Over at Marginal Revolution, I ran into an ad linking to a site demanding healthcare reform by pointing out the nice salary (and house) of the CEO of United Healthcare as evidence that we need reform. One citizen, Stacie Ritter, gives us her story of just how hard it is for her and her family.

So Stacie, this post is for you. It must be hard. Having a daughter (or daughters, couldn’t understand if it was one or both) or any child with cancer can be a traumatic event. I have sympathy insofar as cancer is a disease that often appears indiscriminate and it is especially sad when children are afflicted with it.

But the world is one where we are forced to make choices. Choices to have children, choices to raise them, choices to be their caretaker, the choice to be their teacher and their guide through their early years. Yet demanding that insurance companies cover the expenses of your children and child raising is a tough pill to swallow for a lot of Americans.

Insurance companies are not medical providers. Insurance companies provide a means for shifting the burden of risk at a cost. With this cost are certain limitations the insurance companies impose on the risks, and treatments, they will cover. In your case, the required growth hormones are not covered by their services (from the details you provide).

Your husband’s insurance doesn’t provide for the treatments. It is not the fault of the insurance company. It also is not the fault of the executives you lambaste to stoke your anger. The executives and the insurer didn’t give your child(ren) cancer. The executives and insurance companies abide by their contract. Their role is not one of charity. To  shame someone for circumstances far beyond their control is not only offensive, it is repulsive.

You should be embarrassed. Not only for you, but for your children who you eagerly put in front of the camera to further your point. If we strip away the children and look at your demands for what they are – they are those of a rent seeker. Unfortunately, I have no sympathy for rent-seekers – those who leverage government to serve their own self-interest.

(via Winecommonsewer)

So the people in charge of the Empire State Building in New York are (were?) planning on lighting the building up in honor of China’s 60th B-Day.

The Winecommonsewer sums everything up nicely. It is offensive. But I’m surprise no one else has written about this: Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida was selling Mao t-shirts at one time. My last visit was two years ago so maybe they’ve changed their ways. If not… then I want to know why they don’t offer a Hitler T-Shirt in the German pavillion. I mean, if we’re going to celebrate mass murderers, might as well go all out and add the Hitler shirt. I don’t recall a Russian pavillion but I’m sure WDW can squeeze a nice Stalin shirt in there as well.

Back again with a nice list of observations that have come over the past two years of living with a musician. I hope that women somewhere will somehow sympathize with me on this despite me being a guy and my roommate being a girl.

1. Don’t tell people you are a professional musician when the most you make is enough to cover your bar tab for the night – if even that
2. Don’t borrow your roommate’s musical gear while promising to replace it with your own some day. You’re lying and we both know it.
3. If you’re almost 40 and the most you have to show for it is a couple of CDs you made, you might want to think about hanging it up.
4. Don’t tell everyone you’re a professional musician when you work a part-time job easily outsourced to a third-world country.
5. For God’s sake – stop doing benefit shows for anyone and everyone of your friends any time someone farts or falls down.
6. Don’t expect your friends to show up at every show. We’re far too nice to tell you just what we really think about your band.
7. If you do a benefit show for someone else, make sure it is about someone else and for chrissakes stop trying to make it about you.
8. Your lyrics suck.
9. If you think practice means  getting your band mates to bring all of the beer and toilet paper over to your place so you have a stockpile of both, you need a new career choice.
10. And finally – if you are going to write a song, for $#@$#@ sakes, don’t write a song about your kitten. Think I’m kidding? See #8.

I smoke. Not a lot. But some. I go through 1 to 1 1/2 packs a day cigarettes. However, out of that pack, I only smoke about 3/4 of a cigarette before I’m done with the cigarrette. It is a habit within a habit and one that is both not good and becoming increasingly expensive given the government’s tireless need for more money to support more programs to fight my lack of knowledge about things I know far more about than any one given person in government: myself.

Slate (ht: theAgitator) has a recent piece on at least one liberal suddenly being shaken out of his dogmatic daze to realize the real dangers of the increasingly popular nanny state. Now that states and the federal government have pushed through the smoking war and declared victory (sic), they now have time to look at every other potential vice including the consumption of sugary sweets and foods that are considered “bad” for you.

I like to call such paternalism “the success of the anti-smoking crusade”. Now that the victors have squashed resistance to anti-smoking measures they find themselves with even more time on their hands to consider what you and I shove down our throats.

You see, governments are going after my second vice: soda. I drink a lot of soda. I would venture a guess that I probably drink close to 144 o.z. of Moutain Dew a day. But there are a couple of caveats that come with that:

• I mostly drink fountain soda
• I add ice (waters down the content)
• I mix my mountain dew at 40% diet, 60% regular. (cuts down on calorie intake)

To some this may seem like a lot of soda. It is. And by most measures, I’m not obese. My yearly health checkups are generally positive. I have plenty of energy, no weird deformities or abnormalities and like to think I’m doing just fine.

But the ever-wise public health community appears to know better. Some are advocating for added taxes on such items that might lead to obesity because we nitwits have no clue on what our habits do to our bodies.

For example,smokers like me seem to not be aware that we are missing some sensitivity to smelling, decreased lung function, and the increased cancer risk that comes with smoking.

So the thinking goes that soda drinkers don’t know what they are doing to their own bodies. So to increase the amount of information available to soda drinkers and help coerce their habits, a taxes appear to be the best remedy to fight the “good” fight for public health.

On that note, I would invite legislators and public health demagogues to talk to my dentist. In the past year I have probably made the guy fairly rich because I paid, in cash, for the consequences of my poor behavior. I paid alright. Nearly $4500 to pay for the consequences of my habits.

So I guess that maybe I should just be happy that someone, somewhere, knows far more about the costs of my choices than I. If it weren’t for these people, I would have never known the broken molars and cavities were the result of my habits.