Death of the GOP

The Republican National Convention's adoption of the anti-Humanity/anti-Economy platform put the bullet in the head of the Grand Ole Party. 

RIP

You will be remembered for:

Voter Suppression
Decreasing Access to Health Care for All Americans
Increasing the Income Gap
Decreasing the Gross Domestic Product
Further Suppression of Human Rights
Diminish Capacity of the World to Consider the USA a Great Power

Why am I voting Democrat in this election?

Because the conservatives have vowed to defund or underfund those issues which I hold most dear: Healthcare for All and Education. 

I like sharing. I like working as a group to make our little piece of the world a better place. I think we get more done that way. 

I think a strong Primary Care system will promote better health in the American public. The Affordable Care Act is a good start toward promoting better coverage of Primary Care services. It needs tweaking, but it's a good start. Repealing it is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Change it, but don't abandon it. 

Education should be free, no matter what, but admission should be competitive. Education leads to research, which leads to discovery, which leads to innovation and new technology, which leads to new industries, which grows the economy. You then turn around and invest some of the profit (in the form of taxes) back into education to continue the cycle. The conservative notion that high taxes stagnate the economy is disingenuous. Like the stock market, education is a long term investment, but the rewards are bountiful. 

It is both my right and my duty to vote for those issues which I hold most dear, and I intend to do so. I can not support any candidate who holds a YOYO platform, which is the foundation of Romney/Ryan.

Anyone who shows up on here to make fun of me, belittle me, call me unpatriotic or naive or any other epithet. Save your breath. It's one thing to ask why something is important to me. Something else to begin a conversation with "you're wrong, and this is why. . ." I don't go to your house to make fun of you or tell you that your ideas are backwards (bad manners), so don't come to mine and do that to me. Violators will be banned.

I'm tired of being gracious in the face of outright rudeness

For all those state and federal congress critters who think that if a woman is forceably impaled with a hard object she will have a more sentimental feeling about the embryo in her uterus. Here's a copy of the non-descript lump of tissue she and the doctor will be seeing.

Very cute. 

I'm not sure at this stage (6 weeks) what species it is. But a lump of cells never looked so adorable. Yes, the wand up the vagina is punative. It serves no medical purpose, provides no diagnostic data. I don't care if you're pro- or anti-abortion. Women should not be forced to have invasive medical procedures for no purpose. 

What are we, Nazis?

Electronic Health Record in the USA

When Obama first got into office, he talked about saving money by implementing an electronic health record. Now, I don’t hear so much about that. So I did a little investigating to find out how well an electronic health record (EHR) would work.

Great Britain and other parts of Europe are in the process of implementing an EHR that crosses boundaries and interfaces with most computer systems. The current recession has called for scaling back the programs, but they are still moving forward. The Veteran’s Administration (VA) has been praised for its use of a very effective EHR for many years. But in Europe, they don’t have to deal with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and the VA is nationalized medicine for veterans (basically, it's one gigantic doctors office). HIPAA has been great for ensuring patient’s privacy. But…

HIPAA can also be thought of as Mordac: The Preventor of Information Services.

One problem with HIPAA is that Provider A can’t share health information with Provider B without the express written permission of the patient. If you live in California and happen to get run over by a bus and knocked unconscious while on vacation in New Jersey, the doctor in the emergency department has NO CLUE what your medical history is, what medications you take, what you’re allergic to, or why you chose New Jersey as your vacation destination.

Well, ok. We can’t share our health record from one state to the next, but an EHR in the doctor’s office or in the hospital would be really handy, right? Maybe. My doctor utilizes EHR, but the next doctor I go to may not use the same software program. How do I get my information to my new doctor? Go back to paper copies.

For an electronic health record to be truly useful in the US, it needs to be fully portable and universally accessible. But, the current interpretation of HIPAA says we can’t have an EHR that follows us around the country for our whole life. HIPAA says our health record has to be fragmented in order for our privacy to be secured.

In the event of an emergency, I don’t want my doctor to have to guess at what’s going to hurt me and what will help. I would much rather run the risk that someone finds out I once had an embarrassing infection, than to have my doctor prescribe me a medicine I’m violently allergic to while I’m unconscious and can’t object. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but then an embarrassing infection won't keep me from getting re-elected.