Health Care

"When someone breaks their arm, they deserve to go bankrupt," said no one, ever.  

Everyone wants affordable health care.  The problem is that our current system is so deeply rooted around profit that to do away with it all at once would be economically catastrophic.  We've painted ourselves into a corner. If we want to change our system, we have to do it with baby steps.

This is what led to Obamacare. Obamacare was not Obama's ideal plan, it was simply the only measures he could take with what was given to him.  His answer was a mandate - in theory that mandate would drive many more customers to the market, which would lead to competitive pricing.

The problem with this is that you're relying on the profit margins of the insurance companies to narrow and cut people a break. But in reality, the insurance companies are at the mercy of the pharmaceutical prices.

For instance, let's say my insurance plan pays for my birth control. A generic birth control costs $30. The name-brand costs $400.  Well heck! if my insurance plan pays for it, I'm getting the good stuff! My insurance company doesn't want to buy the expensive stuff all the time, so they incentivize the generic brand with a smaller copay. All generic drugs are $10, all brand name are $25. Ok, now I'm more likely to buy the generic brand because I can't actually tell the difference. Well, what happens when I get to my pharmacy and there's a manufacturer's coupon at the register for $15 off of my name brand birth control? Sweet! I'm getting the name brand for the same cost as the generic!  So now everyone is buying the name brand birth control, and the insurance companies have to account for that by increasing premiums. Everyone has to make a profit.

Unfortunately pharmaceuticals are not like everything else on the market. People need them. When I get hit by a car, I don't get to spend a week shopping around for the right hospitals, doctors, pain medication, etc. Think about the last time you were in the hospital. Did you question the brand of needle that went in your arm and make sure that you were getting the right price for it?  How about the bottle of iodine and the cotton swab?  It sounds silly, but this is the hidden problem that we don't think about.

The truth is, there's nothing to say which brand of needle can go in your arm. You will not be asked, and that hospital may not even have any other options. But you WILL be expected to pay for it. It's like going to Applebee's  and having someone pick the Bourbon St. Steak for you (like it or not) at an unlisted price, force-feed it to you, and then hand you a bill for $3,000.  By law you are required to pay the full amount because, after all, you did eat it. Where's the competition? Where does capitalism work its magic - where the consumers get to shop around and drive prices down?

This is why there is a huge portion of the population who is pushing for universal healthcare. I don't have to talk about the number of people in this country who have gone bankrupt because of their medical bills, or how some people work two jobs to pay for their child's cancer treatment at a time when their child's nerds them to be home the most. You and I (the 98%), see it in our everyday lives.  Obviously this is a big problem, especially at a time when things like autism and diabetes are at record-high levels.

Now, to be fair, there is actually a benefit that comes from privately owned pharmaceuticals:  innovation. There is incentive to constantly fund research for the best newest treatments for the things that affect us the most. Unfortunately it is also paired with a flaw in the system, and that is the incentive to keep everyone sick - but alive - for as long as possible. If I'm Pfizer, and a bio-chemist comes to me with a patent for a cure for HIV, I buy it from him in order to keep it out of my competitor's hands. But I stash it away, because the minute I cure someone of HIV is the minute they stop being my paying customer. So instead I put out a treatment that keeps an HIV patient alive and well as long as they are using my very expensive treatment.

THIS HAS TO STOP. These are people's lives that are at stake.

So how do we  switch over to a universal system when so many profitable businesses are at stake? Obviously you can't bankrupt a whole industry overnight - that would be economically catastrophic. But what we can do is enter the market ourselves (the government), and be the most competitive. We give everyone a heads-up, and a chance to sell their companies to us first. If they decide not to, we simply put them out of business by undercutting them the good old fashioned Capitalist way.

First, you cap insurance prices and put a transition program in place so that over a span of about 5 - 10 years, the insurance companies can invest in other industries that are more sustainable (perhaps even other types of insurance). Then you outlaw disease-related patents and begin to buy up pharmaceutical companies one-by-one at a reasonable price.  If they refuse to be bought out, we simply open our own manufacturing plant that produces the same medication (it's no longer patented at this point), and we under cut their prices so that they can no longer stay in business.  Gotta love Capitalism.

Keep in mind, there is no such thing as a "mom and pop" pharmaceutical company. These people already have a well-established amount of wealth, and will in no way suffer from being bought out. Just like the prison owners, they will now have a chunk of change to invest in other industries. At this point we will have eliminated huge profit margins, so the tax increase we will need from the people in order to fund it will end up being lower than what they were having to pay in health insurance premiums.

This is an ambitious plan, so it has to be done with careful planning so as to ensure a smooth transition for anyone whose income is affected.

