Universal Healthcare – It Baffles Me

This is the third post in a series of fundamental changes we can and should make to have a lasting effect on our society. Last week I covered gun control and made many friends in the past week from the NRA. Now I want to turn my attention to healthcare.

I was born and bred in England, so please excuse me. You enjoy Downton Abbey, The Beatles, and got excited over young Prince George of Cambridge, so don’t pretend we don’t know what we’re doing.

There seems to me that there are certain entitlements if you play the game. By playing the game, I mean work, pay your taxes, and don’t break the laws. In return, your country protects you from foreign invaders who want the rights to Downton Abbey and free season tickets to Manchester United games, give you a sound education so that you can step up in life, and take care of you when you are sick.

The protection and health care are part of what you invest in a social infrastructure as part of paying your taxes. Your soccer tickets are your own problem, but life isn’t perfect. As much as we complain about the National Health System (NHS), and it is far from perfect, there is no such thing as a person going without medical treatment, or losing all their savings to help a family member receive the treatment they need to stay alive.

How is this possible if Brits don’t pay more taxes than Americans? The answer is that the pharmaceutical companies and the medical supplies companies don’t make the astounding profits that are made in this country.

It is greed that is preventing good-standing Americans from receiving what is theirs. Every American is entitled to access to healthcare. It baffles me how this is not accepted. There is no family in America (correct me if I’m wrong) wherein every family member is perfectly healthy and has no need of medical help.

It is a universal need and should therefore be universally accessible.

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Alon Shalev writes social justice-themed novels and YA epic fantasy. He swears there is a connection. His latest books include: Unwanted Heroes and the 2013 Eric Hoffer Book Award for YA – At The Walls Of Galbrieth. Alon tweets at @alonshalevsf and @elfwriter.  For more about the author, check out his website.

Gun Control: Let’s Agree On The Basics

Two weeks ago, I said I would start a series of posts that focus on real game-changers for our society. I feel we (probably – I) bounce around from one good cause or organization to another, and I’m feeling the burnout. Last week, I suggested raising gas prices to $10 a gallon – not my most popular post, but one that hit a nerve. Heck! I never said any of this would be easy.

My second post in the series isn’t going to garner much more support. I want to focus on gun control. My post begins with a number of consensus-building points. You might not agree with it, but you should be able to live with it.

1. People have a right to possess a secured firearm in their home to protect themselves and their families.

2. No one, except law enforcement, should be allowed to walk around the streets with a loaded firearm.

3. Not everyone should be allowed to buy a gun. There should be serious background checks, which is the responsibility of the local government, and a gun seller is accountable if s/he did not follow through with the appropriate checks.

It is my understanding that this is generally accepted, even within the NRA membership.

–       The majority of NRA members do not want a heavily armed, troubled individual anywhere near their schools, universities, or politicians.

–       The majority of NRA members do not seriously believe they need to stockpile guns to protect themselves from a politically extreme government.

–       The majority of NRA members believe our police should not have to face armed criminals.

This would not solve all the issues surrounding gun control, but it would go a long way to making our country a safer place. Is it really so simple? Or only in the wake of another public shooting?

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Alon Shalev writes social justice-themed novels and YA epic fantasy. He swears there is a connection. His latest books include: Unwanted Heroes and the 2013 Eric Hoffer Book Award for YA – At The Walls Of Galbrieth. Alon tweets at @alonshalevsf and @elfwriter. For more about the author, check out his website.

Vote with Your Apps Dollars – Roger Ingalls

Last year 1.6 million cell phones were stolen nationally and 50% of all theft crimes in San Francisco are now related to cell phones. The proliferation of crime related to these smart gadgets is going through the roof and it’s a big headache for local law enforcement.

There is a way to thwart these techno-hooligans but the big smart phone manufacturers refuse to side with legal paying customers. Apple, Samsung and the others generate a good portion of their revenue from replacing stolen phones. Essentially, in the minds of these companies, crime pays.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon recently met with some of the cell phone manufacturers and asked them to voluntarily put permanent kill features into the phone so when reported stolen they are rendered useless forever. The stolen phone market would fade away because who’s going to buy a dead useless phone. However, the manufacturers ignored the request effectively endorsing the illegal market.

