This year's flu shot side effects gave me a COVID scare but I would take it again

    I got my flu shot six days ago. I would do it again but this year it was not fun.

    I had two days of arm soreness that was a little worse than normal. I didn’t think much of it. Then came the weekend and I spent most of Saturday and Sunday sleeping. I am lazy, but when I finally managed to get out of the bed I headed downstairs and hit the couch. I was just completely exhausted.

    Monday morning came and I felt sick, with the muddled feeling that one gets when coming down with a virus, plus I had a little bit of a cough and the edge of a sore throat. I didn’t connect it with my flu shot so I headed over to the RedMed clinic in New Albany to get an instant COVID-19 test. It came out negative. For good measure they did a flu test, strep test, and general viral test, all of which came out negative. They told me in all likelihood it was a reaction to my flu shot, but insisted on doing a PCR test. I got the negative result on that test late today.

    I’ve never had a bad reaction to a flu shot before, and while it wasn’t pleasant the good news is that the strong reaction means I developed a strong immune response to this year’s flu strains. With all of the precautions we’re taking against COVID-19, I don’t anticipate a bad flu season, but it is possible to have both the flu and COVID-19 at the same time and I don’t think that would be a good thing at all. Most people have no problems at all with their flu shots, so by all means get one.

    My case of the mini-flu included two days of exhaustion followed by two days of feeling pretty bad. I am mostly better but am going to spend one more day at home for good measure. I’m glad I don’t have the Rona as of yet and that I don’t have to face the flu shot again for another year. And a couple of days of feeling a little bit bad is better than actually catching the flu – especially this year.

I said it in February and it's true today: Vitamin D important key to surviving COVID-19 infection

Marik Protocol (Click to Enlarge)

    Back in late February 2020 I mentioned the importance of taking Vitamins C & D as a way to ameliorate symptoms of a COVID-19 infection, which at that time I said we all would eventually get. I also recommended taking a low-dose of a statin if a doctor had recommended one in the past. Many people quit taking statins due to muscle pain when the solution is simply to lower the dose or frequency.

    That wasn’t my only advice. In February I also urged the wearing of masks in crowded places and called on churches to stop the repulsive practice of forcing congregants to rush around and shake hands during the service. And I suggested researching various drugs that might have been effective against SARS-02 and MERS, assuming that they might also be effective against COVID-19. (I also suggested stocking up on grocery staples such as hamburger meat; folks, you need to listen to me!).

    On May 2, 2002, I blogged again, and far more explicitly stated the importance of Vitamin D in battling COVID-19. I also shared the Marik Protocol, shown above, and pointed out that the best time to “treat” the virus was in advance. The Marik Protocol has been modified since May to include the heartburn medicine Pepsid, which is available over the counter and has been shown to be effective against the COVID-19 virus. My early advice is being proven correct.

    One thing to keep in mind is that in battling COVID-19 we must never rely on double-blind studies. They are far too dangerous and time consuming. Instead we must study correlations and analyze whether there is a scientific basis for such correlation. The correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 lethality is now about as sharp as such a correlation can be.

    I would urge everyone to follow the Marik Protocol, which now consists of:

• Vitamin C, 500 mg, morning and night (no harm in taking more)
• Vitamin D, 1000-4000 iu daily
• Zinc, 75-100 mg per day for one or two months, then cut dose by half
• Quercetin, 250 to 500 mg, morning and night
• Melatonin, up to 2 mg at night
• Pepsid, 10-20 mg morning and night

    Consider adding to the above a low-dose multi-vitamin and a selenium supplement.

    After this whole thing is over I’d like to see the FDA disbanded. They should be telling people right now to take Vitamin D, if nothing else, but the agency is doing nothing. Instead, they sit around waiting for double-blind studies, by which time the virus will be gone or we’ll all be dead.

    I wrote extensively about Vitamin D deficiency in my earlier post, so no need to repeat it here, save that supplementation is especially important for blacks. I would urge you to read about this. Unlike the case with most vitamins, it is possible to overdose on Vitamin D, so taking 10,000 iu daily is probably a bad idea unless you are having regular blood work.

    As a matter of public policy we need to encourage every citizen to follow the Marik Protocol, exercise caution, and go on about their lives. Simple precautions can keep us alive and keep our country going.

Wuhan likely virus wasn't created in a lab, but lab negligence released it on the world

    Everyone seems to be debating whether the Wuhan virus came from a lab; the leftist media insists that it came from a "wet" market. The fact that this debate could even take place is evidence of how stupid the national media is.
    What do we know? We know that China has 1.3 billion people and that Wuhan has 8 million of them, or a little over one-half of one percent of the country's population. We know that "wet markets" where wild and exotic animals are bought and sold are present all over China, and that these wet markets are a vector for contagion. We also know that Wuhan has China's only Level 4 biological lab. Crunch these numbers and the odds of this virus starting in a Wuhan wet market are less than one in one hundred as there are so many other cities where it could have started. It simply is not reasonably possible for this virus to have started in a wet market a few hundred feet from a lab containing massive amounts of deadly pathogens.
    Note that I am not claiming that the Wuhan virus was "created" in a laboratory. Chinese scientists were on record as being very aggressive in isolating and preserving various bat viruses. There is no need to create a virus in the lab when one can isolate hundreds of them from the bat population. Several Chinese scientists reported that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab only to find them selves silenced and perhaps even dead.
    The only real question is whether or not China intentionally release this virus on the world. My inclination is no. Although there has been video evidence of Chinese citizens intentionally infecting public areas, I find it highly unlikely that the release of this virus was intentional. Equally unlikely is that this virus was released by anything other than negligence at the Wuhan biolab.
    I don't believe the Chinese government released this virus on purpose, but I do believe that it is 100-percent culpable in the release of the virus negligently. Those who would maintain otherwise need to explain mathematically why my view is wrong.

