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Several months ago, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (often referred to as Ted) passed away. Oft-referred to as a “liberal lion”, he was one of the Senate’s major supporters of healthcare reform and express vociferous support for the public option. His temporary replacement, Paul G. Kirk Jr. has taken up the mantle of his former mentor. Kennedy’s death was considered a blow to the prospects of a public option, although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have recently renewed them. With a decades-long tenure, he had connections with politicians on both sides of the aisle. It’s doubtful that a relative newcomer will be able to achieve the bipartisan cooperation he asked for in his recent floor speech. Healthcare reform, especially the public option, are very politically divisive issues. Rhetoric has become even more partisan over the past several months.

What exactly does Kirk want in a healthcare reform bill? During his speech, he assailed the health insurance lobby, which he referred to as a collection of “special interests” who profit off of the status quo. While many politicians in both parties have pointed to a recession as a reason for delaying reform (or scuttling it altogether), Kirk also stated his view that there is an even greater need for reform now, with so many families in need. Like his predecessor, he supports the public option, telling the Boston Globe that he believes it is the most effective way to increase competition in the insurance market and lower your health insurance quote. While not completely discounting the debt resulting from such an action, he seems to think that a New Deal-esque public program for insurance will assist in jump-starting the economy and eventually pay back in spades.

When it comes to driving the direction of the health care debate, Kirk is in a surprisingly good position–despite being a new senator with little clout in a chamber ruled by seniority. He also doesn’t have to worry about re-election, since he will leave office after Massachusetts’ special election in late January. As a result, unlike most other legislators, he doesn’t need to pander as much to either side. Above all, he wants both parties to cooperate the way they did in his home state. People across the political spectrum have pointed out flaws in that state’s healthcare reform program, but the combined efforts of Republicans (such as Mitt Romney) and Democrats on Massachusetts health care reform resulted in nearly all of its population (97%) becoming insured. Similar to the late Ted Kennedy, Kirk thinks that providing basic healthcare through a public option is a moral imperative for the American government. His ideal of compromise is a lofty goal. Kirk may not be able to overcome this philosophical difference with Republicans, who think private industry is more efficient and that it isn’t the government’s job to get so involved (although some are more open than others to stricter regulation of the health insurance industry). However, the underlying concept of a health care system that benefits all Americans is one that applies to both parties.

(Image: Official U.S. Senate Portrait)

About the Author:

Yamileth Medina is an up and coming expert on Health Insurance and Healthcare Reform. She aims to help people realize that they can get a good health insurance quote right now while waiting for a public option, if it ever gets passed. Yamileth lives in Miami, FL.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – How Ted Kennedy’s Replacement Is Impacting Healthcare Reform

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Even as a teenager I learned that, as a rule, the stuff which tasted great was bad for me, and the stuff which tasted like complete crap, was gonna do me the most good. What a ridiculous notion. What kinda weird-ass, nasty prank is that to play on a fat food-loving kid? So not fair. So not a lesson that I wanted to learn.

“Whaddaya mean, donuts don’t have the same nutritional value as vegetables? Let me see that research paper.”

As a somewhat resourceful (code for smart-ass) chubby thirteen year-old, I actually could have run workshops for the masses:

* Vegetable Evasion 101.

* 50 creative things to do with vegetables at the dinner table, other than eat them.

* How to create the ‘illusion’ of vegetable eating.

* Managing your fear of vegetables through cognitive disassociation.

* Developing your own vegetable allergy.

If the entire range of vegetables started and finished with potato, I would have been a vegetable-a-holic. I could, on occasion, stretch myself to carrots, but only to keep the Vegetable Police off my back momentarily. Peas were mushy crap, the asparagus smell was worse than my school bag (that’s saying something), brussel sprouts totally creeped me out, and I had re-occurring nightmares about broccoli; it reminded me of teeny, weeny trees. Didn’t look like food to me. Disgusting.

For the majority of my teenage years, my mother and I actually engaged in vegetable warfare.

Gotta say, in her thirties, she was quite the tactician. She needed to be; I could spot a hidden vegetable at thirty feet. Mothers do that you know; the vegetable ‘hiding’ thing. They’re trained in it by their mothers. And their mothers, mothers before them. We poor, simple men live in the dark when it comes to this stuff. I’ll write an article on that one day.

As I got older, she became more and more skilled and increasingly cunning. Not fair really, I was just a dumb kid. You grow up thinking that mothers are all ‘love and light’; they’re not. They are sneaky, resourceful, creative and extremely strategic adversaries. Sure, they look all cutesy and caring; it’s a complete scam. They are hard-core. They are simply vegetable pushers in frocks. Yep, many significant battles were fought at the Harper dinner table.

“I don’t care how long you sit there Mister, you’re not moving until you eat every last vegetable on that plate!”

“Cow” (in a feeble-under-my-breath whisper).

“What did you say to me?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll give you some ‘cow’ around the ears in a minute, Mister backchat”

That’s another thing nobody tells you – Mothers having super-human hearing; it’s like some in-built, special survival mechanism, chick thing. It puts us kids at a biological disadvantage. What kinda lame-ass ‘level’ playing field is that? I wish I learned about the hearing trick earlier. Coulda saved myself a lot of heartache. It’s amazing how scary a tiny little woman, with cooking utensils can be.

Did I mention their unique propensity to bend the truth?

