I’d Buy A Plan that Covers All the Primary Care You Need for $42/month. Would You?
According to CBS news, you already do.
CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports it’s subsidized by millions of your tax dollars annually. The government doesn’t even keep track the total cost.
What exactly does Congress get? Sen. Lindsey Graham agreed to show CBS News first hand, flashing his Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance card.
Blue Cross Blue Shield is one of five plans offered to members of Congress. Most Americans, 74 percent are offered only one plan – if their employer offers insurance at all.
And members of Congress earn $174,000 a year – triple the income of the average working-age household. Yet their premiums are about the same.
For them, there’s no coverage limit – a major factor for the American families bankrupted or thrown into poverty by health care costs.
Pre-existing conditions? No problem for congressmen and women. The rest of us are out of luck.
And the elected officials get still more perks most Americans can only dream of. Got a cold? You probably have to take time off work and wait to see a doctor.
Not Congress.
“We’re able to access that health care 24 hours a day when we’re in Washington,” Graham said, leading us to the Attending Physician’s Office, a clinic inside the U.S. Capitol. They don’t even have to leave the office.
About half of the members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, use the Attending Physician benefit. For $42 a month, they can get all the primary care they need – physical therapy, X-rays, minor surgery, specialists and a pharmacy for emergencies – no appointment needed.
They also get VIP hospital treatment from the best doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital. And they have a reserved spot at the elite Ward 72 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where the late Sen. Strom Thurmond spent a lot of time.
Outpatient care is free. Well, free for them. Your tax dollars pick up the cost.
Hat tip to @CarriBugbee & @martindave for forwarding the link.
The Fun Theory
Even running out of gas can be fun!
Volkswagen believes there’s a simple way to change people’s behavior: fun.
Thefuntheory.com, an initiative of the company, is a site that’s
dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.
Based on the outcome of the experiment captured in this video, they just might be right. (Oops! Hope that wasn’t too much of a spoiler!) I especially like the parts with the dogs and when Macaulay Culkin* takes a picture.
Piano Stairs
”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here.
*or someone who resembles Macaulay
Christopher Cross Still Rides Like the Wind (A Blog Post for Ryan)
To my knowledge, with all our technological advances, time travel is something mankind has yet to master.
Sometimes, however, a song plays and suddenly you’re whisked back in time: 8 years old, sitting in back of the VW mini-van, traveling from one National Park to the next.
I’d like to thank Jimmy Fallon and The Roots for loaning me the flux capacitor for a night.
Ryan – this post’s for you.
CHRISTOPHER CROSS + THE ROOTS PERFORM “RIDE LIKE THE WIND” WITH SURPRISE GUEST MICHAEL MCDONALD
CHRISTOPHER CROSS + THE ROOTS PERFORM “SAILING”
Memories of camping with Christopher Cross as part of our soundtrack
Why “Do No Evil” Just isn’t Good Enough For Me
I love Google. The company continuously provides ways to use technology to make life easier. Each Google innovation seems to bring new ways to integrate the various data points of our lives.
It’s quite nifty.
(cue Dateline’s Keith Morrison impression)
But is it?
My concern is as we sign up and connect for each new service, we’re spinning our own individual webs of our personal lives into a convenient package that Big Brother would drool over. If the government were providing these services instead of Google, I wonder how readily we’d all be to adopt them?
Would you want Big Brother accessing yours?
Who’s in Control?
It’s not that I don’t trust Google’s business leaders’ intentions live up to their “Do No Evil” mantra.
It’s that I don’t trust that the company’s future business leaders will value ethics enough to let it outweigh profitability, should they ever need to choose.
I also question Google’s ability to maintain control of our data. Ultimately, as omnipresent as Google may be, the U.S. government has the final say over who can have access to what. And, even in the new age of Obama-influenced hope, “Do No Evil” is not exactly this country’s guiding principle.
For Example?
Case in point, is this recent ruling covered in Mashable:
In a highly troubling ruling from U.S. District Court Judge James Ware, Google was ordered to deactivate the Gmail account of an innocent user whose only crime was receiving the results of a bank screw-up.
Earlier this week an employee at a Wilson, Wyoming-based Rocky Mountain Bank inadvertently sent confidential information including names, addresses, social security numbers and loan information for more than 1,300 customers to the wrong Gmail address. Realizing its mistake, the bank sent a follow-up email asking the recipient to destroy the information. When it received no reply, the bank asked the courts to force Google to disclose the recipient’s identity and deactivate the account. Judge Ware, remarkably, agreed.
(You can read the full post on Mashable’s site: Judge Rules Against Gmail User After Bank Screws Up.)
In case you think you’ve misunderstood – you haven’t.
Some dipshit at a bank not only felt comfortable sending confidential customer information via e-mail, they were comfortable enough to click “send” without double (let alone triple) checking the recipient’s email address (if the bank had hired someone with OCD to do the job, this wouldn’t have happened!). read more
Two Steps Back for Moral Progress
(photo credit: John Morris)
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. – Mahatma Gandhi
If you agree with Gandhi, then after reading the following two bits of news, you’ll likely agree that this nation’s greatness and moral progress have taken a couple of steps in the wrong direction.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love animals. At times, I prefer them to people (I openly admit that while watching “Marley and Me”, I thought the ending would be far more bearable if they offed one of the kids instead of the dog).
So while The News is rarely uplifting these days, I found the most recent local broadcast especially depressing. I don’t mean to be a “Debbie Downer”, but I thought a couple of stories deserve some additional attention/awareness. read more