Here are some tips on masks and gloves

This sports mask needs
a shop towel filter

    If you are going out to any stores you absolutely should wear disposable gloves and a mask if you have one. These things can be hard to come by, so here are some tips to make them last longer.

    1. Disposable gloves can and should be “washed” with soap and water just like you would wash your hands. If you are running short, when you get ready to take them off wash and then dry them first.
    2. When taking off gloves, try to do so without touching the outside of the glove.
    3. Both gloves and masks can be reused, but must be sequestered for several days to a week first. Viruses will naturally decompose over time. Masks need several days, gloves need a week. The longer the better, of course! Reusable masks such as the sports mask I'm wearing in the photo should be washed and dried.
    4. There is a real shortage of surgical masks. You can use a sports mask or balaclava. Some of these are quite thin, so to be effective you need to place two thicknesses of a shop towel between the mask and your face. Shop towels make excellent filters, which is why they have sold out in lots of places. Regular paper towels aren’t nearly as good, but better than nothing.
    5. Much of the benefit of both masks and gloves is that they keep you from touching your face. So a lousy mask is better than no mask at all.

If you have stopped taking a statin drug because of side effects, try again with low-dose Crestor

The lowest dose of Crestor does most of the work. Increasing from 5 to 40 mg, an eight-fold increase, only results in about a 40 percent increase in cholesterol reduction.

    A lot of people are prescribed cholesterol-lowering statin drugs by their doctors and stop taking them because of unwanted side-effects, such as muscle pain. There is a lot better solution than simply not taking the drugs: just take them less often or at a much lower dose.
    My cholesterol has been hovering between 200 and 240 for my entire adult life, and my doctor has suggested several times that I take Crestor. A few years ago he gave me enough samples of 20mg Crestor to last six months, but I didn’t take them. Crestor was still on-patent at the time; I probably could have made money peddling my pills around nursing homes.
    After my last cholesterol screening my doctor's nurse called to tell me that he was prescribing me 10 mg Crestor to be taken every day. When I mentioned that I would rather just take it a couple of times a week she told me that he would have to increase the dosage to 20 mg., so I settled for the 10 mg every-day Crestor. Arguing with a doctor's nurse if futile.
    You can lead a man to pills but you can’t make him take them; I ended up taking the 10 mg Crestor about once a week, maybe a little more. There is a reason for my reticence in not wanted to take 10 mg of Crestor every day. Some years back I listened to a radio program which described Crestor as being the very strongest and most effective statin on the market; the downside to that is that it tended to have more side effects at higher doses. The point was made on the show that patients are usually best served by taking a very low dose of a powerful statin -- and Crestor is the strongest -- than a higher dose of a less-powerful one.
    One study found that 5mg of Crestor daily reduced LDL-C by 39% and non-HDL-C by 35%;  10 mg reduced LDL-C by 44% and non-HDL-C by 40%; 20 mg reduced LDL-C by 50% and non-HDL-C by 45%; 40 mg reduced LDL-C by 55% and non-HDL-C by 50%. Note that while high doses of Crestor do cause a greater reduction in cholesterol, the reduction is by no means linear. Increasing the 5 mg dose by 300 percent only results in a 30 percent increase in cholesterol reduction; a 700 percent dosage increase only increases efficacy by 40 percent. On the other hand drug toxicity, as measured by the occurrence and severity of side effects, rises with the dosage in a more-or-less linear fashion.
    Now for the takeaway. I’ve been taking 10mg of Crestor once every five to seven days for several months. I just had my total cholesterol checked for free at Wal-Mart and the result was 136, down from 206 in March. I still need to get a full cholesterol check, but that number confirms that a very low dose of Crestor can have a tremendous effect on lowering cholesterol. In Japan Crestor is marketed with a 2.5 mg dosage; sadly, we don’t have that option, but it is possible to use a pill splitter, and that’s what I’m likely to start doing after my next doctor’s visit.
    I’m not sure I will burden my doctor with the fact that I plan to split a 5 mg Crestor; I’ll just do it and check my cholesterol after a couple of months. In all likelihood it will be lower than 136, which should be plenty low.
    To anyone who has quit taking their statin drug because of unwanted side effects, I would suggest starting them again with a lower dose, either by taking them every other or every third day or with the use of a pill splitter, or both. Ask for low-dose Crestor if your doctor will cooperate; make your own low-dose Crestor regimen if he won't.

As I predicted, Ebola was in Mali, but health care officials just didn't know about it

    On Oct. 29 I wrote that the Ebola virus was certain to spread to Mali due to the fact that people were being allowed to travel freely into that country from infected areas with only a temperature check.