So how do you incentivize innovation? The answer is: any way you can. Grants, contests, awards/prizes, scholarships, partnerships with Universitites, promises of guaranteed employment, etc.  The reality is, the more we spend on incentivizing innovation, the less we will spend in the long run on manufacturing treatments.  It's time we set our sites on cures.

Drugs/incarceration

There a few strategies we use as a society to get people to act the way we want. One is incentive. If we outlaw the things we don't want people to do, there is incentive to not do them - they stay out of prison.

Things like murder, rape, and robbery, will always be outlawed. That goes beyond incentive, we just have to protect our citizens from their fellow citizens by means of physical separation. Drugs, however are a bit of another story.

When someone is using drugs, who is the victim? Well, obviously those most affected by drug addiction are the users themselves, and their loved ones. But they're not victims of the act of doing drugs, as opposed to a murder victim, who is harmed by the act of murder. They are victims of the desperate behavior (theft, violence, prostitution, etc.) that come from the addiction itself. If you punish the drug possession, you are only treating the symptom and not the disease.

Thankfully, this is one disease that we actually have a cure for! There are millions of Americans who have done it. It's just about locating the resources.  Imagine if we could cure homicide! Wouldn't we do everything we could to cure everyone??

So where do we get the money to build enough adequate programs to make a serious dent in the drug problem? Simple: We already have it, and it’s currently being used to pay for the incarceration of these same people were trying to help.

According to a study done by the Vera institute of justice in 2012, The average cost of an inmate is $31,286. In places like NYC, the average cost is $167,731!  Now, since removal from old lifestyles and triggers is an essential part of achieving recovery, it makes sense for us to build recovery centers in remote places where you can get a lot for $31k. We would be able to incorporate sober living, job placement, and continuation therapy that would give long lasting results to keep people out of incarceration, and into tax-paying society. My guess is that we'd actually come out on top - especially if we ban for-profit prisons (don't worry, I'll get to that later).

So then, do you decriminalize drug use? I'd say no, just for the simple fact that we need a way to locate those with addictions who are inflicting harm on themselves and others. But the penalty wouldn't be jail time, it would simply be court-ordered intensive rehab.

I try to keep beliefs out of a lot of these issues, as the best way to find universal solutions is to just work in terms of results. However, I think most of us can agree that profiting from the incarceration of others is just wrong and shameful. We should be supporting each other as a society, not betting against each other. I don't even have to go into what a conflict of interest this is if the owners of such a prison start funding campaigns and donating to local precincts, etc. Funny how the prison owner's enemies always end up behind bars…

On top of the moral conflicts behind it, it just isn't good business sense. If someone is profiting from this prison, then that means we are not getting good enough prices, and our tax dollars are going into prison owner's pockets. We are just simply better off building the facilities ourselves and paying nothing more than cost of labor and materials.

Of course you can't just outlaw someone's business and leave them with nothing overnight, so one option would be for the government to buy these facilities from the owners at a reasonable price. The government gets better prices on incarceration, and the owners get a chunk of change to invest in something else.

When you put a dent in drug use, you put a dent in poverty and desperation, which puts a dent in crime overall.

What about non-drug related criminals? There are so many people who get trapped in the system because they never knew anything else. When you are raised in the ghetto and your dad is in jail and your mom is hooked on drugs, how do you feed yourself? You don't have the nice clothes, the resume, the education, or the guidance to know how to apply for a job, nor do you have the reliable transportation to and from a job if you were to be hired.  If there are resources available to you, no one has told you about them or shown you how to take advantage. As far as you know, you're in your own.  If you don't turn to dealing drugs, you steal. You're desperate and its all you know. So you get caught and go to jail, you serve your time and you get out on good behavior.  

So now you're out and now you're equally desperate, AND you have a criminal record (not to mention those tattoos on your face that you felt pressured to get in order to survive a prison environment). You try not to be discouraged, so you visit the places on the list that your parole officer gave you of businesses that hire ex-convicts, only to find that most of them were just dead wrong and don't hire anyone with a record, and the others aren't looking to hire anyone at all. You get one job interview, but you're beat out by one of the other twenty people who applied. So now you've spent what little resources you had left on trying to find a job, and you're SOL. What do you do? You steal, of course. And maybe you even get caught on purpose because you know at least in jail you know you can get a hot meal.

These people need rehab just like drug addicts. Obviously not the same kind of rehab, but one of resources and encouragement. We need to have a strong exit program to keep from having to fund someone's entire life behind bars.