“Mum, does this have broccoli in it…?”

“Hmm, don’t think so..”

LIAR!

Your pants are SO on fire Mary Harper.

When it came to vegetables, she had absolutely no morals. She would lie, cheat and coerce those horrible things into my mouth. She would look at me with that innocent, ‘but-I’m-your-mother-why-would-I-mislead-you’ face and then proceed to lie her ass off. Even when I’d find the offending vegetable in my meal (hidden cleverly under the good stuff), she’d come out with “I don’t remember putting that in there!!”

No wonder I have trust issues.

It wasn’t until I hit my twenties, that I actually began to understand and appreciate the psychology and the motivation behind my mother’s sneaky little habits. And yes, I did reluctantly discover that broccoli is amazingly good for me. Even though it doesn’t come close to cheesecake, I consume it on a regular basis because it’s good for me. Now, if only someone could only create a cheesecake with the nutritional values and benefits of broccoli! Or conversely, maybe grow some broccoli that tastes like cheesecake. Now there’s a business idea.

I now use the ‘Broccoli Principle’ when I am working with people in the areas of personal and professional development. Even as adults, we are addicted to the ‘yummy’ stuff (metaphorically speaking). The stuff that’s easy, the stuff that ‘tastes’ good, the stuff that doesn’t challenge us, get us out of our comfort zone or cause us to become stronger and more capable. It’s also usually the stuff that doesn’t allow us to grow and be ‘healthy’ (psychologically, emotionally, developmentally). We ‘eat’ what we want, rather than what we need. We’re adults behaving like spoiled brats. And what we end up with, is stunted emotional growth and personal development scurvy. In order to ‘grow’ properly, develop our potential and create our own version of ‘amazing’, we need to eat the broccoli that life serves up.

Okay, I’m off to investigate that cheesecake flavoured broccoli thing…

About the Author:

Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is the #1 ranked Motivational Speaker (according to Google). He is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host and owner of one of the largest personal training centres in the world.

International Speaker – Craig Harper

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – The Broccoli Principle

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Wendell Potter worked for 15 years as the head of public relations for CIGNA, one of the largest health insurance companies in the U.S. Wendell’s job was to keep high profile complaints from becoming major news stories. So when policy -holders were denied care or were kicked out of the plan for getting sick, Wendell’s job was to make sure that the fewer the people who knew about it, the better. For years, Wendell convinced himself that working on behalf of his company’s shareholders over and against the health needs of actual human beings was the right thing to do.

All of this changed at a health exhibit in Wise, West Virginia. When Wendell assumed that he would see things like routine blood pressure checks, what he actually saw astounded him. Wendell saw the people that were being treated in animal stalls and on gurneys, and the “long, long lines of people waiting to get care.” That’s when he had his epiphany. Wendell suddenly realized, “There could have been people and probably were people that I had grown up with. They could have been people who grew up at the house down the road, in the house down the road from me. And that made it real to me.”

Wendell Potter is now one of the nation’s top whistle-blowers advocating for health care reform. Whether you agree with Wendell’s politics or not, there’s something about Wendell’s story that I think should serve as a lesson for Christians of all political persuasions. In Matthew 18:15-17, Jesus laid out a principle that, if applied correctly, could go a long way in correcting many of the problems associated with corporate greed.

“Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.”

As I reflect on Jesus’ words, I can’t help but to think of Wendell’s story. It took seeing real people for Wendell to realize that his line of work was harming people instead of helping them. I don’t know if Wendell Potter is a Christian, but let’s assume temporarily that he is a Christian and that all those years of covering up claims of health care abuse for the purpose of lining shareholders’ pockets, Wendell regularly attended a Christian church. Might it not have been appropriate for a Christian that had been unjustly denied care by Cigna to confront him on the basis of the Matthew 18 principle? And had Wendell refused to listen, might the next step not have been to bring two or three witnesses and then to talk with his pastor or the elders of the church? Had Wendell refused to listen at that point; then perhaps the pastor or the church elders could have chosen some form of church discipline, like excommunication or denying communion.

If such an approach seems far-fetched, it’s probably because of the gigantic gap between modern Christianity and New Testament Christianity. In New Testament times, Christians were admonished not to drag their fellow Christian to secular courts (I Corinthians 6:1-6). Moral disputes and reparations were supposed to be kept within the Church. Nowadays, most Christians are so accustomed to appealing directly to Caesar for justice that we virtually skip the process that Jesus and the Apostles laid out for dealing with sin in the Church.

I wonder how many American Christians are doing jobs similar to that of Wendell Potter, or any other number of jobs that work against the interests of the poor—be it here or a far away country—and haven’t given it a second thought? It’s to these Christians that I think the Matthew 18 principle could go a long way in helping them to repent. The issues then become less about politics and more about personal discipleship. The fewer the Christians there are participating in unjust corporate structures, the brighter the Church’s light will shine. May God raise up Matthew 18-type ministries everywhere!

About the Author:

Aaron D. Taylor is the author of “Alone with a Jihadist: A Biblical Response to Holy War” and the founder of Great Commission Society. To learn more about Aaron’s ministry and his new book, go to http://www.aarondtaylor.com Follow Aaron on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aarondtaylor . Aaron can be contacted at fromdeathtolife@gmail.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – A health care whistle-blower and a call to Christian accountability