    The Ebola virus usually has an incubation period of from 4-21 days, so a temperature check is as useless as teats on a boar hog in preventing infected people from entering an uninfected area. A temperature check only catches those who are actually sick, not everyone who is infected.
    Well, no sooner than Mali had been declared "Ebola free" following the death some weeks ago of a young girl who traveled into the country and died from Ebola, we've learned that there is a more serious outbreak caused by a religious figure -- a grand iman -- from Guinea who traveled to Mali for better medical care. Neither he nor the clinic which treated him understood that he was suffering from an Ebola infection. The iman died and his body was washed at the local mosque before being returned to Guinea. A number of the iman's relatives in Guinea have died, as has one nurse in Mali who treated him. The total number of people infected in unknown, but it is potentially a substantial number.
    All of this happened almost a month ago, and authorities are just now figuring out that the string of deaths that have followed in the iman's wake meant that he was suffering from Ebola. I suspect there are a number of other outbreaks throughout Mali that haven't grown to the point that they've been identified as Ebola.
    On Oct. 29 I wrote the following:

    My guess is that Mali may already have an Ebola outbreak, authorities just don't know it yet. The nature of Ebola is that there is one death from an unexplained cause, often thought to be malaria or some other malady; three weeks later two or three additional people die; in three more weeks that total might jump to six. It can take two or three months for authorities to even become aware of an outbreak.
    Even when villages might suspect Ebola they might be afraid to alert authorities for fear of being quarantined with no food or having their loved ones carted away. So an initial, isolated outbreak often goes undetected by authorities until a village is completely decimated, perhaps even abandoned.
    Most people have all been indoctrinated with the notion that people should have the right to go wherever they want whenever they want. But no one should be allowed to leave an area with an uncontrolled Ebola outbreak without a mandatory quarantine. Nobody has a right to infect the world.
    The world needs to create a cordon sanitaire around those areas with uncontrolled Ebola outbreaks; nobody leaves without a quarantine. If it requires massive numbers of troops standing shoulder-to-shoulder to enforce, then troops we should send. If the only way to stop people from leaving is to shoot them, then shoot.

    The real risk of Ebola isn't that we might get a few cases or even a few hundred cases here in the United States. The risk is that it will continue to slowly creep into poverty-stricken areas with poor communication, poor education, and poor medical facilities, where it will successfully take root before anyone even knows it's there.

Government liberals lie repeatedly about Ebola; their actions show they don't believe what they say

