THE DAY SLEEPER DOZEN

I'm a night worker. You will never understand night shifts unless you’ve worked them. Sorry, just ain’t happenin’. You may get close if you’ve ever lived with a night shifter. But unless you’ve done them yourself, you just don’t get it. So, that being said, I’ve decided to put together a compilation of suggestions and ideas to help you try and understand the lifestyle and help stop you from saying something that could get you maimed or killed when you encounter the freaks that only come out at night.

1.  First, I’m not kidding about the freaks come out at night comment. We are weird people. Seriously, we should be studied and featured in a National Geographic special. Sometimes it seems as though our shift’s primary language is barnyard animal. You have to be a little loopy if you choose to make your living working in the wee hours of the night when the vast majority of nature is fast asleep. So if you encounter a night worker and they seem just a bit off, give ‘em a break. The real question is, do nights make you crazy or do you have to be crazy to work nights?

2. Don’t ask a night shifter what they do all day. What do you think we do all day? What are you doing at 2 o’clock in the morning when you have to go to work at 8? Of course if you do ask this question, we’ll probably try to be cordial in our answer. But in our heads we’ll be thinking that you’re an idiot. In the same regard, DO NOT boast that it must be nice to have the days free to do whatever you want. Yeah, and it must be nice for you to have free time between the hours of 10PM and 6AM.

3. Life revolves around sleep. It’s the absolute most important thing to a night shifter. You can rest assured that almost every shift will start with, “I go X hours of sleep last night.” Given the choice between sleep and almost anything else, sleep wins—EVERY TIME.

Along the same lines…

Worst inventions ever: lawnmowers, cars, telephones, ice cream trucks, happy children playing, sunlight.

Best inventions ever: blackout blinds, sleep masks, ear plugs, rainy days. 

4. Breakfast is more a frame of mind rather than a time of day. Don’t freak out when a night worker is eating chips, pizza, candy bars, etcetera at eight in the morning. It’s the end of our day. And having a beer in the morning doesn’t necessarily mean someone is a raging alcoholic. They could have just put in a full night’s work. We like to wind down after a long shift just like you.

5. If you know someone works nights, DO NOT CALL THEM DURING THE DAY UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO (and if you think you have to, think about it a little longer just to be sure). Unless someone is dead, dying, or we’ve overslept for work, drop the phone and back away. If you do make the mistake of calling during the day with no good reason, be prepared for retaliation in the form of a 3AM phone call. Oh, yeah—if you do call, DO NOT make the mistake of starting the conversation with, “I’m sorry, were you sleeping?”

6. This is a personal experience of mine: If you are roommates with a night shifter, do not tell them that you’ll give them between the hours of X and Y to sleep, but after that we’re going to be as loud as we want (unless you want to lose a friend and the financier of 1/3 of the rent).

7. “Good morning” and “Good night” are meaningless and only make for confusion. If we tell you goodnight at 0700, get over it. It may be good morning for you, but its goodnight for us. And we’re never truly certain of what day it is, so just don’t ask.

8. Hot coffee, cold coffee, it really doesn’t matter unless it lacks caffeine. It’s not a matter of preference, it’s a matter of survival. Caffeine, chocolate, energy drinks. Staples of the night shift diet. The quickest way to my heart is through a case of Rock Star or Amp (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

9. Friendly neighbors and Jehovah Witnesses, alike—DO NOT KNOCK ON A NIGHT WORKER’S DOOR DURING THE DAY. Unless the building is burning down, leave me alone. Don’t mess with my sleep.That goes for you too, FedEx.

10. Today is tomorrow and tomorrow is tonight. Don’t try to figure it out. 

11. We make more money. Get over it. The differential is not about the workload, it’s about the 10 years off the end of our lives because we’ve spent our careers dealing with shift work sleep disorder. You want the diff, do the hours.

12.  If you see this sign on a night worker’s door:

Don’t test us, it’s not a joke.

 

BACKWOODS BUCKTOOTH FILES #1

I pick on religion. I think it deserves it. In fact, I think it deserves all of the respect it gives to the people it condemns with no evidence but faith and a book. But from time to time I get a little ahead of myself and neglect to offer complete explanations and omit various necessary exemptions and clarifications. So without any further ado I’d like to offer these as explanations of my religious worldview and from henceforth in all religious discussions or writings these shall be assumed: *

1. There are good people within all religions. Attacks on religion are an attack on the institution, not generally the individuals within it. Though individuals do, at times, warrant a bitch slapping.

