My column: The Beacon, November 2009

Thanksgiving

This is my first Thanksgiving without my parents. I know that losing one’s parents as an old lady is not as hard as losing them as a young one. Nevertheless, I feel sort of orphaned.

My parents won’t be tasting my turkey this year. Thanksgiving has always been my family’s favorite holiday. We used to celebrate with another family: a couple my parents became friends with when they were wild and young and on their own in NYC. When the other couple died, their kids inherited the job of family elders but our Thanksgiving tradition did not survive the passing of their parents or the pressures of marriage in the age of divorce.

September 1998, my Mom was diagnosed with lung cancer and, expecting her to be a goner, I insisted on getting a day off on Thanksgiving Friday to travel to make what I thought would be the last turkey cooked under her supervision. (I checked the turkey through carry-on at the airport. I still like to imagine what they thought that child-sized critter in the suitcase was. The age of packing pureed squash in a tote bag is gone. You can’t get more than 2 servings in a quart size zip bag.) Although the past decade has been difficult, my brothers and I and our families have enjoyed many jolly Thanksgivings since then. Ten grandchildren will remember their grandparents: old, at home, eating solid food, driving.

So my Dad died in the spring of 2008 and my Mom made it to the new year of 2009. They outlived their parents by a lot. My parents were great advocates for civil rights and they would have been so thrilled to see the inauguration of a man of color. They were rabid Yankees fans and would have loved this year’s world series. But they became old folks and had they lived, they would now be prisoners of economic fear. They would also have been terrified of catching H1N1 from one of the grandchildren. They were spared that fear.

So what am I thankful for? I have never seen children so ill with flu as I have seen this year, now that I am working part time at Children’s again. Healthy 15 year olds come in with fever and cough and in 1 day, their lungs fill up with whatever it is that makes an xray white. The worst off wind up on a ventilator and the worst of those die.

In my school district, 50% of the kids were absent with “flu-like” illnesses. (The CDC reported one case of confirmed ordinary seasonal flu from April to November. Anyone with a “flu-like illness” in our neighborhood has the H1N1 flu.) None of our kids in my school district were hospitalized. None of them ended up with ruined lungs. None of them died.

When you consider that there might have been 50,000 kids with H1N1 in Western NY, I give thanks this year that so few became gravely ill. And I am so terribly sorry for the ones who did.

Be thankful for small joys.

Editor.

Copyright Western Region PTA

Forum: Do physicians have a role in forming public opinion about health care reform?

As a radiologist, I greatly benefit from the current system. Every day I read xrays that are unnecessary, ordered by paranoid midlevels and primary care docs who can't afford to spend 30 minutes with their patients finding out what is really the matter. I get comfortable on the MRIs and CTs and petCTs ordered by oncologists every 3 months for 85 year old patients who should refuse further treatment. Meanwhile, the same old folks are paying $300/month for essential cardiac drugs (or not filling their scrips because of the cost) and I cannot get an appointment for a checkup or mammogram because all the smart kids went into fetal psychiatric oncology or finance.

A sensible single payer national health plan would get me a primary doc who has the time to listen to my little complaints, pay for my essential meds, and make me more likely to seek help when I am thinking my problems are too trivial to bother with.

My neighbors are all 1 illness away from the poorhouse and I care about them. We on earth are a community of neighbors. Life is more fun when we look after each other. Those who do not feel this way are missing out on a great part of being a human.

I want single payer government run health care

Pelosi Agrees to Allow a Vote on Single-Payer

Source: www.allgov.com

After angering the liberal wing of her party over compromises made to conservative Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has decided to allow a floor vote later this year on a plan creating a single-payer government-financed health care program.



SO I POSTED THIS ON FACEBOOK AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED:

My friend K posted:

As far as I understand it, this type of system is not working in other countries and we lose our freedom to pay for services that are not covered under the proposed plan.

And I said:

In Canada, France, and other countries, the total health care bill is 1/2 of ours, they live longer, are healthier, and provide coverage for rich and poor alike. What services are you looking for that you fear might not be covered? I believe there are no essential ones.

And K said:

The people that I know that live in Canada come here for services because there is a long waiting list to have procedures done. I am concerned about this. As for the services that are not covered...that is not what I mean. Now, people can opt to pay for an MRI if their insurance does not cover it because a doctor will not authorize it. As I understand it, we will no longer have that option. I think freedom of choice is important in our society. I am trying to learn more about the proposed plan.