    We have another Ebola case in the United States, intentionally imported by Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress. A New York doctor who knew he might have been exposed in Guinea to the virus has taken ill after spending a night on the town, where he may have infected numerous people.
    I say intentionally imported because Obama and the Democrats have refused to put into place reasonable travel restrictions to prevent a slow trickle of infected Ebola victims from entering the country and spreading it around. While I don't support a total travel ban, a ban on tourist travel combined with a mandatory quarantine period would eliminate virtually all Ebola cases in this country. Instead we are stuck with the possibility -- hopefully a small one -- of an Ebola outbreak in New York City.
    In response to a public outcry for travel restrictions the Obama administration recently adopted a policy of requiring people from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea who are infected with the Ebola virus to enter the country in one of five airports. I'm not sure how this is helpful in any way. Reducing it to one won't help either. As long as Obama and the Democrats continue to allow people who are infected but not showing symptoms into the country the entire nation is at risk.
    With the federal government failing to take action the states are stepping in. New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have all announced quarantine policies. New York is going to allow citizens to serve their quarantines in their homes and compensate them for lost wages, which makes good sense. New Jersey has just forced a nurse returning from Sierra Leone into a quarantine tent with no shower. Not cool! This woman is a hero for her efforts, and while I believe she should be placed in quarantine, she should be given every comfort. Personally, I don't believe a full 21-day quarantine period is necessary; I think 10-12 days of quarantine followed by 15 days of self-monitoring and avoiding crowds and public areas would be highly effective.
    For some reason our national response to  the Ebola virus has become a liberal versus conservative issue. Liberals take the view that we really shouldn't worry at all about the Ebola virus, and besides, if things get out of hand our government will take care of and protect us. Conservatives take the view that worries over Ebola may indeed by overblown, but that it does pose a real risk; our government has proven itself to be truly inept in dealing with it, and in a true global catastrophe no government is big enough or strong enough to take care of us or protect us.
    In other words, we ought to be careful. We ought to protect ourselves. Liberals are so worried about some family from Sierra Leone not getting to see DisneyWorld that they aren't even willing to suspend tourist travel from countries with out-of-control Ebola epidemics. They would rather be politically correct, even if it means hundreds or even thousands of Americans might needlessly die.
    If Obama and the Democrats were ever to admit that infected but asymptomatic people ought not be allowed to enter the country through our airports, then it would also have to admit that infected people ought not be allowed to enter through our border with Mexico as well. For them this would be too much. Obama and the Democrats simply cannot accept the fact that our nation should protects its borders and put the interests of our own citizens ahead of those of foreigners.
    To accomplish its goals Obama and the Democrats have turned the CDC into a left-wing mouthpiece and miss no chance to ridicule Republicans who express fears that come directly from guidelines written by the CDC. CDC spokesmen often deny risks that are stated in their own written policies.
    The CDC and other liberal shills tells us things that are obviously false. Examples:
    ❑ CDC Director Tom Friedan claims the disease is incredibly hard to catch. Yet health care professionals who take every precaution are contracting the disease. It's probably not very contagious in its early stages. But it's worth noting that the government isn't sure of that, because it is carefully tracking and even quarantining people exposed to Ebola patients with early symptoms or even no symptoms. I'm glad the government is being careful; I just wish it would be truthful. Ebola is highly contagious, and we don't know at what point it becomes highly contagious.
    ❑ The government tells us that it is impossible to catch Ebola from riding a bus, but that anyone who might have been exposed to the Ebola virus should not take the bus. Huh? When a woman vomited on a bus and then lied about having just come from West Africa, everyone on the bus was placed under quarantine. Why? According to the government they couldn't have possibly have caught it!
    ❑ Shepard Smith made a big production of telling the world that there is absolutely nothing to fear from Ebola. In that newscast he claimed that nurse Amber Joy Vinson had absolutely no symptoms when she flew from Cleveland to Dallas. This was just false. In fact, she said she had felt draggy for a couple of days and was running a fever of 99.5; the CDC told her to fly anyway. These are symptoms. And the CDC is tracking passengers on both her flight to Cleveland, when she was completely asymptomatic, and her flight home. I'm glad, but clearly the government doesn't believe there is zero risk or it wouldn't be tracking these people.
    ❑ The most recent Ebola victim, Dr. Craig Spencer of New York, returned from Guinea about 10 days ago, where he had been treating Ebola patients as a Doctors Without Borders volunteer. He apparently reported feeling "sluggish" starting Tuesday of this week. For whatever reason he spent the night on the town Wednesday, taking subways and going to a bowling alley. On Thursday morning he developed a fever and diarrhea and reported it to health authorities. The government insists that he was not infectious prior to developing a fever on Thursday, but his fiancee has been quarantined and two friends who were in contact with him on Wednesday have been placed under mandatory quarantine.  Why? The government says the doctor was not infectious on Wednesday. Why do these friends need to be quarantined? And wouldn't it have been easier on all concerned to just have had a national policy that would have quarantined or placed mandatory restrictions on the doctor on his return from West Africa?
    ❑ Rand Paul recently stated that the Ebola virus could be transmitted through the air through a cough or sneeze. He was immediately ridiculed by the left. Dr. Paul was merely stating facts that were on the CDC website. Note, by the way, that a virus that can travel a short distance through the air by way of aerosol created with a cough or sneeze is not airborne. An airborne virus is one that can attach itself to a dust mote and travel a relatively long distance.
    ❑ Far-left mag Mother Jones takes Dr. Paul to task for stating that Ebola is more contagious than AIDS. These leftists just find that notion hilarious. The average Ebola victim currently infects two more victims while the average AIDS patient supposedly infects four, although that number has varied greatly over the years. Therefore, according to liberals, AIDS is more contagious. Have these people not stopped to think that an AIDS victim might take 10 years to infect four people while an Ebola victim does it in three weeks? That you can't catch AIDS from merely touching someone? Ebola is far more contagious than AIDS. Why do liberals want to hide this fact?
    ❑ I frequently see posts where people claim that Ebola isn't very contagious; after all, measles is far more contagious. Indeed it is -- nine times more contagious, to be exact, and perhaps more. But measles has a fairly low mortality rate. Ebola in Africa has a mortality rate of about 700 cases out of 1,000. Why muddy the waters with talk of measles or other diseases? What matters is that the number of Ebola cases in West Africa continues to double every three weeks to one month, and 70 percent of those who contract the disease will die.
    I don't think we as a nation should panic over a few domestic cases of Ebola; but the threat to the undeveloped world is ominous, and if the disaster is large enough if will affect us all. But it's not an act of "panic" or "hysteria" to take reasonable, prudent precautions to prevent Ebola cases from being introduced into the domestic population.
    For some reason Obama and the Democrats aren't willing to take any precautions against an unwanted Ebola outbreak. Rather than admit to any uncertainty, Obama and the Democrats just lie and ignore the dangers. It's almost recreational for them.
    But it's not a game for the rest of us. It's dangerous and it puts our nation and our world at risk. As a general rule things will always turn out just fine, but in every instance we should always think about and plan for a worst-case scenario.

In 20-20 hindsight, Jackson Prep player's death was both predictable and preventable

Walker Wilbanks

    The Clarion-Ledger reports that the lead physician who treated Jackson Prep football player Walker Wilbanks said the teens death from a lack of sodium was a "fluke" and "freak" occurance. Wilbanks fell ill during the Friday, August 22 game against Oxford. His death was from hyponatremia, or an extreme lack of sodium.
    "Please don't overreact. Don't let this alter the way you prepare for games," he said. "Friday night was an isolated incident. He couldn't have prepared for it. No one could," Pressler said. "There are times where there are no answers medically, and that's what we're dealing with here."
    I'm not a doctor but I disagree with this one. There are certainly some unanswered questions, such as whether or not Wilbanks might have been taking a diuretic, for example (which can cause hyponatremia), but I'm not willing to accept that such deaths can't be prevented.
    First, I only played football for a single year. I was terrible. But I remember on really hot days the coaches would give us salt pills. My understanding is that salt pills are no longer given. Why? I've never heard of anyone dying from taking a proper dosage of salt pills before a football game, but I now know of one who died because of a lack of salt in his system.
    Second, when football players practice and play in extreme heat bad things, including the possibility of death, are more likely to happen. The high temperature at the Jackson airport on August 23 was 93 degrees. At 6:53 the temperature was 90 with a heat index of 95.4. These temperatures were recorded on the outskirts of the city, and are likely lower than those that existed on the Jackson Prep field. I think it is obvious that had temperatures been cooler Wilbanks would be alive today.
    Following the death of a football player to heat stroke the state of Kentucky adopted rigid rules concerning practices in heat. With a heat index of 95 or above the following steps are required:

 Provide ample amounts of water. This means that water should always be available and athletes should be able to take in as much water as they desire.
 Mandatory water breaks every 30 minutes for 10 minutes in duration
 Ice-down towels for cooling
 Watch/monitor athletes carefully for necessary action.
 Contact sports and activities with additional equipment
 Helmets and other possible equipment removed if not involved in contact.
 Reduce time of outside activity. Consider postponing practice to later in the day.
 Re-check temperature and humidity every 30 minutes to monitor for increased Heat Index.