2. There are decent religions/denominations. However, the more “liberalized” religions and even more liberal individuals within conservative religions are a product of intellectual progression. They exist because people have allowed their life experiences to alter their biblical views—the mark of a person who has evolved beyond caveman status.

                     

*This list is not all inclusive. I may add or subtract at any time. I’m human and, thus, reserve the right to change my mind.

 So now that that’s out of the way, on with the religious smackdown…

This is why I believe firmly that religion is dependent upon the brainwashing of children in order to survive through time—

I don’t hate these people. No, these people aren’t to be hated. These people should be pitied. They’re a product of the same child abuse they’re now passing down to the children in their congregation. This is sad and this is why religion causes so much suffering in our world. Maybe that little boy in the video will grow up and realize that he’s gay. Imagine his suffering when he has to try to resolve what he knows intuitively about who he is with what he’s been brought up to believe.  

This is one of the saddest and most despicable videos I’ve watched in recent times. Bigots are not born, they’re raised.

Matthew 18: 5-6

            “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be downed in the depths of the sea.”

And Jesus wept…

DOG WHISTLES AND MORAL MAJORITIES

Every time I write about religion I find myself asking the question, why does religion get a free pass from scrutiny? I think it’s a more than fair question considering there are many out there who would wish that their religious beliefs should dictate civil law. Of course, they wouldn’t frame the argument that way. They would say that their beliefs are based on tradition and natural law. They would also be ignorant.

If there is one phrase I hate, one phrase that makes me want to projectile vomit across the room, it's, "This country was founded on Judeo-Christian Values." That's just plain ignorance. It implies that basic human decency is reserved for only the so called descendants of Abraham (except, of course, the Muslims). It's a backhanded attempt to detract from any person who doesn't think like them, and its implication that Christianity should dictate our law is antithetical to the most basic values of this country.

There no doubt that religion played a role in the formation of this country. The evangelical movement was a primer (not the only primer) for the idea that all were created equal and the true moral measure of a man is with his deeds rather than his hierarchical place in society. This certainly isn’t to say that religion or God, per se, was the reason for going to war. Our Founding Fathers weren't bible thumping evangelicals at all. Many were deists, many were Unitarians, Episcopalians, but certainly not snake-handling, tongue-speaking, fire and brimstone-preaching, holy-rolling, shove my religion down your throat Jesus freaks. They embraced the egalitarian principles of religion and dumped the dogma. Our Founding Fathers were also influenced by Rousseau, Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Machiavelli, among others. Do we call ourselves a country founded on Machiavellian principles? In fact, I would argue that the split from the Anglican Church and the ideas of the first great awakening and subsequent schisms in the Protestant Church were largely influenced by (secular) Enlightenment thinking.

There's no doubt and it's laughable to argue against the fact that the majority of Americans in the history of its post-Revolutionary existence were (and are) Christians. A Christian majority is not synonymous with a national Christian identity. There is only one fact that needs to be mentioned to understand the role that our Founding Fathers thought religion should play in government and that’s that there is no mention of God in our Constitution. Rest assured it was debated, but in the end, the decision was to leave God out.

But Lemon, how about the part that says, “…the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them,” or even more celebrated, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

You fool, that’s the Declaration of Independence.

But alas, I’ve got you this time Lemon…In the signatory section of the Constitution it states, “…in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven…”

Give me a break. This is a reference to time, not religion and it was common to refer to the date in this form in the period in both religious and secular circles.

The conspicuous absence of God from the Constitution should be a big flag to everybody out there that our Founders explicitly knew the dangers of intermingling civil law with religious doctrine. Combine that with the First Amendment, and it’s a no brainer—“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” In so many words, religion is an important aspect of many people’s lives and they deserve to practice their form of worship, but it’s a private choice and, thus, government has no business forcing it upon its citizens via legislation nor at the barrel of a gun. Yes, when the founders talked about free exercise of religion, they were largely talking about freedom to practice the whichever Christian sect you chose and, in deed, many feared atheism, Islam (Mahometans), and deism. But our Founders also owned slaves. People evolve and if you remain stagnant in a changing world then you, too, will become irrelevant. You want government sanctioned religion—go live in Saudi Arabia (I’d just suggest watching your head or you might lose it).