And I replied:

We currently have the freedom to pay for services that are not covered by our insurance, including our medications. Many people cannot afford their medications, which easily run $300/month for common conditions such as heart trouble.

And:

In addition, very few of us can afford to pay out of pocket for a lung transplant although we certainly do have the "freedom" to pay for services that private insurance might not cover. Having the freedom to pay for services means little to those without the money to buy even minimal coverage.

And:

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," words and lyrics by Kris Kristofferson made famous by Janis Joplin.

And K said:

I believe that people should be covered, but I do not think the government should be in the business of healthcare, auto industry and banking. We are becoming a socialized government, and that is NOT what the founding founders meant us to be, nor a society that I want to live in. I work hard for my money and I do not think that I should have to pay for insurance for those less fortunate. I guess we will agree to disagree.

And I said:

We pay health bills for our elderly. Is that socialism?

And K said:

The government takes my income to help pay for that. I do not like that either - however it was one thing they did. Now they are trying to take over many aspects of our lives...that is socialism.

And I:

They torture and kill with my money. Better to employ and heal.

And K:

You have a point there...



Wow. I feel like I won an argument for the first time in my life. I sure hope K never has to find out how really crappy her health insurance can be.

My friends are mostly Christians. I really wonder what they are hearing in church. It doesn't resemble Christianity, that's for sure. Of course my friend Gordon is a Christian too. He is in Honduras donating his time to provide medical care to the poor as he has done year after year.

The photo

This photo of me is interesting. Not because it is one of so very few (like all but the vain and starved, I think or know that I look horrid in photos) but because of the photoshopping I did. The hand on my right shoulder belongs to............Eliot Spitzer. The photo is from a long ago time when deluded Democrats were proud to have their picture taken with our wonderful governor-elect. How far they fall!!!

My vacation

So I am on "vacation" this week. So far I have done the quarterly NYS employer taxes, no help from their so called online filing which took 2 hours and wouldn't complete (they said it was because I was using Firefox, but when I tried IE it was worse), tidied the house for a party/meeting of the PTA (Harry: the living room table has NO magazines on it), WASHED MY CAR FOR GOD'S SAKE (if you make rain by washing your car, will I make a tornado as I have never been known to wash a car?), taken 100 lbs of paper to the Abitibi box at the school, put in 5 hours moving wood chips to the amazing new elementary school playground, done the PTA treasurer thing, sent Mom&Dad mail to my brother, withdrawn $ from nysaves and sent it to GWU to pay for the 2nd to last undergraduate college bill, called the phone company in Vermont, called IHA to get my gym debit card, filled my scripts, gone to the gym 3 times, and hosted 12 people at our PTA party/dinner. Next: 3 days of PTA camp in Utica!!!!!!!!!

Oh I forgot: I cleaned the inside of my car as well. I didn't find anything I needed there, unless you count the Canadian money. You folks who occasionally ride with me will be happy to know the (brand new) kitty litter is no longer in the car. I did find 3 right hand black winter gloves. Good thing I am right handed. (Hmmm...) Can anyone tell me how you get the streaks off the car? I have no experience with this. I washed with Calgon DW liquid in hot water, which worked really well on the bug carcasses.

So tonight I again tried to get movies of my water snake but again failed. I walked along the edge of the pond running my Flip hoping to get a picture of a frog jumping in. I have a nice audio of plops, screeches, and tractor noise but didn't get a single frog in the picture.

Now it's time to make dinner but since I have all the party leftovers, I can just chill. Wondrous!!

Next vacation: clean the oven. Can't wait.

Al Franken

So what's up with the cuntservative pundits? They think Al Franken somehow stole an election. Will they ever stop epitheting Franken as "comedian" or "SNL comic" and just give it up to Senator Franken? I always thought that Reagan was the functional actor who knew how to act the part of president of the US. Did he actually know anything about foreign or domestic policy? At least Al Franken graduated from Harvard. By itself that puts him way beyond Reagan in qualifying for public office.