    Unlike a practice, a football game doesn't allow 10-minute water breaks every half rour. Players can't always remove their helmets. And the outside activity can't be reduced or postponed.
    But there is a solution: Don't allow football games in August!
    School traditionally began the Tuesday after Labor Day, with the first football game perhaps the Friday after Labor Day. Labor Day marks the end of summer for a reason; temperatures drop with every passing day.
    I don't blame anyone for Wilbanks' death. But in hindsight it wasn't a "freak," unpreventable occurrence. It was predictable and preventable. We need to attempt to discover as many facts as possible and work together to prevent such deaths in the future.
    We can prevent future deaths by banning August football games and by making sure players have a high enough sodium level, whether it's achieved with salt pills, energy drinks, or something else. As a state we need to regulate football practice conditions as well. These changes can come from the athletic associations or from the legislature; I don't care which.
    As a state we have a choice. We can make some changes, or we can decide to bury some more teen-agers. Because when another kid dies, it won't be a "fluke." It will be because we allowed it to happen.

When patients fail to pay their Obamacare premiums health care providers are left holding the bag

    The important thing to understand about Obamacare is that virtually everything is broken. It's a bad, poorly thought out law.
    It had to be, by the very nature of it. The Democrats rammed it through Congress as part of a reconciliation bill. Even the people supporting it had little idea what they were voting for. Nancy Pelosi made headlines when she explained that the bill would have to be passed before people would really understand what was in it.
    The American people are starting to understand and many simply do not like it.
    One little feature of Obamacare is that anyone purchasing subsidized insurance is automatically covered for four months after making a single payment. In other words, there is a 90-day grace period before policies are cancelled.
    I suppose that is something that can be priced into insurance. But what happens next is the shocker.
    During the first 30 days of the 90-day grace period insurance claims will be paid and processed. Any claims during the next 60 days simply will not be paid unless the premiums are paid.
    So doctors and hospitals will be told that a patient is insured, only to find out later that they aren't going to be paid.
    Obamacare already has really low reimbursement rates for doctors. In California, for example, a majority of doctors are simply refusing to see those insured through exchanges. They can't afford to. Refusing to pay doctors and hospitals for services provided is going to make them even more loathe to accept exchange insurance.
    Failure to pay premiums is a big problem with Obamacare. The administration has been trying to hide the numbers, but roughly 20 percent of those who signed up never paid their first premium, and that may be a low number. So instead of 4.2 million being enrolled through the exchanges the number is more like 3.3 million or fewer. If 20 percent of this number eventually defaults on their insurance payments, then roughly 600,000 people will be able to run up doctor and hospital bills under the guise of being insured. Providers will be falsely told that their patients are insured only to find out later that they are being stiffed.
    No doubt many people are going to be upset over the fact that they've paid for insurance and can't find a doctor to accept it. How bad is the problem? Well, it depends on the state. Forbes did an analysis of the availability of specialists and found substantially fewer participate in Obamacare.

    The chart at right shows specialist availability offered by Athen in its PPO plans versus its Obamacare Bronze plans. In some cases the differences are extreme. For example, Anthem PPO customers in Indiana have a choice of 1055 cardiologists to choose from in their plan. Obamacare customers have 74. In other words, only one in about 14 doctors in its regular PPO plans are willing to accept Obamacare patients.
    Anthem was chosen for the comparison because the data was readily available, and its exchange plans tend to be as good or better than most.
    Understand that President Obama has declared policies which don't cover things like maternity care for senior citizens junk. But most Americans would prefer to pay less for their insurance, forego the free birth control they don't need, maternity benefits they don't want, and so forth, and instead have a wide choice of doctors who would be glad to see them.
    Roughly half of American doctors aren't going to accept Obamacare, and that number is likely to rise after they don't get paid.
    Even worse, because of all the money being spent on Obamacare there is no money to pay for the annual Medicare/Medicaid "doc fix," which increases reimburse levels for these programs. Doctors are about to take a 24 percent pay cut and many will respond by refusing to see Medicaid patients.
    So the problem isn't limited to just purchasers of junk Obamacare policies. Soon Granny won't be able to find a doctor, either.
    Thanks Obama!

A single chart shows how doomed Obamacare relies on the victimization of young males to succeed

This chart shows what a really bad deal Obamacare is for males of almost any age. Roughly 50 percent of the premiums paid by young males go to women and wealthy older insurance customers. Note the bottom portion of the chart, which shows that older customers receiving giant subsidies are signing up at roughly twice the expected rate while young people have signed up at about half of what was expected and needed.