Now, all that said, what the hell are these Judeo-Christian theorists even talking about anyway? Which values, exactly, are they referring to? Are they talking about the fact that a large segment of society is denied basic civil rights because they love differently than the majority? Are we talking about relegating women to subservient and subjugated roles to men by denying them the right to make choices, paying them less for the same work, or making them pay more for basic medical care, if not outright taking away access to preventative healthcare? Maybe they’re referring to tactics ranging from covert operations to fighting outright wars in order to advance our (and our allies) economic interests and to satisfy our imperialistic tendencies from the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran to protect British oil interests, to Panama, to going to bed with Saudi Arabia, to going to Grenada to cover up for a disaster in Lebanon, to abandoning Afghanistan to go to Iraq, to filtering money from the World Bank and USAID to underdeveloped countries so corporations can rape them of their resources and then flee once the money’s made (shall I go on?). Are we talking about war profiteering and that the US military actually had the gall to inscribe Bible passages on weapons intended to kill in some of the most violent ways possible? I would remind these people what the Bible really says about war profiteering (Proverbs 1:10-19, Isaiah 59:1-8). Maybe these are the Judeo-Christian values they’re talking about.

But alas no, these are not the values our Judeo-Christian supremacists are referring to. They refer to our basic sense of right and wrong--equality of man, liberty, human creativity, that we don't (in theory) murder each other, steal from each other, lie to each other, or screw somebody else's spouse, among other things.

Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on morality. These are basic rules of human decency. Any group of people that has to live together in a community could figure out that they probably shouldn't kill each other. Do you honestly think that if there wasn't some invisible warden or taskmaster in the sky that you'd feel free to guillotine your neighbor? Is it only the threat of punishment that keeps you from murder? If so, then I fear you more than anybody outside of Judeo-Christianity.

The reality is, anytime you hear someone refer to our country being, "founded on Judeo-Christian Values," you can rest assured that it's a dog whistle. It's a coded message meant to rile up the emotions of supremacists who believe they're the gatekeepers to morality and saviors of our depraved country. They're telling their audience that they don't have to worry about the homos being able to marry, or the women folk aborting all those babies, or a Muslim being able to walk into an airport without being strip searched, and those atheist heathens aren't gonna be able to keep our God out of the public institutions anymore. Every time you hear "Judeo-Christian Values," or "Family Values," translate it as homophobic, anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-anybody who doesn't kneel at the cross on Sunday mornings. In fact, there was a time not long ago that churches had very little to no interest in playing politics. They didn't want the dirty pool of politics to taint their religion. Oh, what a wonderful time that must have been. Believe it or not, we weren't blessed with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Paul Weyrich, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and other right hand men of God until the latter half of the 20^th century. Now we're stuck with one political party that's a demi-religious cult.

I'm sick of hearing about Judeo-Christian values. I'm tired of Christians thinking they are the moral authority when, in reality, their value system is just a result of an evolving need to live together in a community. I'm sick of the claim of "family values" being a cloak for the hypocrisy of pastors who rail against gays while they're smoking crystal meth and banging their male masseurs on the weekends. A word of advice: the louder someone rails against homosexuality, the bigger repressed homo they are themselves. And I'm entirely sick of Christianity being used as a guise for racism and male hegemony. So the next time you think that your Christian roots give you moral superiority over all others, I have the perfect place you can stick your Judeo-Christian principles.

LIFE LESSONS FROM LEMON VOLUME 2: A PRIMER ON GYM ETIQUETTE

This post may not necessarily belong here, it's not exactly politics or religion. But it’s something that’s on my mind and when something’s on my mind I like to let everyone know about it!

Gym etiquette. Now, I’m not talking about wiping down your benches, or yakking away on your cellphone, or grunting like Maria Sharapova at Wimbledom while you’re warming up with 10 pound dumbbells. Yes, Mr. Hyperhidrosis is disgusting, I’d like to smash Chatty Cathy’s cellphone against the wall, and the over-testosteronized ape trying to draw attention to himself needs to realize people are laughing at him, not admiring him. (**Note: I’m talking about the meathead grunters who are clearly want for attention and probably have small penises, not those who let out a little groan pushing out that last set or rep-all respect to hard workers, no respect to assholes).