California Water Supply

As the years go on, California gets drier and drier. We've had a little El Nino to break the fall a little, but very soon we will have more and more farmers deserting their crops because you can dig a well only so far down.

If you ask the farmers, they'll tell you that California has the water, it's just being given to nature conservancy efforts, instead of being used to grow food for the country.

Well, both are important. As Californians we know the beauty of this incredible dynamic state, and we cherish it. Most of us also value a stable ecosystem. Farming is one of our many big assets and income sources. So instead of fighting over who gets the water, why don't we find a way to MAKE water?  And then make it into wine because we're Californians! Or was that Jesus?

Either way, the Central Valley is notorious for its fog. It makes the 99 FWY deadly. It's time we harvest that moisture from the air and use it to help grow our crops.  One way to do this is through Atmospheric Water Generators, and power them with solar panels. While they do generate quite a bit of water (up to 3,000 gallons a day), that can get a little expensive when factoring in maintenance and repair.   The simpler way to do it is with these:

Will it be enough? Probably not. But if we can make a significant dent in how much water we're losing, it will buy us some time to make it up other places.

Other places:

Desalination plants - The cool thing about desalination plants is that they have an almost endless water supply; the ocean. The problem is that the process traditionally has been extremely expensive and some might say "not worth the trouble." However, the beauty about the age we live in is that there is innovation all around us. We have people like Elon Musk who use their engineering skills to create new ways to provide what we need at a reasonable cost. Was he a little late on proposing the hyper loop as an alternative to the high speed rail? You're damn right. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, there are people around us who can make things like desalination plants more efficient and affordable with new technologies and more affordable materials (we'll pretend they're not coming from China). All we have to do is give them incentive. Provide incentives for college engineers that are project-based, give grants, etc.

Ban big water - At a time when we were at our most desperate, Nestle was selling it's bottled water for a HEFTY profit. That's right, bottled in California.  Food cannot be grown just anywhere - that's why the Central Valley is so valuable. Water is everywhere. There's no reason for companies not to bottle their water elsewhere. Sure, that will make it slightly more expensive for us as consumers to purchase bottled water in the long run, but is it really the end of the world if we stop drinking bottled water? I can't remember the last time I finished a full bottle before tossing it because it sat in my car for 3 days and I got paranoid about the BPA. Let's disincentivize bottled water, because all we're really doing is paying for plastic.

So there are lots of little ways to gather alternate sources of water without fueling the local political bickering. As usual, the answer is that it's time to get to work.

Abortion

When does a human life begin?
At what stage does a baby fetus to have awareness and feel pain?
Is is ok to take one human life for the sake of another human life?
Is it ok to "play God?"
Is the child better off never living at all, or living a life of abuse and desperation?
Do we have the right to tell someone what to do with their body?

Everyone will have a different answer to these questions, so the best way to settle it is to look at results.

If we outlaw abortion, what happens? Easy. Let's go back to a time when abortion wasn't legal...
(cue music)

Here we are in the late 1800s when abortion first became outlawed. Did it decrease the amount of abortions? No. All it did was make women take matters into their own hands. I'll let you read about it here: http://healthresearchfunding.org/15-dramatic-back-alley-abortion-statistics/

If you don't feel like clicking, here's the meat and potatoes of it: "Despite the fact that abortion was made illegal from this time until 1973, the same number of women each year (over 1 million in some years) continued to seek abortions out, illegally.
 Illegal abortions (or back alley abortions) include methods performed at home (using coat hangers or sharp feathers, etc. to pierce the uterus or blunt force to the stomach), by medical professionals, albeit illegally, or through attempted herbal methods."

So studies show, if you tell women they can't, they will do it anyway. And they will endanger their own lives in the meantime. Ruthless, those nasty women.

Ok, so since we can't outlaw it, what CAN we do?

Two things: Put reasonable restrictions on it, and shower women (and men!) with prevention resources.

Proposal:

I say we talk to scientists. Develop a team of the country's most respected OB/GYNs and ask them at what stage they can agree a fetus will feel pain and be aware that something terrible is happening. Let's, just for sh**s and giggles, pretend that's at week 24. Well then in order to get one, you've got to do it by the end of your 24th week, unless you have extenuating circumstances (newly uncovered medical issues, lack of mental stability, etc.).

Now, anyone who has watched "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant," (yes there's an entire show) knows that we have some ground to cover when it comes to educating women about pregnancy symptoms.  We need to hand out pregnancy tests as frequently as we do condoms to ensure that no one is put in a position where they waited too long simply because they didn't know. I know when I was growing up I was given resources all about the different methods of "safe sex," but no one ever told me how to recognize pregnancy symptoms and I was never encouraged to test regularly.  Pregnancy tests should be a dime-a-dozen, and they should have family planning and adoption resources inside every box.