    It should be apparent by now that the government's attempt to take over and micromanage one-sixth of the American economy is a complete and total flop. Obamacare will fail, and it should fail. The chart above, from the ACA Death Spiral website, shows why.
    One of the myriad faults with Obamacare is that it limits or outlaws all insurance ratings, save for those based on geography. Age ratings are permitted in part. Older patients cost as much as five times as much to insure as younger ones, but Obamacare imposes a 3:1 maximum premium differential. In other words, young people just starting out in life are forced to subsidize their wealthier elders.
    Oddly enough, liberals don't seem to care about premium differentials when it comes to auto insurance. The differential is often huge: young males pay premiums several times those of older females. If we are going to limit age differentials in insurance, shouldn't we do so for all types of insurance? Shouldn't we require all citizens to purchase auto insurance, whether they own a car or not?
    The chart above shows that roughly 50 percent of premiums paid by younger males will go to provide free insurance coverage to other groups, a subsidy being a form of free care. Consider the fact that 20 percent of insurance benefits are actually overhead costs and young males as a group will receive only 40 cents of medical care for every dollar in premiums paid.
    But wait there's more! I'm operating on guesstimate here, but we've all observed that in any group the bulk of medical costs are incurred by a relatively small number of individuals. Using a proper rating system I dare say that out of a group of 100 men I could identify 10 up front who would be likely to consume 50 percent of the group's medical services over the next year.
    Technically insurers are allowed to charge a smoker's premium under Obamacare. But those who lie won't have their policies cancelled or coverage denied. With Obamacare, those who engage in risky health behaviors now have their costs passed over to the healthy. So the Type 2 diabetic who weighs 300 pounds, drinks like a fish, and chomps on pork chops and pies all day won't have to pay a dime in extra insurance costs. His costs are covered by gouging vegetable-eating joggers.
    I suspect that when you factor out the costs of the intentionally or unfortunately ill, you'll find that young, healthy males will receive less than 20 cents in health-care benefits for every dollar paid in premiums. For young males -- and males of most ages really -- Obamacare is a sucker deal.
    The Obama administration has been in an all-out effort to get young people to sign up for Obamacare. And many administration officials have been up front about why these younger signees are needed: to subsidize health care for those being sold discounted health plans. The president is actually making (bad) comedy videos in an effort to woo the young.
    But these Obamacare shills have a terrible sales pitch. It's essentially, "Hey young people, come sign up for insurance so we can charge you four times as much as we should and use the money to give free coverage to people who are older and wealthier than you!" Many young people will qualify for health-care subsidies when purchasing low-quality policies through the exchanges, but unless these subsidies equal 75 percent of their premiums it's a bad deal.
    Suppose you were to go to a restaurant and be told that your $25 meal would cost $125 in order to provide everyone with unlimited fine wine with dinner. This might be a good deal, except for those who are satisfied with a $5 glass of wine, or no wine at all. Soon such a restaurant would find that teetotalers and cheap-wine drinkers would stay away, and it would quickly go broke as its changing customer base slurped down vast quantities of Cristal, Château Petrus, Opus One, etc., for the low price of $125 per meal. Would you go to such restaurant? I wouldn't.
    Of course, with the Obamacare mindset such a restaurant needn't go broke. The government would just agree to cover the tab of any patron who drank too much expensive wine and pass on the costs to the taxpayers. But is this a rational government policy?
    Should young males buy health insurance? Perhaps. They should base their decision on their own best interests and not on some stupid comedy skit by the president. If they are dreadfully ill, of course they should buy the now-partially-free insurance. If they have a substantial estate, yes. But for the average male with a modest estate a better choice is probably to buy plenty of accident coverage on one's auto policy and hope for the best.
    Yes, bad things can happen, but uninsured young people can get emergency health care. If a chronic condition should surface they can wait a few months and enroll in Obamacare. And if their bills are just impossible to pay off they can declare bankruptcy and get a new start. This is the best choice young males have under Obamacare, and it's the one most are taking.
    Maybe more young people could be persuaded to sign up, if only they could be shown videos like the one made by Richard Simmons, as part of the "Tell A Friend -- Get Covered" campaign (shown below). Please watch this video, young males of America! Doesn't it make you want to pay four times as much as you should to "Get Covered"?

If you are really, really sick you need to hire a doctor to hire your doctor

    Internet blogger Steve Sailer occasionally creates national talking points by writing things that mustn't be written. Others then repackage his views and either repeat them in gussied-up form or else denounce his ideas without referencing exactly what they are denouncing.
    For example, he opined in 2005 that the difference between Red States and Blue States was that in Red States "Affordable Family Formation" was possible. In other words, in Red States it was generally possible to get married, have children, buy a house, and send children to public school. He Googled the phrase and found not a single instance of this phrase having ever been used in the history of the Internet. Google it today and you will get 44,300 hits.
    He's written a few posts over the years about being cured of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1997. The most recent item was in response to a New York Times opinion piece which pointed out the fact that people need to take control of their medical treatment, because doctors do get things wrong.
    I'll cut to the chase. Sailer's advice to anyone suffering a serious illness is this: Hire a doctor to hire your doctor. In 1996 he hired an oncologist as a consultant to choose between three different doctors with three different treatment proposals. Because of this he was one of the first people in the country -- if not the first -- to use a new drug that has been found since then to be highly effective. He credits his decision with saving his life.
    A personal example: A few years ago my father got a call from one of his doctors telling him that they had his blood tests and that his potassium levels were dangerously high (high potassium can cause a heart attack). They told him not to eat any bananas, tomatoes, or other foods high in potassium and to come in first thing Monday morning (it was late Friday). That was it.
    When I heard this I immediately did a web search on all of his medicines and found that an alpha blocker he was taking for blood pressure was associated with high potassium levels. His blood pressure problem wasn't all that serious, so I had him discontinue the alpha blocker until his consultation, at which time the doctor ordered it dropped as well.
    I didn't do anything the nurse couldn't have done better. But if I hadn't done it then it simply wouldn't have been done.
    Two years ago I wrote about a simple genetic test that most of us have already taken that could save your life. The test to answer the question, "How does dextromethorphan (Robitussin DM) make you feel?" I don't know of any doctor who asks that question. As a result, these doctors are mis-treating three to seven percent of their patients, risking potentially fatal consequences.
    When it comes to medicine, your health and life demand that you do some research on your own. And if you are really sick, hire a doctor to hire your doctor!

