Archive - Jul 10, 2009
Continuing the Health Care Debate
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 07/10/2009 - 15:19After Gov. Rell vetoed Sustinet, I sent the following email to Rep. Klarides who is the State Representative for the district where I live:
Rep. Klarides,
I was very disappointed to learn that Gov. Rell has vetoed House Bill 6600, An Act Concerning The Establishment of The Sustinet Plan. We need meaningful healthcare reform in our State and in our Country and Gov. Rell’s actions are a grave disservice to our State.
I realize that you have failed to show any leadership in addressing the greave issues of health care in our state as well, but you have an opportunity to redeem yourself.
Please join with the Democrats in overriding this ill thought out veto
To which, I received the following reply:
Dear Aldon:
I understand and share your concerns with the need for affordable health care in the state. However, H.B. 6600, AN ACT CONCERNING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SUSTINET PLAN, was vetoed by the Governor because, as stated in her veto message, it is a well-intentioned bill, but ultimately does not resolve the central problems of access and affordability. While this plan on paper may seem effective and efficient, it will cost billions of dollars to implement. In this current economic situation with record budget deficits, unemployment, and business closures, there is no guarantee that the funding necessary to sustain the program over the long-term will be available.
It is important to note that our state has been one of the nation’s leaders in health care coverage. Our uninsured rate was recently reported at just 9% in a 2007 census study. This is a reduction from the 11% uninsured in 2005. I think that the actions we have taken in recent years by expanding outreach on HUSKY (Public Health Insurance for the Uninsured Children) and implementing the Charter Oak plan for uninsured adults has helped keep Connecticut ahead of the rest of the nation in access to health care. Our system may have flaws, but it makes practical sense that any new reforms work with the existing system and future federal reforms to expand coverage to those not fortunate enough to have insurance.
To address the need for affordable health care, the governor has created a new advisory board of health care. Given the fact that Congress is currently looking at making fundamental changes to health care coverage nationwide, it is important to develop a process that will insure that Connecticut is prepared to make the most of the policies established on the federal level as quickly as possible.
While we may not agree on the process, I think we both agree on the need for a health care program that benefits the majority of citizens and is both affordable and accessible while not compromising our difficult economic situation.
Here is my latest reply to her:
Dear Themis,
I have read Governor Rell's veto message, and I believe it is extremely misguided. I firmly believe that the cost of doing nothing, or setting up some advisory board, the way Governor Rell has done with her executive order will actually cost the state much MORE than implementing the Sustinet plan. We already pay for the cost of the uninsured when we visit a hospital that bears the brunt of providing emergency room services to the uninsured and unable to pay. This gets passed on to insurance companies and we pay the cost in increased insurance premiums, such as the increase that Anthem just requested. This gets passed on to local governments and we pay the cost in increased local taxes as local governments provide insurance to their workers. We pay the costs in decreased jobs when small businesses cannot compete because of the costs of trying to provide insurance to their employees.
Yes, Sustinet will cost money to implement. However it will far cost far less than doing nothing, or setting up an ill conceived panel by executive order. Governor Rell and the Republican leadership has been seriously remiss in addressing this issue and our state continues to suffer from this.
Yes, we do disagree with the actions and more importantly, the inactions of Gov. Rell and the Republican leadership. As far as I can tell, the new advisory board is nothing but another bureaucratic boondoggle, an attempt to avoid doing anything until someone else, such as perhaps the U.S. Congress comes along and addresses the issue in a manner that is more acceptable to the insurance companies that are using our money gathered in the form of premiums to lobby Governor Rell and people in Congress. Meanwhile, we all pay too much for too little coverage.
So, again, I ask you to look much more closely at this very important issue. Show some leadership instead of simply echoing empty talking points of Governor Rell.
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Follow Up – Aging without Makeup
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 07/10/2009 - 10:03On Tuesday, I wrote a blog post entitled Blogging without Makeup discussing some emails from a mailing list of Group Psychotherapists that I read. On Thursday, I celebrated my fiftieth birthday and wrote about turning fifty. Both blog posts have received a lot of comment and I would like to try and combine some of my reactions to this in a single, somewhat coherent blog post.
Anthropology Professor Dave Jacobson of Brandeis wrote about the question of what is the ‘real self’. Who is the self real to? Ourselves? Others? Some combination? How does it change based on context or time? To me, it seems as ‘self’ is a function of both our own experiences of ourselves and the experiences others have of ourselves and that it is constantly changing as we grow and have new interactions and experiences.
One experience that a friend from the mailing list suggested is blogging with makeup; that is presenting ourselves as something other than how we currently see ourselves. It seems to me that this is a valuable insight in how we might change ourselves into something we would like to be.
Another person brought up the image of Pygmalion and the modern musical version, My Fair Lady. It seems like this is a very powerful idea for therapy. To the mailing list, I wrote:
Your comment about Pygmalion particularly jumped out at me. In Pygmalion, like My Fair Lady, the hero creates someone else. Yet isn't that, in a certain way, what we do in therapy?
When I was younger, I resisted therapy because I was pretty happy with who I was, in spite of my own issues that I really needed to work out. At one point, however, I came to realize that these issues where impeding me and making me unhappy, and that I needed to, shall we say, recreate myself into an image closer to what I would like to be. In short, I was my own Pygmalion.
Isn't that what we want from people entering therapy, an exploration into who they could be if they addressed their insecurities, their inabilities to properly control anger, drinking or drugs, their need to be in the spotlight, their difficulties finding joy and happiness, etc? Yet doesn't this also bring up interesting issues of where transference and counter transference come in? Who is the patient trying to recreate themselves as? Their own vision? The vision of their therapist? A vision they gain from a group or society around them?
To return to My Fair Lady, perhaps we can change one of the songs just a little bit to
"The gain in pain is helpful to obtain"
In a discussion where myself and another person were being wished happy birthday, one person noted that so many of the birthday wishes focused on youthfulness. To this, I wrote:
It seems like we live in a culture that values youthfulness more than it values wisdom. Why is that?
Perhaps some of it is the fear of our own mortality. Each year the older we get, we are a year closer to death. As we get older, various parts of the body stop working as well as they used to, which can result in the loss of some pleasures and an introduction of new displeasures. I seem to recall Yalom talking about that in one of his novels and about how if he ever got to a particular difficult impasse, he would ask the patient how the patient would want to be remembered at a funeral. As an aside, this fits nicely into the Pygmalion thread, how do we choose to envision what we would like to be?
So, what about wisdom, or perhaps to use the words from another email, "being old in spirit"? I must admit, it is the wisdom of this group as opposed to any youthful spriteliness that I find so attractive.
Perhaps I am sensitive to this because here in Connecticut a reporter has brought an age discrimination suit against a local television station. The station is alleged to have repeated demoted women when they have gotten into their thirties to have younger, more nubile reporters. Personally, I think our news would be much better with the wisdom of older reporters.
With that, let me return to the emails and again thank everyone who shared birthday wishes. What a wonderful world it would be if we could aspire to the wisdom of older members of this list instead of youthfulness of the 23-year-old female reporters.
