Of mice and men

My Fedora 11 install is going about as well as expected :) I'm having some dvd-rom trouble, tried compressed air already, I ended up disassembling it and cleaning the drive by hand. The drive still does not work. My next guess is the cable. (yeah, I know that's the first thing I should have checked)

To a Mouse

Ok, I'm going to go off on a tangent. I'm going to try upgrading my system to Linux Fedora 11 today. I'm currently running Fedora 9, and it's been serving me well for about a year now. So hopefully all goes well, and I'll be up in running by the end of the day with a new Operating System. Which brings me to a Mouse. What?

"To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough", is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns. That poem is where the often used phrase of ,"The best-laid plans of mice and men / Go oft awry." Even though it was written in 1785, it is still applicable 224 years later to my life and our world.

America is sick

Seems like every time I read the news there is an article about healthcare. Usually, the best part of the article for me are the comments from readers. All of the articles basically say the same thing, it's too expensive. The people crying the loudest are the insurance companies and political parties. Of course a few of the readers will also comment about how they don't want higher taxes and people should be responsible for their own healthcare. People also fear the debt the United States would be taking on and worried how where going to pay for it all. My question is, are we not already paying for it?

I'm currently one of those uninsured Americans and I would welcome low or no cost insurance. While I was working it was costing me $520.00 a month to insure my family for an 80/20 policy with a $2000.00 deductible. That's like $6240 or possibly over $8,000 a year if I met my deductibles. If I was not paying over $500.00 a month I could have put the money back into the economy or paid down some of my own debt. I know some Americans pay more or less for their monthly premiums. If everyone had access to free coverage just think how much more money they would have to put back into the economy and how businesses would be relieved of a huge burden of providing these benefits. I understand our government would be taking on huge debt, but that money is staying in the country. That money is not gone, it's being put back into circulation to drug companies, hospitals, doctors, ect ... If people are not putting off health care that means more business for all health care providers.

I'll admit I'm not a financial genius, heck I can't hardly balance my check book, but won't freeing up money for people to spend kick start the economy. The question should not be, "how can we afford health care?", it should be "how can we afford not have it?"