Local doctor charges $40 for office visit, no bills, no insurance, no Medicare or Medicaid

    I got an interesting flyer in the mail not long ago that suggests which way medical care may be heading in the near future.
    The flyer is for a medical clinic operated by local doctor Thomas Fowlkes and two nurse practitioners.
    Dr. Fowlkes' clinic doesn't accept Medicaid, Medicare, or insurance. Payment is expected when services are rendered; no bills. An office visit costs $40 -- substantially less than at most clinics.
    Ask any doctor about the problems with getting paid by insurance companies or the government and after their blood pressure goes down they will tell you the billing side of the business is killing them. A substantial portion of the typical medical practice is now devoted solely to maintaining billing and insurance records. As Medicare reimbursements drop I think we'll see more doctors pulling out of the system altogether.
    In addition to marketing his clinic to people without insurance, Fowlkes also seeks those who have insurance but also either have a high deductible or else those who are in a hurry. Obamacare is expected to dramatically increase the already long wait time to see a doctor. Fowlkes's clinic doesn't accept appointments and sets a goal of seeing patients within 15 minutes of arrival.
    I suspect that in the future more and more people with either insurance or Medicare will decide to just pay cash for service for their minor ailments rather than endure the hassle of a long wait for an appointment at their preferred doctor's office.
    In fact, it may be the formula all medical providers need to adopt in the future. For the big stuff, use insurance; for the little stuff, just pay.

Say hello to the 28-hour work week as companies start to gear up for Obamacare

    We warned you! We did! Don't say we didn't tell you!
     The Obamiacs assured us that all we had to do was require every employer who hired someone for 30 or more hours each week to buy them insurance and all of our problems would be solved. And of course, it couldn't be a low-cost policy. It had to be the most expensive, comprehensive insurance money can buy, with low deductibles, low co-pays, no lifetime limits, and free birth control. Welcome to the good life!
     Many public-spirited employers of lower-wage employees were already providing insurance for their full-time workers. They didn't need a new law. But the insurance they have been providing isn't good enough for the government, which under the Obamacare law requires them to spend substantially more so there will be lots of extra money to provide college girls at expensive private colleges with free birth control and other extras that many working people neither need nor want to pay for.
     And so, faced with skyrocketing health costs under Obamacare, employers are acting rationally. They are cutting lower-wage workers back to a 28-hour-per-week work schedule. Remember, the employer-mandate only applies to full-time workers, so as long as the workers are kept under 30 hours the employer has no obligation to provide insurance.
     The Orlando Sentinel reports, for example, that the Darden Corporation, which owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Longhorn restaurants, is testing a new 28-hour work week in anticipation of new insurance rules that go into effect in 2014. If successful the shortened workweek will likely go into effect at all restaurants on the rollout of Obamacare.
     This isn't an outlier. This is going to be the new normal of employment for low- and moderate-wage workers. Obamacare is just going to make it too expensive to keep these workers on full-time.
     And sad to say for these semi-displaced workers, but because of the individual mandate they are still going to be required to purchase insurance or face fines. So instead of getting employer-sponsored insurance they can afford they are going to be forced to purchase subsidized, luxury policies entirely on their own or pay a fine -- and they will have a lot less money to do it with.
     Obama gave his word of honor that people who liked their current health insurance could keep their current health insurance. But that doesn't apply to many low-wage workers, who are losing both their low-cost insurance plans and the hours of work that they need to survive. These people don't want free birth control or to be forced to pay for lots of extras, they want the affordable insurance they used to have and plenty of hours at work to help pay for it. Those days are apparently gone forever, thanks to Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al.
     As a matter of public policy, Obamacare did just the opposite of what it should have done. Instead of outlawing bargain health plans, we should have concentrated on providing every American with limited health coverage. But the Democrats were too concerned with forcing the Catholic church to buy birth control for rich, unmarried college girls to think about the needs of actual working people.
     Obama would no doubt say that Change is hard, but he sure Hopes you have enough money to pay your bills once you are semi-unemployed. But at least those stuck without full-time work or health insurance will be able to rest easy knowing that any full-time job they get will come with insurance. Of course, they'll never again get a full-time job for as long as they live.

