as the opposition is more hypocritical.

It’s a safe bet that soon there will be a Republican senator pointing to Democratic hypocrisy on debt as an excuse more debt. I want at least two completely new parties to take power just so we can get away from this justification via hypocrisy arguments. Two new parties would at least hit the reset button on finger pointing for a few years–maybe even long enough to fix DC.

If HealthCare Reform is Like Buying Meat: Hands off My Hotdog

I’m glad the President made a meat industry analogy, because its a good opportunity to point out the flaws in the President’s proposal.

President Obama at the Health Care Summit:

We could set up a system where food was cheaper than it is right now if we just eliminated meat inspectors, and we eliminated any regulations on how food is distributed and how its stored. I’ll bet in terms of drug prices we would definitely reduce prescription drug prices if we didn’t have a drug administration that makes sure that we test the drugs so that they don’t kill us, but we don’t do that. We make some decisions to protect consumers in every aspect of our lives.

If the role of government in health insurance is analogous to the meat industry then according to the Presidents proposal –

We would all be required to purchase meat even if we didn’t want it.
We wouldn’t be able to choose between buying hotdogs or steaks; we have to buy steaks.
We could buy some steaks from some vendors in other states, but wouldn’t be able to buy hotdogs from anyone, anywhere.
Those too poor to afford meat would have free steaks, but not hotdogs.
The meat industry would be labeled greedy for profiting from people’s inevitable hunger.
Supermarkets would only be allowed to sell steaks.
We would all be protected from affordable meats like hotdogs, turkey, and chicken.

Its would be wrong to tell vegetarians to buy meat, and it’s equally wrong to tell Christian Scientists to buy health insurance. It would be an intrusion of government to decide which meats we can afford, just as its an overreach into our personal lives for DC to to tell us how much insurance to buy.

Forcing people to buy meat would only protect some meat companies, just as forcing people to buy health insurance only protects some insurance companies. The wide variety and affordable prices of meats at supermarkets didn’t come about through a DC-based algorithm of price controls and income-based prices. It came about by supply and demand and a free market.

To President Obama: stay away from my health insurance, and hands off my hotdog, too.

ObamaCare – You’ll be in control, except when you aren’t.

Out of morbid curiosity, I looked at the Presidents new health care proposal. I wanted to know if the word “mandate” was used in the proposal. Mandate is in there, but it’s not used in the portion describing what the cost is to each person. If you choose to remain uninsured you have to make a payment. In other words, buying health insurance isn’t mandatory, but paying for it is mandatory.

There are other carefully chosen words and phrases in this proposal, like the very first line:

The President’s Proposal puts American families and small business owners in control of their own health care.

Taking away control of choosing to purchase health insurance now puts you in control of health insurance. Just as forcing everyone to purchase a fitness club membership (or make a payment if they choose to remain unfit) puts them in control of their fitness. You will now be in control, except when you aren’t.

Health care costs are described as inevitable as in “make a payment to offset the cost of care they will inevitably need.” Using life insurance is inevitable; using health care insurance is not inevitable. Even using catastrophic health insurance is not inevitable. Not everyone will have an accident and not everyone spends the last year of their life under medical care.

The part titled Improve Individual Responsibility has two paragraphs covering the cost to each person; the cost is not described as a tax, fine, or a penalty. The choice of words to describe the cost is payment, alternative payment and assessment. It’s not a tax, fine, or a penalty; it’s simply a transfer of money from you to your government, and anyone who says otherwise is just itching for a fight.

The proposal mentions curbing insurance company abuses. Its pretty low when insurance contracts have ambiguous, difficult to decipher, or hidden intentions. I’m assuming thats what the President means abuses along the lines of technical language the layperson doesn’t understand or adding hidden meanings, terms, conditions, or unexpressed intentions. Only a lowlife like an insurance company would stoop to those shady tactics.

Below are the two paragraphs covering the transfer of wealth.

Improve Individual Responsibility. All Americans should have affordable health insurance coverage. This helps everyone, both insured and uninsured, by reducing cost shifting, where people with insurance end up covering the inevitable health care costs of the uninsured, and making possible robust health insurance reforms that will curb insurance company abuses and increase the security and stability of health insurance for all Americans. The House and Senate bills require individuals who have affordable options but who choose to remain uninsured to make a payment to offset the cost of care they will inevitably need. The House bill’s payment is a percentage of income. The Senate sets the payment as a flat dollar amount or percentage of income, whichever is higher (although not higher than the lowest premium in the area). Both the House and Senate bill provide a low-income exemption, for those individuals with incomes below the tax filing threshold (House) or below the poverty threshold (Senate).The Senate also includes a “hardship” exemption for people who cannot afford insurance, included in the President’s Proposal. It protects those who would face premiums of more than 8 percent of their income from having to pay any assessment and they can purchase a low-cost catastrophic plan in the exchange if they choose.

The President’s Proposal adopts the Senate approach but lowers the flat dollar assessments, and raises the percent of income assessment that individuals pay if they choose not to become insured. Specifically, it lowers the flat dollar amounts from $495 to $325 in 2015 and $750 to $695 in 2016. Subsequent years are indexed to $695 rather than $750, so the flat dollar amounts in later years are lower than the Senate bill as well. The President’s Proposal raises the percent of income that is an alternative payment amount from 0.5 to 1.0% in 2014, 1.0 to 2.0% in 2015, and 2.0 to 2.5% for 2016 and subsequent years – the same percent of income as in the House bill, which makes the assessment more progressive. For ease of administration, the President’s Proposal changes the payment exemption from the Senate policy (individuals with income below the poverty threshold) to individuals with income below the tax filing threshold (the House policy). In other words, a married couple with income below $18,700 will not have to pay the assessment. The President’s Proposal also adopts the Senate’s “hardship” exemption.

TMD;ST – Too Much Debate; Stopped Thinking

After seeing there is yet another health care plan from President Barack Obama, I’m becoming an advocate for ignorance and apathy. There is an eleven page PDF about the Presidents latest proposal and my first thought was to respond with tl;dr (“Too long; didn’t read”). The country needs a retreaded health care proposal about as much as the internet needs another opinion… like this one. At this point one more health care proposal or debate is just tears in rain.

I know my first reaction to something isn’t always the best response. I’ve tried to stay informed on the health care debate. I want to have at least a semi-informed view. After hearing this issued debated through a two-year Presidential campaign and a year of Obama’s Presidency I think there has been enough debate. I’ve heard so much about health care that parts of my brain have gone on strike and are boycotting my natural curiosity.

You know that soft spot on a baby’s head? That is what health care is on my brain. The optimist and lizard portions of my brain have been demanding curiosity supply some good news about the economy. Since natural curiosity has done such a poor job supplying any news to satiate the cries from optimism, other portions of my brain have started listening to ignorance and apathy calls to censor optimism. The ugly mess our nation is in, has been reproduced in my consciousness.

The conspiracy part of my brain is still somewhat active (and trying to convince the logic center that the plethora of health care bills is a plot to bring about this apathetic response). Logic is demanding more proof before it will seriously consider conspiracy’s argument.

The logic center is just out of luck in hopes of further information, because TMD; ST (Too Much Debate; Stopped Thinking.)