I went to the doc recently and discovered that I have a torn meniscus in my right knee. I've been living with it for a while, and it's tough to manage. So I bit the bullet and went, for which I'm grateful. Probably should have gone sooner.
When I herniated my back a few years ago, it recovered on its own. A couple of months of supreme discomfort and shuffling like Tim Conway's speedster character, but it all worked out.
Not so with this. Sometime in June I get to be seen by the actual surgeon. When is the surgery? Summer, I guess. Sooner is better than later. Then I can go on walks with my wife again, something I haven't been able to do much of lately.
What would this all look like under Obamacare? No clue, but it can't be good. Government is never anything but a no-value-add, expensive middle man. Look at everything else it has ever touched.
ETC: This is fascinating. A woman from Canada writes in the comments with her own story of a torn meniscus under the care of the Canadian health care system.
I injured my knee back in mid-January. Went to my family doctor right away. Went back 2 weeks later cause the pain just wasn't getting any better. He referred me to the hospital for an MRI. I finally got a call they had room for my MRI appointment the Saturday of Easter weekend. Three weeks later my doctor called me with the results. His words: "You've completely destroyed your knee!" Next step is to meet with an orthopeodic surgeon and schedule surgery. At this point, I was told there is a one year wait to see the ortho.
Compare and contrast our private health care with a nationalized health care system:
I went to my family doctor, had an MRI the next week, got the results two days later, and an appointment with the surgeon set up within the next 30 days.
Estelle went to her family doctor, waited a couple of months for the MRI, got the results three weeks later, and now has to wait for a year before seeing the surgeon.
Yes, of course. Nationalized health care for everyone! Barack Obama - supah genius!
If only "self-improvement" had been as popular as "home improvement" in the last ten years, our economy would likely be in better shape.
You can make the case for a college being the place where people go to improve themselves, but at the price tag universities charge these days, where's the ROI? How does $60K in debt make sense for the Sociology student who will make $25K per year?
My conversation with Joe Hilley over the weekend has me thinking a great deal. Self-improvement...
In getting ready for my Internet radio show (The Growth Accelerator, Mondays, 2 PM to 3 PM on Des Moines Local Live), I re-discovered Frederick Douglass. He gave a speech in 1859 - before the Civil War - entitled "Self-Made Men." I'd like to quote some of it here (I'm amazed that it's not transcribed for the Internet anywhere, except in parts.)
"Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power, and position, and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy character."
"[Self-made men] are in a peculiar sense, indebted to themselves. If they have traveled far, they have made the road on which they traveled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder."
"Though a man of this class need not claim to be a hero or to be worshipped as such, there is genuine heroism in his struggle and something of sublimity and glory in his triumph. Every instance of such success is an example and a help to humanity."
"I do not think much of the 'accident' or 'good luck' theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value. An apple carelessly flung into a crowd may hit one person, or it may hit another, or it may hit nobody. The probabilities are precisely the same in this accident the same in this accident theory of self-made men. It divorces a man from his own achievement, contemplates him as a being of chance and leaves him without will, motive, ambition, and aspiration. Yet the accident theory is among the most popular theories of individual success. It has about it the air of mystery which the multitude so well like, and withal, it does something to mar the complacency of the successful."
"Fortune may crowd a man's life with favorable circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them."
"A wise man has little use for altars or oracle. He knows that the laws of God are perfect and unchangeable. He knows that health is maintained by right living that bread is produced by tilling the soil that knowledge is obtained by study that wealth is secured by saving and that battles are won by fighting. To him the lazy man is the unlucky man and the man of luck is the man of work."
"We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting, and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put, and which, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, is the true miracle worker. Everyone may avail himself of this marvelous power, if he will."
"He who does not think himself worth saving from poverty and ignorance, by his own efforts, will hardly be thought worth the efforts of anybody else."
"The lesson taught at this point by human experience is simply this, that the man who will get up will be helped and that the man who not get up will be allowed to stay down. This rule may appear somewhat harsh, but in its general application and operation it is wise, just, and benevolent. I know of no other rule which can be substituted for it without bringing social chaos. Personal independence is a virtue and it is the soul out of which comes the sturdiest manhood. But there can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence, and this virtue cannot be bestowed. It must be developed from within."
"I have by implication admitted that work alone is not the only explanation of self-made men, or the secret of success. Industry, to be sure, is the superficial and visible cause of success, but what is the cause of industry? In the answer to this question one element is easily pointed out, and that element is necessity. Thackeray very wisely remarks that 'All men are about as lazy as they can afford to be.' Men cannot be depended upon to work when they are asked to work for nothing. All men, however industrious, are either lured or lashed through the world, and we would be a lazy, good-for-nothing set, if we were not so lured and lashed."
"If you wish to make your son helpless, you need not cripple him with bullet or bludgeon, but simply place him beyond the reach of necessity and surround him with ease and luxury."
"Thus the law of labor is self-acting, beneficent, and perfect increasing skill and ability according to exertion. Faithful, earnest, and protracted industry gives strength to the mind and facility to the hand. Within certain limits, the more that a man does, the more he can do."
Dude, forget Bush. I wish this guy had been president.
Freedom means freedom for everyone.
As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that.
ETC: Carlos Watson predicted this very thing four days ago. Superb analysis, Carlos!
Some people say the nation's current economic problems are due to the recession which began under the Bush Administration. Others say the problems are being caused more by the policies President Obama has put in place since taking office. Which point of view comes closest to your own?
1) Economic problems are due to the recession that began under Bush. 2) Economic problems are caused by policies President Obama has put in place 3) Not sure
If I were asked that question, I would agree that our nation's economic problems started during Bush's tenure. If allowed, I would add that what Obama's doing magnifies the problem in a big way. But of course, that's not captured in the survey.
"The U.S. Treasury would own 72.5 percent of the new GM coming out of a bankruptcy sale process while a trust affiliated with the United Auto Workers union would own 17.5 percent, GM said in a filing with securities regulators."