If we want to prevent abortion, the answer is always EDUCATION and RESOURCES.  As much as the Republicans hate to hear it, Planned Parenthood has actually one of the best organizations for this. Anyone can get confidential contraception in addition to health exams and STD screenings.

If you're against contraception because of religious reasons, well then the only thing I can advise is to not use it yourself. You are in the extreme minority, and this country relies on the separation between church and state.  You still have Freedom of Speech, which allows you to advocate for your cause.

Personally, I am as liberal as they come, and yes this is a little more conservative of a proposal than I would like to see.  HOWEVER, I recognize that if our society wants to work effectively together, there have to be constant compromises. I'm willing to put some reasonable restrictions on abortion if it means less pro-lifers trying to overturn Roe vs. Wade every three minutes.

The System is Failing Us

Two out of three of our past presidents did not win the popular vote.  The majority of this country did not choose them as our nation's leader, and yet because of the electoral college system, they get the nuclear codes to our country.

The House of Representatives is under conservative control now, all thanks to gerrymandering - a blatant, unabashed, legal manipulation of the democratic system.

Bottom line: The system no longer represents the people, and some citizens' votes count much more than others. How do we fix it?

1) Get rid of the electoral college.



"But Courtney! Didn't our founding fathers create it for a reason?" You ask.  Our founding fathers did an incredible, unfathomably thorough job at creating our constitution and system of government so that it could work successfully under as many different circumstances as possible. 

HOWEVER, we must always remember that there are some things no one can predict. i.e. Ben Affleck NOT being nominated for an Oscar for Argo!  Whaaaat?! 

Remember that in the time our founding fathers were developing this system, the only form of transportation aside from walking was horseback. They didn't have phones or radio, or even Snapchat! They often had to slaughter the cows themselves! *gasp*








Most of our system having to do with voting and government representatives was put into place because communication with the rest of the country was not at everyone's fingertips. They had to hire representatives to stay up on the news because they couldn't just turn on FOX news and have their opinions spewed at them.  They had to plan an entire day of travel just to vote, which is why we vote on a Tuesday (let's get rid of that while we're at it).

A couple of  viral videos have surfaced claiming different purposes of the electoral college. One of them talks about how it helps balance out which states the candidates campaign in. In an age where all we have to do in order to see our candidates is look at our phones (which you're probably already doing), I don't think that's a factor that should be deciding our elections anymore.

This video claims it's to protect the rights of the minority...

https://www.facebook.com/Dr.JayKinzler/videos/vb.1637903659798131/1773269092928253/?type=2&theater

Electing a president that a majority of the country is vehemently against is not protecting the rights of the minority. I repeat...

Electing a president that a majority of the country is vehemently against is not protecting the rights of the minority.

There's actually a great way to protect the rights of the minority, and that is by creating more moderate candidates (more on that in my next point). That way the minority (while always losing because it's the MINORITY) will never have to wake up to what they consider to be the apocalypse or a president that genuinely makes them question their personal safety. 

As long as we have a reliable system of voting, we should be going by popular vote. It is the best representation of our people, and that's what Democracy is all about. No, not a direct democracy, as we have many other systems in place to ensure that (which she even mentioned in her video), i.e. the Supreme Court, House and Senate, etc.

2) No party favors. 

First off, lets abolish the whole delegates and super delegates thing, k? We all have Facebook, and a way to get to the polls. No one is using carrier pigeons to communicate with the outside world.

Now for the meat and potatoes:  Independent voters should be allowed to vote in primaries. Roughly 35% of voters are registered as Independent. Now the argument against this is "what's to keep everyone from registering Independent so they can vote for both parties' candidates?"  I had that same response until I entertained the idea for a minute.

Let's pretend I (as a Democrat) voted for Kasich (a moderate) in the Republican primaries, and so did most of the other Democrats, and he became the Republican candidate.  The Republicans would then vote for the most conservative  Democratic candidate in return, and we would end up with two moderate candidates.  This basically prevents both parties from having any extreme candidates unless a majority of the voters from BOTH sides chose them. This all but solves the polarization issue in this country, and no one wakes up the day after the election fearing for their lives and logging onto the Canadian immigration website. 

2) Get rid of gerrymandering. 

There is no reason the whole country shouldn't be divided up into one big grid. If your district has a lot of different demographics, well then I'd say that's pretty representative of this country. That's why cooperation and compromise are so important.  It will be up to that district to elect local officers who are capable of handling it. Any mother of a blended family will know how.  Think your district has extenuating circumstances? Well fine then, propose it to the citizens of your state (giving good reason) and let them vote on it.