No, I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about people who are at the gym for its social aspect. I’m talking about the people who, if they worked their muscles out as hard as their jaws, they’d be ripped. I'm talking about Mr. or Ms. STFU (though, I find that it's almost always Mr. STFU, despite the stereotypes).  

I have no problem if you want to pay a monthly fee to go make new acquaintances at the gym, but you need to learn how to discern the difference between social gym goers and people who are there to workout seriously. Look to the right of this post. See the picture of the chick with the red, white, and blue cowboy hat and mannish looking arms? That’s me. Do I look like somebody who’s at the gym to make friends? If your answer was yes, then you’d be wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I like people—I really do—but I take working out seriously. I don’t have a problem taking a second to say hi to my fellow lifters. Heck, if you’re a friend, I have no problem taking a minute to catch up with you. And if I haven’t started or I’m finished with my workout I’ll stay and talk to you as long as you want. But I’m the type of person who has very little interest in inane, how’s the weather-type conversations anyway, let alone when I’m trying to bench press 150 pounds. So, here’s a little advice—when you see a chick bench pressing her body weight, it’s not generally advisable to go strike up a conversation with her. She’s not there for the sociability of the gym.

And just in case, here are a few more signals that someone is not interested in interrupting their workout to strike up a conversation—

1.      Brim of the cap covering the eyes. This is a signal that the person is focused on themselves and what they’re doing. They are avoiding eye contact so as not to entice onlookers to interrupt.

2.      Headphones. Headphones are actually a multi-purpose device. Yes, they deliver the sweet dulcet sounds of Kenny Loggins to your eardrums, but they have a highly useful secondary function. Headphones are an antisocial device. They scream leave me alone. Sometimes I even put headphones on without any music for that sole purpose.

3.     Working out at 4:00 AM. Anyone who hauls their ass to the gym at 0400 is probably there for a workout and not to talk. Leave them alone. If you want to be social, go to the gym at 4:00 PM.  

4.     The person limits answers to “uh huh,” “mmm,” “yep,” and other nonsensical utterances while grabbing at the piece of equipment they are currently on. This is a big one. You’ve already tried to strike up the conversation. The person is telling you, “I’m working out here. I’m trying to tell you to go away without being completely rude.” Be careful because this person is one step away from going Regan MacNeil on you.

I’ve tried all of the above and still seem to attract the social butterflies of the gym. So, clearly, they are not fool proof methods. I suppose I just scream, "come talk to me." It must be my friendly aura.

AYN RAND SHRUGGED

The latest manufactured kerfuffle on Capitol Hill has been Paul Ryan's sudden rebuke of the once heralded conservative philosopher Ayn Rand. The man who once said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” now rejects her philosophy and in lieu of the objectivist viewpoint, now claims to prefer the much more Catholic-approved Thomas Aquinas.

I guess Paul Ryan is no longer John Galt.

You have to wonder sometimes if these politicians haven't heard about the Google—a wonderful new invention that can prove someone is lying in about 3 seconds.

Why the sudden rebuke of Ayn Rand from our favorite House budget author and restorer of America's promise? It's not the cold-hearted rational egoism philosophy or the embrace of the widely discredited and plutocratic laissez faire capitalism. It's not the inherent greed and callousness of philosophical objectivism or her staunch promotion of child labor. No, no.

Here’s the reason Paul Ryan now rejects his former hero:

The tune is changing in this election year for the vice presidential wannabe to a more dulcet religious tone and Ayn Rand was--GASP! GULP! YELP! SAY WHAT?-an Atheist. Now Congressman Ryan claims, "I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

I don’t care that Paul Ryan has suddenly seen the error of his ways in his Randist philosophy. The political maneuver should be blatantly obvious to anyone with a brain. Not to mention, none of this matters anyway. It's a manufactured controversy and nobody but a few wing nut Christians and a few liberal opportunists is really concerned about the Ryan/Rand connection.

My question is about the blatant atheophobia in America. You probably have a better chance of winning public office in this country if you’re a black, gay, Muslim than if you’re openly atheist. Why are Americans afraid of atheists? Why the necessity for some faith-based belief in a “higher power?”  You don’t have to believe in their God, just as long as they believe in some God, but non-belief—that’s unacceptable.

