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War is sickening. I’m not sure at what point in my life I came to that conclusion, but it was probably around the time I realized that blowing someone else to bits was really no different from someone else blowing me to bits, and I didn’t fancy that one little bit.

War is all about bits. Invariably, the winner is whoever manages to spread the most bits of their opponents over the biggest area. There used to be rules governing how the bits were created, and how to avoid becoming bits by something called ‘honorable surrender’. But that’s all gone now.

Now, how you dissect your opponent into bits is left entirely to your discretion. Anything goes, including the last vestiges of that old-fashioned idea known as ‘honor’.

Take the case of Stephen Farrell.^[1] Stephen’s a British journalist working for the New York Times. He regularly wanders into war zones with “PRESS” plastered all over his flak jacket, and then expresses surprise when he’s shot at or kidnapped.

Stephen hasn’t yet realized that bits of a journalist scattered over the battlefield count in the score just as highly as bits of anyone else. Consequently, he gets shot at a lot, and kidnapped frequently.

The first time he was kidnapped was in Fallujah, Iraq. The last time was in Kunduz, Afghanistan, just a few days ago.

Stephen set off with an Afghan journalist/interpreter to ‘investigate’ the recent US strike on two fuel tankers captured by the Taliban. The airstrike killed around ninety villagers, many of them children. Their bits don’t count as they were on the wrong side.

True to type, Stephen was kidnapped by the Taliban, along with his Afghan interpreter. The Taliban are not given to beheading western journalists too often, but they do have an affinity for separating Afghan heads from Afghan bodies, so with hindsight Stephen’s actions could be considered, at best, a trifle selfish.

As it transpired, Sultan Munadi, for that was the Afghan interpreter’s name, need not have concerned himself with losing his head, for instead he was cut down by a hail of British bullets as the UK equivalent of the Seventh Calvary arrived to rescue Stephen.

The operation was hailed a great success. Only one British soldier, the Afghan interpreter, and two innocent Afghan villagers died, and Stephen Farrell was returned safely to the bosom of the New York Times with enough stories to keep its front page blooming for at least a couple of days.

However, count the bits and they tell a different story.

So far as can be ascertained, no Taliban died in the attack. All the bits belonged to four bodies – one British and three Afghan.

Surely, that’s a clear victory for the Taliban?

But, like I said earlier, there’s no rules anymore.

And I doubt Stephen Farrell will be counting the bits as he writes his, no doubt, award-winning copy for the New York Times today.

^{[1] “Four die in Afghan rescue mission” BBC, September 9th 2009}

Filed under: Bits and pieces

There is no ‘healthcare debate’. The arguments against reform don’t exist.

My part-time work is merely to get me out the house for a few hours each day. Money’s always useful, but it’s not the primary reason I do what I do.

Recently, the company I worked for was taken over by another. The new one offers its employees ‘health benefits’. I received details via the US mail.

Three health plans are offered: the most ‘Basic’ starts at $118 per pay period (fortnightly) for a single person with no dependents. Note, I did say it was the most basic. The second plan gives a bit more cover and rises to $189 p/p/period, and the third is $100 more than that.

For an employee with a dependent spouse the ‘Basic’ is $252 and the ‘Premium’ rises to $581. For a family of two adults with children – $371 for the ‘Basic’, $994 for the ‘Premium’.

These sums have to be paid every fortnight.

The average employee of this company earns $10 an hour. Working a forty hour week means a gross fortnightly pay packet containing $800, less taxes, Medicare, Social Security, and possibly union dues.

If he’s single and on the ‘Basic’ plan, he’ll pay around 17% of his earnings to the company’s medical insurance. Prescriptions will cost extra, and god help him if he ever needs hospitalization.

Being single, and probably young, he may just scrape by on the $500, or so, he’ll have left to live on for two weeks.

It’s hardly worth mentioning that the cost of these plans is prohibitively expensive for those employees with dependents. Unless, of course, they happen not to be one of the drivers earning ten dollars an hour, but on the management team and taking home substantially more.

And that’s what it’s all about. A three tier system where the poorest workers have the least cover, and the top brass bask in the sunbathed splendor of their gold-plated ‘Premier’ health plan – at close to $1,000 a fortnight.

In front of me at this moment I have the last salary slip I ever earned before leaving Britain and moving to America. In the ‘Deductions’ section is an entry for ‘National Insurance’. National Insurance is what all working Brits are obliged to pay the UK government for healthcare.

Payment of the National Insurance contribution grants free access to a doctor, a hospital, and medical treatment ranging from an ingrowing toenail to heart replacement. It covers X-rays, MRIs, CAT scans, and every other hospital procedure. It covers not just the worker paying the National Insurance, but also his wife and children. Prescriptions cost a ridiculously tiny, nominal, sum regardless of the type of pill.

For this gold-plated health service my last salary slip shows I was charged 7.5% of my gross salary. Compare that to the service our US employee would receive if he contracted for the ‘Basic’ plan at 17% of his salary – more than double what I paid.

Even the ‘Premium’ plan (which, if he had a family, would cost him in excess of 120% of his salary) does not provide total coverage free of ‘co-pays’ and other ‘deductibles’.

Is there anything to debate about healthcare reform in the United States?

You decide.

Filed under: Robbing the poor to pay the rich

We don’t need health care reform. At least, that’s what Republican senators like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma would have us believe.

Of course, McConnell was paid $2,000,000 by the health industry to say exactly that, as part of his campaign financing.^[1] Coburn was paid $193,000. The health industry was, by far, Coburn’s greatest benefactor.^[2]

A couple of weeks ago I was bothered by a persistent belly-ache. Eventually, it drove me to our local doctor. After poking and prodding around he sent me to the hospital for a CAT scan – “just to make sure there’s nothing seriously wrong.”

It took three attempts before they got the needle in my vein and I eventually walked away with bruised forearms that took a week to subside, but the scan itself was all of ten minutes. It required a few more minutes in the waiting room before the nurse person came out and said everything was fine and I could go home.

Yesterday we got the bill.

Before proceeding, let me assure you the Adams’s have one of the finest health insurances available – Blue Cross Blue Shield’s policy for Federal employees. I’m told it’s one of the best.

The hospital presented the insurance company with a bill for the CAT scan of $6,034.11.

This is, of course, what an uninsured person would be expected to pay for a similar procedure.

Blue Cross Blue Shield said, “Up yours! Our plan only allows for you to charge us $3,113.65 for that procedure,” so immediately wrote off $2,920.46.

By a complex and mysterious process that no layman could ever understand, they then concluded that of the $3,113.65, they were only responsible for $2,391.66. The rest was down to me.

So, despite paying an enormous sum in health insurance premiums every month, a ten minute CAT scan still cost me $721.99.

Had I not been insured, the hospital would have dumped the full $6,034.11 at my door and I’d have had no-one to stand up to them and say, “Up yours! You’re grossly overcharging.”

Is Senator McConnell right in his assertion that health care in the US does not require reform? Is Senator Coburn right, as a representative of the people, to hold the views he does?

You decide.

^{[1] OpenSecrets.Org Mitch McConnell 2005 – 2010.}

^{[2] OpenSecrets.Org Tom Coburn 2005 – 2010}

Filed under: Pocket lining