3) Elected officials need to be citizens, not career politicians.

Anyone who has seen House of Cards can tell you that when it comes to the way our politicians do business, we're f****d. Our senators should be dealing with issues that are presented to them by the citizens, and voting accordingly. This shouldn't be about trading favors or getting kick-backs. How do you execute this? There are a few ways...

 - Get money out of campaigns (I'll expand on this later). Our congresspeople (is that a word?) should be spending NO time fundraising, nor be feeling like they owe anything to people/companies who have supported them financially.  This is a conflict of interest.

- Get money out, period. NO CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. Truly the way to do this is to make sure every government official is getting paid well enough to not be enticed my outside income, and not elect anyone who owns a business or shares in the stock market. If that ends up being too unrealistic, then there's another way to do it. Surrogates. If a congressperson owns an oil company, and there is a bill being voted on that has to do with solar energy, that person has to sit out the vote. They can be replaced by a surrogate Congress person for that particular bill. Perhaps there are a few on reserve for this purpose... who were VOTED in. I see you already trying to find loopholes, you mischief maker.

- Limit consecutive terms.  Our president has limited terms because our founding fathers wanted to be sure we weren't giving too much power to one person. If someone is on the "inside" too long, they can rig the system itself to benefit them. This is what is happening right now.  Our congresspeople (ok, it's a word now if it wasn't before) are staying in too long and developing dangerously strong relationships with lobbyists, campaign sponsors, and each other. This is how we end up with motorcycle safety bills with an abortion clause hidden inside (huh???). We have to break the bonds in these relationships. The way to do that is with one consecutive term at a time.  No two in a row.  If your state really loves the job your congressperson is doing, then they can do that job wonderfully every-other term.

- Legislation in plain English. The average citizen should be able to read and understand every piece of legislation, and it shouldn't be unnecessarily long. This encourages people to run for office who may have otherwise been intimidated by a feeling of under-qualification. More importantly it keeps congresspeople from hiding the real meaning of the bill or relying on the hope that no one will actually read it.

 - Transparency. There is no reason our elected officials should be hiding what they do day-to-day. they are officers of the people. If there's no favors being traded, there's no reason to hide discussions and daily activities.  Congress should be run much like a reality show without the manipulated plot. Cameras always on, audio being recorded, and a blog at the end of the day summarizing events, activities, feelings, and thoughts. When you run for office, you agree to full transparency. WE THE PEOPLE are the employers. You wouldn't allow your employee to do business behind closed doors, would you? Except maybe going to the bathroom. Go ahead and close the door on that one.

I know the concern on this one is that sometimes we can't handle the truth. I get it. When things are suddenly much more bold and honest than we are used to, it's shocking and painful at first. Kinda like when Sarah told you that your bangs were super out of style. But after a while you get used to Sarah's honesty and you appreciate having someone who's an asset in your life and you can trust not to let you embarrass yourself. And now guess who you go to EVERY TIME you get a new haircut? No, not Mike. Sarah! You go to Sarah! Are you even listening?

4) Get the media out of politics.

Sounds weird to say when you're trying to educate and empower people, also politics is kinda the main reason the media even got started way back when. But so many things have changed. One of our biggest problems now is that the media is a profit center, and what sells? Shock. Horror. Anger. Emotion. Boring stories don't sell. So a story that should be headlined "Limes help balance your pH levels, and balanced pH levels lower your risk of getting cancer," now reads "LIMES SAVE LIVES!!!" There's so much media available to us now, that they are desperate to stand out and grab our attention.  Politics are like candy to them. All you have to do is demonize the person who opposes your beliefs, and now you're riled up and reading/clicking/sharing and probably even making memes about it.

Here's how to do it: Have ONE website for politics (libraries have the internet, so don't give me the "what if I'm a mountain woman who lives off the grid" line). Each candidate gets the same amount of coverage to post their issues, beliefs, plans, etc. They can only mention another candidate in the form of facts, not opinion. i.e. "Terry Forsett was arrested for throwing a pile of sticks at a little girl." vs. "Terry Forsett is a worthless piece of garbage who will ruin your life."

Same for propositions - much like they do in voter guides. Allow the same space for each position to make their case.

There should be no money spent on campaigning materials other than "go vote."  Everyone will be forced to visit the website and see both sides if they want to know what they're voting for. It will be illegal to purchase or sell any campaign ads in any medium.  This is a big chore, and will need to be closely monitored, but it is so important when it comes to uniting our country and keeping the peace within.