I’m quite confident that it's because religious people can't comprehend that morality can exist without God. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, they believe morality is derived from only God and, therefore, without God there is no morality. This is ridiculous, of course. Morality isn't derived from God but out of an evolutionary necessity to live together in a commuity. Atheists don’t blow up buildings in the name of atheism, atheists don’t bomb abortion clinics in the name of atheism, atheists don’t commit genocide in the name of atheism. The view of the “immoral/amoral atheist” is a conjured up straw man used by the religious in order to explain away all the ills of the world.

But Stalin was an atheist…so more people have been killed in the name of atheism than any other philosophy.

Because Stalin was an atheists does not mean his murder streak was in the name of atheism. Atheism was a part of the larger Communist philosophy. Stalin was a totalitarian psychopath. Besides, Stalin was educated in an Orthodox seminary—it’s just as arguable that his religious upbringing and education had plenty to do with his violence. There’s a reason they call them the “formative years.”

But, Lemon, Hitler was an atheist.

Um…no he wasn’t. Do a little research before you start throwing out easily disprovable lies that you heard from some right wing loony tune.

I don’t support the larger part of Ayn Rand objectivism. I’m a liberal. I believe that there is a place for the collective good over self-interest. Objectivism is a cold, heartless philosophy not based in any sort of realistic vision of society or people in general and, frankly, I think it’s just wrong. First, quantum physics is starting to disprove the metaphysical aspect of objectivism (that reality exists independent of man’s conscious observations—for a great quantum read, I suggest Biocentrism by Robert Lanza). I’m far less Aristotelian than Rand. Aristotle, was (ironically) irrationally optimistic about man. While I agree that reason and logic should be man’s way of acquiring knowledge, the empirical evidence shows that man’s worldview is not based on logic or reason. Take religion, for example. The vast majority of people in the world have some sort of religious belief. Studies show that belief decreases with an increase in analytical thinking. Religion is, by nature, irrational. If ration was man’s default, there would be far less religion in the world. Objectivism is a rather ironic viewpoint in that it’s an idealistic view of man rather than a view based on the empirical evidence. Besides, as a liberal, I don’t believe that man’s default is total rejection of the collective good in the name of self-interest and no good Christian ethicist should believe that either. Remember the whole basis of your religion? JC died for you, not for him (apparently). 

I don’t support objectivism, but Ayn Rand nailed it on the head with her views on religion.

In response to the question, “has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?” Ayn Rand answered:

“Qua religion, no - in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man's life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very - how should I say it? - dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.”—Playboy Interview, 1964

That is a reasonable opinion. So why do so many people fear reason? Why does religion get a free pass from being questioned? Is it because if people were asked to defend their religion, they might sound a little ridiculous? This is particularly true of intelligent people. A less intelligent person has no problem saying that a man lived in a big fish for three days or Lazarus was raised from the dead. Smart people hedge at the thought of hearing themselves defending talking snakes and virginal births. So instead of defending the book they use to condemn whole segments of society, many religious people just claim the Bible is symbolism. Frankly, I’m of the belief that religion is far less about God than it is about a perceived social obligation—but that’s just me.

Atheophobia is, in itself, irrational. The evidence points out that the areligious, in terms of basic moral decency, are actually more moral than their religious counterparts. More secularized countries and more secularized states in America are less violent than the more religious countries and states.

The amoral atheist is just a plain lie and I’m sick of the automatic correlation between religiosity and moralism. There’s just no link. Tell me a man is religious, fine—so they believe in a prescribed set of philosophies. Is he moral? That’s a different question and it’s not based on his chosen religion.

And for those of you, like Paul Ryan, who still believe or at least portray that Christianity/Religiosity should be a prerequisite for public office, I would simply remind you of Article VI, paragraph 3 of our own Constitution:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

   

A CONSTITUTIONAL QUANDARY: AMERICAN HEALTHCARE

I always thought the phrase, “cutting off your nose to spite your face” was rather odd. I’m not the biggest fan of idioms anyway, mostly because it takes me the rest of the conversation to figure out what they mean. I’d much rather people just come out and say what they want to say, please. But “cutting off your nose to spite your face” is really the perfect summation of the healthcare debate.

I was watching the Supreme Court oral arguments for the healthcare mandate on C-Span this morning. Now before you fall asleep, just hear me out. Seriously—stop yawning—I see you out there! More people should supplement their daily Fox News or MSNBC fixes with a side of C-Span. People would be a lot more informed rather than conditioned to think a certain way. Unfortunately, I think most people simply prefer others to do the thinking for them no matter how biased that thinking may be. But I came away with a couple of thoughts in mind. First, Antonin Scalia is so condescending, but rather entertaining. Second, I heart Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And third, that David Verrilli is leaving a lot to be desired in the defense of the healthcare act.

