Insurance

I’ve been reading all about the health care debate. Turn on the news and it seems like that’s all you hear about. Should we have a government option, or should it all be private insurance programs? Should there be a choice for the underinsured and uninsured and what about those who don’t have an employer backed plan? What do you do if you are losing your job and your insurance or can’t afford to buy any even if you are working?

I find myself caught in the middle, to young for Medicare and dependent on my wife’s insurance at work. Her health and mine are both shaky at best so what do we do if she can’t do her job any longer? If we don’t have “good” coverage how are we going to afford to see our doctor or buy any medications that we need? If you’re poor enough or old enough you can get Medicare or Medicaid so why not an option for those who are not? There is no question that the system is broken, or that it is unfairly weighted tin favor of those who have good jobs or are more affluent. Lord knows that the government is great at screwing things up, but the system is not fixing itself so what should we do?

There are no easy answers, but right now it all boils down to “how is it going to affect me?” Are we going to have insurance, should my wife keep working at a job that she is leaves her in pain from standing at a machine all day just because we need the medical coverage? Good or bad I would at least like a choice that would allow us some options and if it’s a government backed one so be it.

Make It Green

I just read an article in the paper about Waste Management Corporation here in Michigan. Rather then capturing the wastewater runoff caused by rainwater at their Maple City site and trucking it to the Frankfort for treatment they have instated new technology to take care of the problem. It uses methane gas generated by the landfill to power a system that evaporate and concentrate the liquid called leachate creating a product that will go back into the landfill to add decomposition.

This is a win win deal, keeping the trucks off the roads, saving Waste Management money, taking extra load off the treatment plant, and about half the methane gas created at the site is used. They say that even though it is better for the environment they are doing it for economic reasons only.

It’s a shame that new technologies that are good for our environment are often at the mercy of cost considerations and the not in my backyard attitude that keeps things like wind farms, trash handling systems, and other “green” systems from being implemented.

We must let our elected representatives on the local, state, and national level know that we need to clean up our act and the time to do it is now.

I Was Bored

Taking a deaf child road sign, tipping over head stones in a cemetery, breaking into and vandalizing a school, defacing someone’s lawn display of the Statue of Liberty, what’s going on? Acts such as these show disrespect for the property of others, cost someone money, and in some cases can cause harm to people.

When caught the person or persons responsible are usually young (under the age of twenty five) and say they did it because they were bored. They had nothing better to do so they thought it would be fun to destroy some ones property.

Since they are the children and grand children of my generation, I have to ask if it’s the way they were raised. Did we fail to give them a set of values; did we not teach them to respect others, are we somehow to blame for the things they have done? Or is it the environment they live in that has given them this idea that the rules don’t apply to them.

They are worse than the “me generation”, they are the “it’s not my fault generation”. If they think a thing will be fun to do they do it without regard for the damage they are causing.