Blog from the Future Past

BILL LAMBERT

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Monday, October 5. 2009

Signs of the Season

Autumn has arrived with two sure signs.

First, the ivy climbing toward the peaks of many of the tall, spindly ash trees that ring our yard has gone scarlet, one of the better years for color.

Secondly, the Boston Red Sox make their way into the American League playoffs once again, making 2009 the sixth out of the last seven years; their two Wold Series wins achieved when they enter the end-of-the-year sweepstakes as the wild card entry, as this year.

Before you know it, people will be putting out pumpkins, dressing like denizens of Zombieland and riding Duck Boats around the common.

"In Theo We Trust..."

Posted by Bill Lambert in Beantown Fan Attic, Red Sox at 19:52 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, September 21. 2009

More On Healthcare

In my most recent blog entry, I tried to emphasize the inequities inherent in our current healthcare system. At the time I wrote that, I knew I lacked hard research data, no doubt weakening my case.

An article in the Boston Globe this past week cited a Cambridge Health Alliance report that appeared in the American Journal of Public Health: a study that followed 9,005 adults under 65 years old who took part in a national survey conducted from 1986 through 1994 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After 12 years, 351 people had died. Sixty of them were uninsured and 291 were insured.

I'll quote from the article...

After accounting for age, education, income, and other factors, the researchers found that people without private insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of dying than people with private insurance. An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine based on 16 years of data through 1993 found that uninsured people had a 25 percent higher risk of dying than insured people, which translated into 18,000 additional deaths.

Co-author of the CHA paper, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, noted in an interview that being uninsured is more lethal relative to being insured than it was 20 years ago, due to advances in treatment and prevention.

Even I didn't think the difference in mortality rate would be that startling... shocking, really. That means that lives lost due to lack of quality healthcare will exceed lives lost by american forces in the Vietnam War in about 15 months, and the Iraq war in about three and a half weeks.

Another Globe article Thursday reported on their recent survey of the commonwealth's major health insurance providers and the prospects of upcoming rate increases. Anticipated increases ranged from 7 to 12 percent, capping a decade of consecutive double-digit premium increases. Rates for 2010 will depend on the size of the employer and the type of coverage, but small businesses and individuals are expected to be hit the hardest.

The Globe claimed that, overall, premiums are more than twice as high as they were 10 years ago, but if the writer were familiar with the back-of-the-envelop "rule of 72", 10 years of at least ten percent increases gets you closer to a mind-numbing 150% boost. Massachusetts insurance costs are higher than most states, but the average cost of a family plan will be around $14,000 next year, with those insured through their employer footing around two-thirds of the bill.

An annual tariff of $14,000 is roughly double what an employee making $50K and her company will shell out for the twin payroll taxes, SS and Medicare.

These two trends are what the real healthcare crisis is all about. Private healthcare insurance is rapidly becoming beyond the means of the majority, and people will die because of it.

Posted by Bill Lambert in Straight Zen at 07:46 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Wednesday, September 9. 2009

A Question of Equality

For all but the last few ticks on the human time clock, the quality of healthcare or medical care mattered little. If someone developed a serious affliction or became critically injured, in all likelihood they were headed toward their rapid end. Indian or chief, royal or rube, you were lucky if your medical practitioner knew enough not to clean open wounds with river water, didn’t administer killing amounts of mercury or arsenic or blood-let you to death, not to mention passing on to you some nasty, lethal infection.

The threat of serious illness or death has always been the great equalizer. The high-born and the rich never fared much better than anyone else, and no amount of wordly goods could save you.

The modernization of medical care accelerated rapidly only during the mid 19th-Century. In one of the cornerstone achievements of mankind--along with the widespread use of fire, writing and the exodus of out Africa--we began to observe, discover and understand the things smaller than we could observe with the naked eye: our building blocks, our essence. Discovery of this micro-world drove development in the three basic sciences of modern medicine: biology, chemistry, and physics, and fueled the modern medical revolution.

Barely a-hundred-and-fifty years removed from the childhood of modern medicine, the average life expectancy has roughly doubled in areas with access to modern healthcare. The availability of quality prenatal care is the single largest factor in raising the live birth rate and reducing infant and early childhood mortality.

What could be more basic to, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness...”, than our health and longevity? Denial of healthcare or pricing it beyond the means of many essentially shortens the lives of those left out.

This is a statistical no brainer, really. If you have health care, on average you live longer than those who don’t. A new kind of inequality suddenly appears, a direct result of our misplaced, market-based system: some of us will have a right to expect a longer, better quality life; many of us will not.

Only the federal government can remedy this inequality by assuring health care access for every citizen, every indian and every chief.

I look on those who would deny universal healthcare access with pity. What kind of folks would deny their fellow citizens an equal chance at life as a political statement or to maintain their profits.

We should take the model of our one true socialized governmental function: defense and security. We aren’t left to hiring our own police or private armies to keep us safe. Since national defense and local laws apply to everyone, it is much more effective and better managed through the public sector, supported by our taxes.

Healthcare, so basic to our freedom and a core issue for every citizen, from every walk of life, demands the same level of national effort and attention.

Posted by Bill Lambert in Straight Zen at 11:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Tuesday, August 11. 2009

Tom Terrific Returns

My son Mark and his wife Catherine are home from Virginia for ten days or so. Since they're both big sports fans, on Monday I'd thought we could take a ride down to Foxboro and see one of the open practice sessions at Patriots training camp.

Turns out Mark hadn't been to the new stadium yet. I haven't been there since they started surrounding the place with enormous shopping malls. It's impressively, massively tacky around there now... too little green and way too much asphalt.

The practice session, was way cool. Though the afternoon was hot and humid, there was a nice breeze to tone it down and the clouds gathering by the time we arrived eventually gave way to blue sky. I'd guess there were somewhere around 1,000 to 1,500 fans and media watching from the small stadium set-up and grassy knoll surrounding the twin practice fields behind Gillette Stadium.

The big question this year, of course, is the health and recovery prognosis of Tom Brady after last season's knee surgery. Tom, the best quarterback on the planet, sure seemed like his bad ol' se'f during the passing drills.

To help Tom get through a very difficult off-season rehabilitation regimen, every morning Gisele took a break from writing her thesis on alternative fuel sources for inter-stellar travel to make breakfast: a pair of soft-boiled eggs which she would then secrete somewhere on her person and force Tom to hunt them down and consume them while hand-cuffed and blindfolded.

Number 12 was one of the last players on the field; easy to spot in his red practice jersey as every eye went to him. The Pats have four QB's on the roster at this stage: Brady, Mike O'Connell, Andrew Walter, a free-agent cut by Oakland, and rookie Brent Hoyer. To begin practice, the four alternated throwing sideline passes to the running backs. Though Walter can really wing the ball, it was easy to see why Brady is Brady. Hard throws with perfect timing and on the money, time after time.

Effortless... Tom somehow makes it all look easy. Attitude has a lot to do with it, and if Tom has lost even an ounce of confidence with that season-ending injury, you'd never know it. His teammates love him, gravitate to him. At the end of the 90-minute practice, Tom was standing in the middle of a group huddle, screaming at the top of his lungs and pumping his fists. I think Tom will be back, and so will Mr. Lombardi.

I was disappointed Randy Moss and Wes Welker were held out from the afternoon practice. I really wanted to see Randy doing his thing close up. I was also impressed by young Brandon Merriweather, who came to the sidelines after practice to sign autographs. The way he spoke with the fans, he just seemed like a great kid... a great kid who happens to hit like a ton of bricks, mind you.

Posted by Bill Lambert in Beantown Fan Attic, Patriots at 16:54 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)