The constitutional point in question with the mandate is whether health insurance falls under the definition of interstate commerce. If the justices determine that it does, than the mandate would be constitutional via the commerce clause (Article 1, Section 8). If health insurance is not interstate commerce, then Congress has no right to legislate it and that part of the law would be negated. Now with that boring little technicality in mind, is this oral argument really necessary? I’m going to go out on a limb here and just predict that this decision is going to be a partisan decision. Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas will dissent. Bader Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer will decide for the law. Kennedy will be on the fence, but will join the pro side in the end and the healthcare mandate will be upheld. Just a guess, Kennedy could go the other way.

Does anybody really think that health insurance and healthcare isn’t interstate commerce? If I get injured in Idaho, I don’t get choppered back to Maine Med to have my femur fracture repaired so I can bleed out while watching out over the plains of the Midwest. Healthcare is about 17% of our economy. It’s ridiculous to say that healthcare isn’t interstate commerce and just because you don’t like a law doesn’t make it unconstitutional.

Okay, I’m done with the boring constitutionality arguments for healthcare mandates. The Supreme Court will decide and we’ll have to live with their decision. I’d much rather talk about the healthcare debate in general. So here we go…

Let’s first ignore the conservative hypocrisy over the healthcare mandate. The mandate originated with the Heritage Foundation and was pushed for multiple times by multiple Republicans during the 1990’s. Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that this isn’t about hypocritical partisan posturing in order to take down their enemy, Barack Obama. Let’s just say that the Republican dissent is genuinely based on a concern about government imposition on personal choices—for argument’s sake.

Conservatives are, forgive the idiom, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. They don’t think government should have the power to make them buy insurance and they don’t want to have to pay for someone else’s personal “decision” to remain out of the private insurance market. I put decision in quotations because it’s often not a decision at all. Good luck getting into the private insurance market with diabetes, heart disease, a history of cancer, or any other preexisting condition the market deems too costly for their bottom line. God forbid private insurance companies not be able to pay for their multi-million dollar executive salaries and private jets. Let’s also not forget all of those investigators hired in order to determine (without patient contact, mind you) that your medical procedure was not actually necessary so that they don’t have to make good on the service that their customer has already paid for.  

Well here’s my answer to all those who cringe at the thought of paying for someone who doesn’t have insurance: YOU PAY FOR THEM ANYWAY!! Healthcare cannot be treated like a free market enterprise. People get sick whether they can afford it or not and when the uninsured get sick, we (the insured) pay for it both through government subsidies and through increased private insurance premiums.

Uninsured patients cost hospitals$49 Billion per year. Hospitals have to find some way to recover those costs. How do you think they do that? It’s all cost shifting. We’re paying for these people anyway. The uninsured are charged WAY more for their healthcare, one, in attempt to recoup the costs of those who don’t pay their bills and two, because individuals don’t have the bargaining power that private insurance and the government have. When these people go bankrupt—and many of them will—we now pay this increased cost. At least if they were insured, there could be some caps and control over inflated prices.

We’re a country that values life. I wish the rhetoric of those who say they value life the most lined up more closely with their actions and I wish that someone would remind these same pro-lifers that Jesus preached more against hypocrisy than anything else (Oh, I guess I just did that). But unfortunately, we live in a world full of hypocrites. Because we, as a society, value life we passed EMTALA regulations in 1986 (signed, BTW, by *gasp* the conservative messiah himself, Ronald Reagan). 

 

How many of you against the individual mandate have no idea what EMTALA is? Shame, shame, shame. Well, let me help you. Very generally, EMTALA is the set of laws that require emergency rooms to accept you as a patient regardless of your ability to pay. Despite certain Republican debate audiences, most Americans think it’s a good idea that if uninsured farmer Joe has his arm chopped off in a hay baler that the emergency room can’t turn him away.

           

Sorry Farmer Joe. We’d sew that back on for you, but there’s no way you could afford it. Good luck. I’m sure that massive spurting, arterial bleeding will clot right up.

