Ben Stein's new movie...

Wow.
I'm so going to see this. Check out the trailers. Wow.
Are you?

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php

drat, no car for me... yet!

Doggone it. The car we checked out needs a lot of repair. I don't think we're going for it. However, we have two other possible leads, and will be following them up next week. All we want is an old beater, but we don't want to double the price of the car in repairs, nor pay for a check up too many times. It is, after all, $100 a pop to get a car looked at by our mechanic. We think it's worth every penny.
This is a very important lesson for anyone who has not yet learned it:

No matter if you know the person, love the person, work with the person, or have heard the person is reliable, you ALWAYS take the car to a mechanic and have it looked at. NO EXCEPTIONS. NONE. Not even your own parents or siblings or your very bestest friend ever. We have refused cars now three times from people we know because we had an inspection done and things like brakes or struts needed replacing. Once we took a car, and it died very soon after. Really died. We knew it was coming, we just thought we had more than six months til it's untimely death. And that's ok, because we already knew what we were buying. But it's not nice to find out the hard way.

Someday, I really am going to become a certified auto mechanic. Just so I can say I know something about cars. I give up on algebra, but I do want to know about cars.

Assisted Suicide

Here is an article from LifeSite News. I have comments after.

Oregon Assisted Suicide Report: Deaths Increase, No Psychological Referrals
Salem OR (LifeNews.com) -- Oregon officials have released their tenth statewide report on the status of assisted suicide there and it found the number of people who died is on the rise. The report also showed the number of people getting drugs to use in taking their own lives is increasing as well. More people received lethal drugs from doctors to kill themselves than any previous year under the state's first-in-the-nation law legalizing assisted suicide. The report showed 85 people received the drugs (an increase of 20 from the year prior) while 49 people had their physicians help them kill themselves (up slightly from 2007). Three of the people who killed themselves in 2007 receive the prescription for the lethal cocktail in 2006. Since the Oregon assisted suicide law took effect, 341 patients have killed themselves. One leading euthanasia opponent, Rita Marker, of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, said she's concerned doctors don't do more to help patients address the mental health issues that likely prompt them to consider suicide. "During 2007, not one patient who died under Oregon's assisted suicide law was referred for psychiatric or psychological evaluation before receiving the prescription for lethal drugs," she said. Full story at LifeNews.com.

I don't know why people think this is such a good idea. You can ask people in the Netherlands where it started, and what has happened since in the way of abuses of these kinds of cases. Not having a psych evaluation is definitely an abuse of this law. If we think suicidal people have mental health issues under normal circumstances, why is that different if they are dying?

I'd rather die well than this. I'm going to milk the only life I've got for all it's worth, suffering or not. Why is this ok? What if someone wasn't really sick and neglected to get a second opinion? What if someone were convinced by their family, the way some girls who get abortions are convinced by their families? What if they were convinced because it would save everyone money? That is very likely, considering home care costs, especially if one had Lou Gehrig's disease or something. And what if we then moved on to the severely disabled, just because they weren't productive members of society? It goes downhill fast once it starts, and I know I'm not exaggerating, because it's happened before and is happening now. Hitler's Germany was where this kind of thing ends up. It isn't alarmist to say so. It is stating the obvious.

Vote no if it comes on the ballot in Washington, or anywhere else.

BSG! BSG! or Why did I cancel cable?

OMG.
I didn't know that the end of the new and improved Battlestar Galactica is this year. What was I thinking? The season is about to begin, and I cancelled cable! And I have to wait a year to see it!! Unless they put it on iTunes or something. AAAGHHHH!

I know very few people who read this with any regularity probably know what I'm talking about. They think, Wow, Ann Marie has really lost it. Isn't BSG that campy little show that made the original Star Trek look amazing? It was kind of like Bo and Luke loose in space. Francis tells me this is not accurate. Actually, he says nothing and looks like he is in pain. I guess that means I didn't watch enough of the original to know for sure, but it looks pretty awful.

So when the Sci Fi channel decided to redo the show into something modern, many were skeptical. But it is AMAZING! They fit great moral conundrums into almost every show. The characters are very human. There is some pretty gross stuff, but not every episode. It's just really fun. They even manage to make religion a somewhat central theme to the show!

