Death of a Myth (Hopefully)

Rumors are near impossible to kill. Part of this is the impossibilty of disproving the impossible. How do I know that Elvis is dead? The other part is that crazy people are going to be crazy people. Even if I dug up Elvis' grave and shoved the rotting corpse in a non-believer's face, I would be told that the body was a fake planted by extra terrestrials.

So it's hard to argue with the nutty. But for the good of the country, that's what Obama was trying to do today. He provided a long form birth certificate because his word, at least two newspaper announcements, eye witness accounts and a short form weren't enough to quell the nutty. Apparently it was easier to believe that his mother was living in Kenya, snuck him into Hawaii without any papers and managemd to forge official documents, eye witness accounts and a couple newspapers so that 47 years later, this foreign national could one day become leader of the free world.

Politically, it wasn't necessarily bad for Obama to ignore the nutty. It's easier to win elections against the nutty. I'm not sure why he chose to finally release it, but he might just be tired of answering questions about it. You can only call the nutty, the nutty so many times.

But I'm not sure the birther people are going away just yet. There were definite racial overtones in wanting to see his birth certificate. There are even more racial overtones in requesting all his transcripts. The implication is that he wasn't smart enough to get in either Columbia or Harvard without affirmative action. Now, that is definitely getting racial. And frankly, it really doesn't matter. This guy has proven time and time again, he's smarter than me and he's smarter than you. Really. It doesn't matter what his grades say and the nutty really shouldn't go there, but unfortunately, for the rest of us, I think they will.

Ripping the disabled.

A lot of disable kids need special things to help out. Modified stollers and car seats. Often these things need to be custom made and can run a lot of money. There are stroller and car seats that can easily run $800. Outrageous but understandable because the of the individual needs of each kid.

But there are also complete rip offs masquerading as things you need for disabled kids. I've seen foam stairs that are $300 on a website for special needs kid that run less than $100 at a gymnastics site. I've seen $30 spandex type suits (helps with the tone for CP kids) that become $300 suits, once the manufacturer figured out it could bill this stuff to insurance. Toys at special needs websites routinely run much more than they do with a little digging. Instead of making things readily available to this vulnerable population, the game seems to be marketing to these people as suckers or people that don't worry about cost control because the equipment is going to be billable to insurance. I find something very twisted about this, but I don't know how to change any of that. I guess the good capitalist argument is that I have choices, which is true to some extent, but I still get upset at corporations taking advantage to charge unreasonable profits on these things.

To extend on this thought a little. Medicaid and Medicare do cost a lot of money and they do need to be reformed. But the answers are not government management vs. insurance management. The answer is really more about cost control. There are people bilking the system. Just yesterday, one large health provider accused another one of admitting patients unnecessarily because it could recoup more money once patients were admitted. And the government ends up paying a lot of this.

More on bashing Paul Ryan's ridiculous plan some other time.

Filling out the Form

The other week we got a letter indicating that we needed to renew our Medi-Cal info for our little one. The letter indicated that we needed to respond within 20 days of the date of the letter. The problem was that the letter was post-marked more than a week after the date at the top of the letter. Instead of having 20 days we actually had more like 10. Right in the middle of tax season when we're worried about getting other paperwork in order. The cynical me wonders if the government is purposely making these timelines difficult just so people will late in filing, and therefore denied coverage.

So late last night, we got it done. (Thanks Wifey. As always you're awesome.) We think. We're not sure we filled out the information correctly. I don't think someone with a doctorate in quantum physics could have done any better because the forms were obviously written by some third grader. It seems like that even though this is a renewal and not an initial application, they have sent a renewal form with various attachments from an initial packet that we don't think we need to fill out. At least according to the checklist. But who knows? Maybe we were supposed to fill it all out. The additional forms asked a lot of great questions, like whether or not I own a boat or a plane. Seriously. Here's the other thing that struck me. 100% of the questions were about our financial status. 0% was about the person receiving services and that person's status. I would call that person the applicant, but we're still unsure if the forms wanted the parent/guardian listed as the applicant or the person actually receiving services.

So we've filled out the forms and Wifey is going to drop them off today. Last time, dropping them off took 4 hours in a government center. I hope she packed her portable time machine because I didn't see how she was going to do that, take the kid to therapy and get to work today. I hope it all went well.

Tune in for more complaining later.

Last bit from Madison

So they just had a judicial election in Wisconsin that somehow went from a sleepy local election to the forefront of the national political wars. To me it was another sign that democracy is failing. Ideological purity was again the only thing it seemed people were voting on. Not any ability to reason. Not that I'm upset with the result of the election. I don't know squat about either candidate, but over $5 million poured in from interest groups from across the nation. Neither candidate could control their own message anymore. It was all the outside people blowing the money. This whole racket and that awful decision by the Supreme Court is just meant for all people to lose faith in voting and democracy. It sort of sucks.

I take the result as a small repudiation of Walker. The Republicans easily would have won this one if he hadn't kicked the hornet's nest. But it wasn't like this was a blow out. Union folks are trying to tell themselves that Walker has energized them. But for the most part, these are people that would have voted democratic anyway. I'm not seeing a huge difference yet.