Garcon has now partnered with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and they are scheduled to meet with the smart phone companies again in mid-June. With mounting pressure, maybe this time the smart phone manufacturers will act responsibly and side with legal paying customers and not the criminals. If not, it’s time for us non-criminal smart phone users to take action.

If Apple, Samsung and others don’t act responsibly, we should boycott them by not purchasing smart phone APPS. So far in 2013, four to five billion APPS are downloaded monthly; now that could be a powerful vote!

Let’s help Garcon and Schneiderman significantly reduce smart phone crime. If the phone makers don’t want to play then we shouldn’t pay. Using our phones to text, tweet and run other social media tools, we could organize a “don’t buy APPS day” to send a message. After losing a few hundred million, they may get a clue.

Vote with your APPS dollars!

Breaking: God to be Put on Trial in Iowa for Zygoticide – Tom Rossi

This just in from sAP wire (satirical Associated Press):

Dateline, 10/10/2014:

It was just over a year ago that the State of Iowa passed a law defining the abortion of a fertilized human egg (known to eggheads as a “zygote,” an egg that has been fertilized by a sperm) to be the equivalent of the murder of a child, teenager, or adult. Since then, Iowa law enforcement authorities have been made aware by those same egghead biologists and so-called “doctors” that most “abortions” of zygotes, and even morulae, blastulae, gastrulae, and embryos occur naturally, sometimes called a “spontaneous abortion,” a “miscarriage,” or, as Iowans say, as an “act of God.”

As a result, God has been arrested and, according to Iowa Attorney General Dick Rednecropper, will be put on trial for the crimes of “zygoticide, morulacide, blastulacide, gastrulacide, and embryocide.”

Rednecropper, interviewed in the courthouse, said: “Essentially, my hands were tied when we defined zygoticide as murder. It would be easy for a person, whether it be a man or a woman, who got an abortion to say, ‘I was guided by God,’ or ‘If it happened, it must have been God’s will.’ We circumvented that problem by simply saying that zygoticide is murder, no matter what the supposed justification.”

“Would you accept, as an excuse for murdering your wife, that the killer says, ‘She was ugly, and I just couldn’t look at her any longer?’ I don’t think so. We don’t accept God’s excuses, either. I mean, a tree would like to blame the wind when a branch falls onto your car or house, but it’s ultimately the tree’s responsibility to hang onto its limbs, isn’t it?”

Reporter Brent McStallwart asked, “So, is your office currently planning to prosecute trees?”

Rednecropper answered, “Don’t be ridiculous man. I’m just using that as an analogy. We don’t have the resources to spend on incidents like that.”

When asked how many counts of murder God would be charged with, Rednecropper replied, “Well, it’s hard to say right now. These here bile-ogists tell me it could be in the millions… maybe lottsa millions. It seems that, if a woman misses her per… I mean that time of the month where I sleep out in the shed, but then she doesn’t have a baby, there just mighta been a spotaneonous abortion. The egg mighta been fertilized, but didn’t stick where he’s supposed to. Either way, it’s an abortion, and that’s illegal.”

In describing the arrest, police officer Rip Burgundy said, “We had to spend almost half an hour searching for his hands in his long, flowing, white beard in order to put the handcuffs on him. He didn’t really resist, he just kept rolling his eyes. He has huge eyes. Everybody at the scene could easily see his reaction. It was kind of, you know, disrespectful to us as officers of the law.”

Officer Burgundy added, “Usually, in these situations, we use our Tasers, but we knew that there were some liberal noise makers in the crowd that would just love to accuse us of police brutality. So, since he wasn’t black anyway, we decided not to do it.”

God’s arraignment is set for this Friday.

Meanwhile, upon further study of the phenomenon of spontaneous abortion, Iowa law enforcement officials discovered that virtually every woman may have had, at some point in her life, a spontaneously aborted zygote, morula, etc. When asked what this would mean for Iowans, Attorney General Rednecropper said, “We start rounding up the women next week.”

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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