I know it won't make sense if you haven't watched a single episode yet, because three seasons have gone by, but here is a website that will recap all three seasons in about 3-5 minutes. Click on "What the Frack is Going On?". I think my stomach muscles hurt from laughing...

http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/index.php

Don't worry, Ethel, I'll get to the healthcare thing again, when my brain works. For now, fun stuff.

a second car!

HOORAY!
I think we're getting a second car. And unlike all of our past money mistakes, this time, we're buying it in cash! So no payments on this one. It will be our "get thee to a park and ride" or "omigosh, you scheduled something at the same time?" car.
I am so excited. And we get to stay a Toyota family, because it's an older Camry. It needs to be checked at Toyota of Kirkland first to see if something is seriously wrong with it, but then I think we're good to go!
If you are wondering why this is so exciting, one thing is that I cannot take kids to soccer practice in the fall if Francis needs our one car. Gabe loves it, and Brandon has been watching for two years and I promised him he could if we got a second car. This year will bump us up to two games and four practices a week for 2.5 months, and I know they love it, but it was simply impossible with schedule changes at Francis' work and his need to not ride the bus every single day, especially when he works on Saturday and the bus doesn't run early enough to get him there. He works 30 mins away with no traffic, 7am-3pm. It is one hour on weekdays each way. Right now it's Monday-Friday, but it has been every other shift humanly possible at some point.
Anyway, I can hardly wait. No more bumming rides to the bus stop for Francis! No more walking home from it for an hour in 30 degrees when we couldn't make pick-up time and swimming lessons work.
Again, I say, HOORAY!

What do you think of "Sicko"?

Francis and I watched "Sicko" last night. It was very interesting, just like Bowling for Columbine was. There are some similarities that bother me, and here they are:

1. Michael Moore makes blanket statements and then moves on before you realize what he's done.
2. He does not back up what he says.
3. He puts people in situations or asks questions to make his point look good without really looking for anything that disagrees with him, because I'm sure if he looked hard enough, he'd find it. For instance, he found great health care in Cuba. Yes, that is mighty ironic. But why are people jumping on boats and risking their lives to leave, if it's so great? No mention of that.

Michael Moore does serve a purpose, even if people love to hate him. It is the same purpose, ironically, that Ron Paul serves. He makes people think. At least that is the idea. THINK AND VOTE, people! But I think two different things happen.

a. People get excited and do research to see if any of his claims are completely, or only partially, true. If they find out it's true, they get politically motivated.
b. People get excited and believe him, and then go off half-cocked and know-it-all like they always do anyway, except this time with different facts. They go tell their friends, who believe them, and nobody checks their FACTS.

Well, Francis and I hope to be in group A. And so we checked our facts. The World Health Organization, while a flawed system also, like the UN, at least keeps some kind of tabs, and since Michael Moore quoted them as saying the US healthcare system is 37th out of 191 nations in the world, I figured we should find out how they did their numbers. I would post just the link, but I think this study is so important, I want people to tell me what they think when they read it.

Here it is. What do you think?