Pictures of my kids

I hated being a cute kid. I thought people judged me by the first impression they got: pretty, cute, clean, whatever. I always considered it terribly unfair to those who weren't cute and to those who were cute who might actually have a brain or an opinion or something of more importance than physical attributes. It has been some relief to grow old and older-looking.

As a mother, I have learned that it is great to have cute children. What I never realized until now is that if one's children are far away on an adventure, if they are friendly, cute, nice, other people will take pictures of them and I will get to see them in a duct-tape boat at college or on top of a bus in Cameroon.

comedian in the senate

What is the problem with Al Franken being in the senate? Those who think Al Franken should not be a US senator always epithet him as "TV comic" or some such denigration. Never mind that, in the absence of a Minnesota law stating that a majority must amount to a lead of more than 225 votes, he won the election, what is the issue with a comedian being a senator? Haven't we had several physician senators, who wasted a perfectly good medical education to become an elected representative? What about the bug killer from Texas? I think it is about time that a funny guy got seated. I just hope he has some fun there. It looks to me like a not very fun job, but what do I know?

Economusing

So my friend's lovely smart daughter, the first in her family to graduate from college, majored in business at NYU and landed a job in NYC. The recession took out a lot of her more expensive colleagues first. The yearlings hoped they would be safe for a while but the while ended and she is coming home. This is so sad but maybe it is better to not spend a whole career working at Bogusville Inc.

America has experienced an internal brain drain. (Remember the brain drain? It was the migration of the smartest rich kids from India, etc. to the United States. They became American doctors and scientists and engineers and computer whizzes.) For the past many years, the bright kids in America's high schools swarmed off to college to become not doctors but financial alchemists, transforming someone else's money on paper, making huge salaries and nothing tangible. They built McMansions in Mamaroneck, next to the Mafiosi and the Kuwaiti royalty. They hired 2 nannies for the weekdays but just one for the weekends. They paid $22,000 in property/school taxes.

The real estate mess has not really hit those who already own their homes and still have jobs. They are, however, letting one or 2 of the 3 nannies go and getting by with one housekeeper. If these "folks" try to sell their houses, they may feel the pain. (Your house may be the surrogate for a rainy day fund and may lose a lot of its value, but the pop of the real estate bubble only hurts when you need the cash.)

Think of the people who clean those fancy houses: they work 3 jobs, they support 6 people, they send money to Mamacita in Guatemala, and they have no benefits. Even those with green cards have no health insurance. If you work 3 jobs and lose one of them, you are screwed. Did your rent go down? Did your food get cheaper? Did your car payment get reduced? Did you get younger and healthier? You are screwed. My parents were lucky to have the same "cleaner" since 1982. She started work at my backyard wedding and ended up essential to their being able to avoid the dreaded nursing home death. No one but my folks ever did the social security thing with her paycheck. She was essential and beloved and her situation gives a different significance to "under employed."

So what happens to a business major when business contracts? Can a business major make anything anyone would buy? One thinks of "starting a business" as opening a store front and selling something or offering some service. But business school does not teach one to manufacture a product. Business grads get jobs in companies. What will the federal stimulus do for hispanic housekeepers and business majors? Perhaps a business grad might start a company that offers to clean people's houses and hire all those hard working Central Americans who have awakened from the American dream.

Lost with GPS

The last time my personal mechanic (friend who drives my car to work, fixes it, drives it to my house, gets a ride home from me) returned my car, he laughed at me and said "Anne: you have maps in your car!" I love gadgets: my iPod, my many computers, my wireless routers, my speakers, my Palm, my phone. He couldn't believe I didn't have a GPS navigator. I do get lost sometimes but it's usually when I leave the YahooMap at my desk. I am pretty good at getting places.

So I went to a meeting at the Stockton Hotel. It's in Stockton, NY doncha know? I got so lost, over and over. I stopped for directions twice and managed to get info from left/right dyslexics both times. I missed the food, which wasn't a big loss.

I bought a Garmin nuvi270. It was really cheap, as these things go. I wanted it before I did one of my frequent runs to 1166, code for my parents' old house. I flew to JFK and rented a lovely large SUV. Spent the afternoon and night with my brother and his kids, went to 1166 the next AM, loaded up the car with a couple of chairs, bowls, books, and a 50 lb concrete mushroom, and drove home. The Garmin wanted me to go on Route 17, which I have always hated, but since I couldn't figure out the other way to do it, I gave in and took 17 from Binghamton. It was much better than last time. I just couldn't remember how to get off it.