We passed EMTALA because we believe that even if a person made an irresponsible decision to not buy insurance we don’t want them to needlessly suffer if we have the ability to help them. We value life. When these Farmer Joe situations happen, someone has to pay for it. If we’re lucky, Farmer Joe is independently wealthy and can pay out of pocket. For the rest of the 99% of the country, the likely progression is from sickness to treatment to health to huge bills to being overwhelmed to depleted savings to losing your home and other assets to losing your retirement to claiming bankruptcy and finally to passing the bill off to you and me.

Anybody out there who thinks that the individual mandate is a government overreach must also stand up and fight for the repeal of EMTALA. Anything short is hypocrisy. EMTALA forces a hospital to provide services to customers who cannot and/or will not pay for them. It’s akin to forcing a store owner to sell a plasma TV to a customer who offers nothing but his word that he’ll eventually pay. Are you willing to let Farmer Joe bleed out in his cornfield simply because he couldn’t afford insurance?

Of course, that argument is ridiculous. Healthcare is not a product that follows market rules. It’s not supply and demand. The demand is constant—especially with the American lifestyle. People will always be sick. The real question is what do we value as a society? Should healthcare be a right or should healthcare be reserved only to those who can afford it?

Do I want to pay for somebody who is morbidly obese and refuses to eat anything green unless said food happens to be dyed that color? Do I want to pay for somebody who chooses to smoke two packs a day? Of course I don’t. But, you know what? I pay for them anyway because we, as a society, have decided that even people who make bad choices deserve treatment. You really want to control healthcare costs then you find a way to get preventable disease under control. Unfortunately, the same people who bitch the loudest about individual mandates are the same people who scream and cringe at the idea of putting nutrition facts on restaurant menus, or banning soda in school, or increased cigarette taxes. What do we call that again? Oh yeah, HYPOCRISY! These people don’t care about health, they care about bottom lines and that’s it! Until, of course, they’re the ones lying on the operating table. Everyone else is a freeloader, but when they need help, their claims are legitimate.

Healthcare should not be treated like a free market commodity because the product does not follow the rules of supply and demand. People need healthcare whether they’re rich or poor—whether they have a job or not. When we treat healthcare like a free market enterprise, we get ridiculously high prices for medical procedures, absurdly inflated salaries for insurance company executives who do nothing in terms of actually helping a patient, and a system that focuses on treating sickness rather than preventing the sickness from happening in the first place.

And the thing that hurts our wallets the most is that the sickest in our society are the ones being kept out of the market. Unfortunately, we’re beyond the point of appealing to people’s humanity. Profitability is what matters. Well, I would remind you that when the uninsured get sick, whether it’s a kid who just got off his parent’s insurance and gets into a car accident or a farmer who leaps headlong into a hay baler, you pay for them anyway. So stop cutting off your nose to spite your face! People will always make bad decisions. Most people believe they still deserve to be helped. If you don’t believe that then you need to stand up and start fighting for the repeal of EMTALA. Here’s another idiom for you if you tell your congressman to fight for EMTALA repeal: That’ll go over like a fart in church.

   

LIFE LESSONS FROM LEMON VOLUME 1

Anybody who’s followed my writing probably gets the impression that my life philosophy is sarcasm and curmudgeonly cynicism toward the inanity of our political system and religious institutions. And while those people would be largely correct, I actually have a surprising level of optimism toward human beings as a species. I believe that people are intrinsically good. I think most people’s intentions are upright, even if their actions don’t befit that objective. Though it does exist, true psychopathy is really an anomaly. I believe that the iniquity and venality in society is caused by the groupthink influenced by corrupt institutions, especially religions and political parties.

So essentially, I believe people are ultimately good, but they’re also easily led and, therefore, misled. It doesn't matter what the message is as long as they have someone to follow who at least appears like they know what they're doing. They’re also reticent to be leaders because leaders are required to have their own ideas, which is very scary for people who are afraid of being cast out of the group. Our society is so pariah-phobic that we’ve become inundated with minions who are so paralyzed by their fear of being laughed at that it’s allowed the corrupt few to overtake us and create a population of angry and confused people.  

We’ve been trained to think that the only way to be happy is to fall in line. In the end, that’s what destroys us. We lose ourselves in the quest to be accepted and to not upset the status quo. We’re experts at polishing our façades in order to give people what we think they want and, thus, remain part of the inner circle.

I wish more people would risk being shunned by their respective group because then, just maybe, the groups would dissipate and we could live in an amicable communal society.  

Random thought, yes, but such is my life.