http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/index.html

World Health Organization Assesses the World's Health Systems World Health Organization Assesses the World's Health Systems The World Health Organization has carried out the first ever analysis of the world's health systems. Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan. The findings are published today, 21 June, in The World Health Report 2000 – Health systems: Improving performance*. *Copies of the Report can be ordered from bookorders@who.ch. The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18 th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy. WHO Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland says: "The main message from this report is that the health and well- being of people around the world depend critically on the performance of the health systems that serve them. Yet there is wide variation in performance, even among countries with similar levels of income and health expenditure. It is essential for decision- makers to understand the underlying reasons so that system performance, and hence the health of populations, can be improved." Dr Christopher Murray, Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy. says: "Although significant progress has been achieved in past decades, virtually all countries are under- utilizing the resources that are available to them. This leads to large numbers of preventable deaths and disabilities; unnecessary suffering, injustice, inequality and denial of an individual's basic rights to health." The impact of failures in health systems is most severe on the poor everywhere, who are driven deeper into poverty by lack of financial protection against ill- health, the report says. "The poor are treated with less respect, given less choice of service providers and offered lower- quality amenities," says Dr Brundtland. "In trying to buy health from their own pockets, they pay and become poorer." The World Health Report says the main failings of many health systems are: Many health ministries focus on the public sector and often disregard the frequently much larger private sector health care. In many countries, some if not most physicians work simultaneously for the public sector and in private practice. This means the public sector ends up subsidizing unofficial private practice. Many governments fail to prevent a "black market" in health, where widespread corruption, bribery, "moonlighting" and other illegal practices flourish. The black markets, which themselves are caused by malfunctioning health systems, and low income of health workers, further undermine those systems. Many health ministries fail to enforce regulations that they themselves have created or are supposed to implement in the public interest. Dr Julio Frenk, Executive Director for Evidence and Information for Policy at WHO, says: "By providing a comparative guide to what works and what doesn't work, we can help countries to learn from each other and thereby improve the performance of their health systems." Dr Philip Musgrove, editor-in-chief of the report, says: "The WHO study finds that it isn't just how much you invest in total, or where you put facilities geographically, that matters. It's the balance among inputs that counts – for example, you have to have the right number of nurses per doctor." Most of the lowest placed countries are in sub-Saharan Africa where life expectancies are low. HIV and AIDS are major causes of ill-health. Because of the AIDS epidemic, healthy life expectancy for babies born in 2000 in many of these nations has dropped to 40 years or less. One key recommendation from the report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible. WHO says that it is better to make "pre-payments" on health care as much as possible, whether in the form of insurance, taxes or social security. While private health expenses in industrial countries now average only some 25 percent because of universal health coverage (except in the United States, where it is 56%), in India, families typically pay 80 percent of their health care costs as "out-of- pocket" expenses when they receive health care. "It is especially beneficial to make sure that as large a percentage as possible of the poorest people in each country can get insurance," says Dr Frenk. "Insurance protects people against the catastrophic effects of poor health. What we are seeing is that in many countries, the poor pay a higher percentage of their income on health care than the rich." "In many countries without a health insurance safety net, many families have to pay more than 100 percent of their income for health care when hit with sudden emergencies. In other words, illness forces them into debt." In designing the framework for health system performance, WHO broke new methodological ground, employing a technique not previously used for health systems. It compares each country's system to what the experts estimate to be the upper limit of what can be done with the level of resources available in that country. It also measures what each country's system has accomplished in comparison with those of other countries. WHO's assessment system was based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system's financial burden within the population (who pays the costs). "We have created a new tool to help us measure performance," says Dr Murray. "As we develop it further and strengthen the raw data used for these measures in the years to come, we believe this will be an increasingly useful tool for governments in improving their own health systems." Other findings in the annual WHO report include: In Europe, health systems in Mediterranean countries such as France, Italy and Spain are rated higher than others in the continent. Norway is the highest Scandinavian nation, at 11th . Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica and Cuba are rated highest among the Latin American nations – 22nd, 33rd, 36th and 39th in the world, respectively. Singapore is ranked 6th , the only Asian country apart from Japan in the top 10 countries. In the Pacific, Australia ranks 32 nd overall, while New Zealand is 41st . In the Middle East and North Africa, many countries rank highly: Oman is in 8 th place overall, Saudi Arabia is ranked 26th , United Arab Emirates 27th and Morocco, 29th. In 1970, Oman's health care system was not performing well. The child mortality rate was high. But major government investments have proved to be successful in improving system performance. "Oman's success shows that tremendous strides can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time," says Dr Murray. Information in the WHO report also rates countries according to the different components of the performance index. Responsiveness: The nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. The reason these are all advanced industrial nations is that a number of the elements of responsiveness depend strongly on the availability of resources. In addition, many of these countries were the first to begin addressing the responsiveness of their health systems to people's needs. Fairness of financial contribution: When WHO measured the fairness of financial contribution to health systems, countries lined up differently. The measurement is based on the fraction of a household's capacity to spend (income minus food expenditure) that goes on health care (including tax payments, social insurance, private insurance and out of pocket payments). Colombia was the top-rated country in this category, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland. Colombia achieved top rank because someone with a low income might pay the equivalent of one dollar per year for health care, while a high- income individual pays 7.6 dollars. Countries judged to have the least fair financing of health systems include Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Brazil, China, Viet Nam, Nepal, Russian Federation, Peru and Cambodia. Brazil, a middle-income nation, ranks low in this table because its people make high out-of-pocket payments for health care. This means a substantial number of households pay a large fraction of their income (after paying for food) on health care. The same explanation applies to the fairness of financing Peru's health system. The reason why the Russian Federation ranks low is most likely related to the impact of the economic crisis in the 1990s. This has severely reduced government spending on health and led to increased out-of-pocket payment. In North America, Canada rates as the country with the fairest mechanism for health system finance – ranked at 17-19, while the United States is at 54-55. Cuba is the highest among Latin American and Caribbean nations at 23-25. The report indicates – clearly – the attributes of a good health system in relation to the elements of the performance measure, given below. Overall Level of Health: A good health system, above all, contributes to good health. To assess overall population health and thus to judge how well the objective of good health is being achieved, WHO has chosen to use the measure of disability- adjusted life expectancy (DALE). This has the advantage of being directly comparable to life expectancy and is readily compared across populations. The report provides estimates for all countries of disability- adjusted life expectancy. DALE is estimated to equal or exceed 70 years in 24 countries, and 60 years in over half the Member States of WHO. At the other extreme are 32 countries where disability- adjusted life expectancy is estimated to be less than 40 years. Many of these are countries characterised by major epidemics of HIV/ AIDS, among other causes. Distribution of Health in the Populations: It is not sufficient to protect or improve the average health of the population, if - at the same time - inequality worsens or remains high because the gain accrues disproportionately to those already enjoying better health. The health system also has the responsibility to try to reduce inequalities by prioritizing actions to improve the health of the worse-off, wherever these inequalities are caused by conditions amenable to intervention. The objective of good health is really twofold: the best attainable average level – goodness – and the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups – fairness. A gain in either one of these, with no change in the other, constitutes an improvement. Responsiveness: Responsiveness includes two major components. These are (a) respect for persons (including dignity, confidentiality and autonomy of individuals and families to decide about their own health); and (b) client orientation (including prompt attention, access to social support networks during care, quality of basic amenities and choice of provider). Distribution of Financing: There are good and bad ways to raise the resources for a health system, but they are more or less good primarily as they affect how fairly the financial burden is shared. Fair financing, as the name suggests, is only concerned with distribution. It is not related to the total resource bill, nor to how the funds are used. The objectives of the health system do not include any particular level of total spending, either absolutely or relative to income. This is because, at all levels of spending there are other possible uses for the resources devoted to health. The level of funding to allocate to the health system is a social choice – with no correct answer. Nonetheless, the report suggests that countries spending less than around 60 dollars per person per year on health find that their populations are unable to access health services from an adequately performing health system. In order to reflect these attributes, health systems have to carry out certain functions. They build human resources through investment and training, they deliver services, they finance all these activities. They act as the overall stewards of the resources and powers entrusted to them. In focusing on these few universal functions of health systems, the report provides evidence to assist policy- makers as they make choices to improve health system performance. The World Health Report 2000 consists of a message from the WHO's Director-General, an overview, six chapters and statistical annexes. The chapter headings are "Why do health systems matter?", "How well do health systems perform?", Health services: well chosen, well organized?", "What resources are needed?", "Who pays for health systems?", and "How is the public interest protected?"

Happy Easter!

Just wanted to say that. We didn't make it to any holy days other than Easter. I didn't even make it to confession this month, but I did last month. I really wanted to, and so did Gabe, but we just didn't make it. I completely forgot. Again. I think that there is a wall between me and what is good for me somedays.
I did have a loverly talk with Rachel today. It had been a while, and I missed her, and I'd like to be down there. Must make that happen.
I get to feed Eileen's kitty, Stormy, for Easter. Today I walked in and she never knew I was there. Manna from heaven, she must think.
Mom's package for the kids got here in the knick of time. Now that the kids are asleep, I can open it. We dyed eggs, too. I got a lot done today, especially without kids. Daddy saves the day! I bought a lamb roast! I spiced it up and put it in the fridge. We are going to our neighbors' house for Easter, because they invited us last year, too, and we really should say yes. Fun stuff! I don't think they're excited about the lamb, but I am, and there will be more leftovers for me that way!
Hooray!
Time to have a little chat with the Easter bunny....