The Garmin took me into windmill land. I went north and then west on a road I would name "Seasonal", without shoulders or center lines. Those who have driven with me know I hate steep roads and wow these roads were steep. At the top, there was a lot of snow on the ground and there were about 100 high tech enormous windmills. (Does anyone know where the wind becomes electricity and where the power lines are?)

So I got home pretty fast, despite my 40 mph tour through the roughest land I have seen in western NY. I would like to let Garmin know that Telegraph Hill is not a good way to route someone making that trip, unless they are visiting the farm up there, but I now cannot find my route on a map.

I probably will never see 1166 again: the buyer will tear it down and landscape it. I wonder what happens to the $22,000/year property and school tax when the building is gone. The end of an era.

I thought if I had a blog, I would write more. We'll see how that goes.

I am an MD but astonishingly poorly educated otherwise. Some educational lowpoints: I never took a science course in high school (made college confusing: the "first" time I went to college I took physics and didn't know there was a textbook!). I got through college without taking English. I was so mad at high school English teachers for ruining literature for me that I punished myself. I recently found a paper I wrote in sociology. I could swear I never took a sociology class! Made a big impression on me I guess. I took 4 years of Latin, 3 years of French, and 2 years of Spanish. I can count in French and Spanish and ask where the library is. I can't understand the answer however, so I try to travel to English speaking countries or in the company of my Francophone son. Fortunately, the rest of the world has better language skills than I do and can speak English.

Might finish this later: generator test in 4 minutes.

March 09 column from The Beacon

Editor: Infrastructure

The buzz word of the post finance-as-real-industry economy is “infrastructure.” Over a period of 25 years our economy morphed from one in which people made things they could eat, sit on, drive, or wear into one in which some people got really, really, really rich counting and betting on future money, while a lot of the rest of us earned a living servicing each other in government, schools, hospitals, and prisons. I knew this bogus economy couldn’t last.

So when the “Fed” has lowered interest rates to 0% above prime to stimulate the economy and there is nothing left in the tool chest, before double digit unemployment and deflation hit, we are discussing government spending on infrastructure to make jobs and fix what’s broken. Put people to work repairing bridges and crumbling schools, bringing train travel and internet service up to European standards, protecting and improving water supplies, updating the grid so that if it snows in winter, a million people in Kentucky aren’t without electricity for 2 weeks.

To me the most important infrastructure is people. The foundation of a strong nation is built upon the people who live there. They must be educated. They must understand their government. They must know how to learn. They must have a critical awareness of the world. We heard that spending on education would be protected in these hard times, even increased.

On a cold Saturday headed to the annual Legislative Breakfast, co-sponsored by our Western Region PTA, the Erie County Association of School Boards, the League of Women Voters, and school administrators, NPR reported that a large chunk of the education piece had been excised from the stimulus package in front of the US Senate. Apparently supporting human infrastructure by fixing crumbling schools is not that important a part of a stimulus package.

GM, obliged to present a plan to restructure to qualify for a zillion dollars from the US government to avoid bankruptcy, will probably fire 20,000 US workers and another 27,000 around the world. What are we getting for our money? CEO bonuses and shareholder dividends? The fired rank and file (and the laid-off non-GM folks who make the parts) will join those in need of health care coverage. They will not be sending their kids to college. They will not be paying income taxes. They will certainly not be supporting GM since they will be keeping their cars on the road for 15 years. We just hope they will not be forced to live in their cars like some neighbors we have heard about.

I took Amtrak to the LegEd Conference in Albany. I was so happy to be on a comfortable train in America and I was so angry when I got off. For most of the trip, there is one track and passenger trains get to wait while freight trains pass them. I missed the first session of the meeting. In Europe, the trains run on time. That’s what good infrastructure gets you.

Advocacy for children and education will be very hard this year, with the stresses the economy places on our resources. PTA and our school board, teacher, and library allies have a long row to hoe. It has always been a daunting task to pursue our issues. This year will be a particular challenge. We must stand together and keep our eyes on the prize. PTA power!

(From The Beacon, the newsletter of Western Region PTA. Copyright 2009. Reproduce with permission and attribution not for profit.)