True, false and the in-between of health reform: Illegal immigrants

A large part of the noise provided by opponents of health care reform has been in reference to claims that illegal immigrants would be getting open access to health care.

One of the best ways to prevent this, is to have provided for a robust form of photo I.D. that anybody applying for health care benefits must show in order to prove citizenship. You’d think that the Republicans would have been all in favor of this, but instead opposed it at every turn. They believe that a national identity card will be the next step to ‘big brother’.

May I also assume that these same folks have burned their drivers licenses, passports, military ID,  Medicare and social security cards? Uh, probably not. Logic rarely enters into these sorts of discussions.

Click to read more ...

Location can weaken understanding need for healthcare reform

“Hey, hey … Peter Rast has a letter to the editor in today’s paper!” I blurted out across the breakfast table this morning, to Mr. Maven. We know Peter from our days as collegues in the Nevada Wing of the Civil Air Patrol.

Peter is a well known and highly respected consultant and expert witness specializing in forensic engineering, accident reconstruction, and causation analysis. I’ve worked with him in Search and Rescue enough to know that he’s really, really sharp. He and I are about as far apart as humanly possible on the political spectrum, but I was still surprised to see the following:

Regulations are driving up costs

“I recently ran an old, rusty nail into my hand and needed attention.

Click to read more ...