Dump Obamacare, then allow every citizen to sign up for bare-bones Medicaid or take a voucher

    Hopefully the Supreme Court will overturn the Obamacare individual mandate this week and throw out his odious health car law in its entirety.
    There are a million problems with Obamacare, not the least of which is that it forces every citizen to purchase exactly the same insurance policy. We were told this wouldn't happen, but that's clearly not where we're headed with this.
    Obamacare is based on the notion that the government can simply wish any problem away by ordering the insurance companies to solve or cover it. The insurance companies are willing to go along with this scam by raising rates and cutting services to their current customers, since they know everyone is going to be forced to participate no matter how sorry their product or service.
    There is, by the way, nothing wrong with trying to extend basic, bare-bones health coverage to every American. In fact, it can be done. The problem is that most people who have insurance through their employers have luxury care, with lots of bells and whistles. They like these bells and whistles and are paying for them. It is a part of their wage. Reducing the quality of their insurance coverage and care is in effect a giant pay cut.
    While the nation was being sold this bill of goods we were ensured that Obamacare would actually reduce health-care costs. A well-thought-out health care plan can cut costs. Extending free or subsidized luxury care to tens of millions of Americans will cause them to skyrocket.
    To understanding what we need to do to provide health care for those who don't have it, we need to come to some common agreement:

    1. There is value in having a healthy populace.
    2. We are currently providing free but erratic national health care through our nation's emergency rooms. This care is outlandishly expensive, the hospitals are forced to provide it for free, and so they shift the costs to those with insurance. Even worse, they shift even more of the cost to the poor blokes who don't have insurance but who are able to pay for their care.
    3. The breakdown of the American family and the rise of single parenthood as a lifestyle choice is directly related to the fact that it is fairly easy for single mothers to get Medicaid and other care while married women have a very difficult time of it, even when they are relatively poor. There is thus utility to providing this care to everyone, not just the single poor.
    4. Medicaid, in its current form, provides very lavish, luxury health benefits that are sometimes better than those provided by private insurance. There is room to dramatically expand this program at no extra cost by making it a bare-bones, basic health program, similar to that in Great Britain.

    So how do we expand health coverage? The first step is to leave everyone who already has insurance alone. Right now everyone is seeing their insurance coverage going down the tubes, and it's all because of Obama, Pelosi, et. al. and their desire to control every aspect of our lives.
    Second, as a society I believe we need to look at increasing the minimum wage followed by the imposition of additional payroll taxes on every American to fund a bare-bones health voucher. Payroll taxes should be paid by everyone, and every citizen, regardless of income or wealth, should receive a Medicaid voucher, which can be used in one of two ways. The recipient can use the voucher to sign up for Medicaid, or the recipient can use the true cash value of the voucher to offset the purchase of luxury care private insurance that will allow doctor choice, non-generic drugs, a less-rigorously managed rationing system, and a generally more pleasant health-care experience.
    In other words, I'm suggesting that we make every citizen -- note the word citizen -- eligible for Medicaid voucher at no cost beyond a payroll deduction, regardless of wealth. Those who want more can pay for more.
    Giving every citizen a Medicaid voucher would provide basic health care to those who currently can't afford it. People with pre-existing conditions would automatically be covered by Medicaid, even if they couldn't afford a luxury care plan. Meanwhile, the rest of us would be free to use our vouchers to buy the type of insurance we've always had, insurance that would be relatively free from government control.
    That means we can still allow the Catholic church to offer insurance that doesn't include birth control. It means people who want high-deductible luxury plans can have them. It means that the lives of American people can again be free from government micro-management.
    Before we can solve our health care problems we have to first get rid of Obamacare. Hopefully the Supreme Court will see the overreach of forcing citizens to purchase a private product. Once we get rid of Obamacare we can go to work devising a plan to give every American a voucher to enroll in a bare-bones Medicaid plan, while those who want a little more can take their voucher, pay a little more, and get a little more.
    In other words, we can be free again.

The death of the Wendy's hamburger

    When Wendy's Hamburgers came onto the scene in a big way 30 years ago I was their biggest fan. I don't know whether it was because I loved their hamburgers or because I hated McDonald's.
    You see, when I would go into McDonald's, I would order a hamburger and make a big production of saying, "Please no cheese, please no cheese, please no cheese." "No ketchup! No ketchup! No ketchup!" I would then get my burger and it would be covered with slimy American cheese and a great big splat of ketchup. (Is there a greater afront to our national honor than to have a product so vile named "American" cheese?)
    Wendy's would let me order the hamburger the way I wanted it, with mustard, pickle, and onion -- the way most people at burgers before McDonald's started pouring ketchup on them. I would usually have to ask for extra mustard, because most establishments apply mustard with an eye-dropper, but I could get my burger the way I wanted it.
    Wendy's would still try to sell the cheese, at a 40-cent upcharge. I would always specify that I wanted a hamburger and they would always ask if I wanted cheese on it. I would decline, and would sometimes point out that you can't put cheese on a hamburger. After getting a quizical look, I would explain that I had ordered a hamburger and if you add cheese it becomes a cheeseburger, which I would have ordered had I wanted the cheese. I actually wrote my weekly column for the Daily Mississippian on this subject one week and made the local Wendy's people pretty miserable for a few days as a number of students took up my cause.
    Wendy's has solved this problem. They have taken hamburgers completely off the menu. The last Wendy's I went to didn't offer a single hamburger -- all they had was cheeseburgers.
    If it was good cheese, I might not mind. I love cheddar cheese, even pepper jack. Port of Call in New Orleans tops its steak burgers with shreadded cheddar that isn't quite melted all the way. It tastes great (the long-closed Ruby Red's down the street was even better). But I don't want the Wendy's slimy cheese.
    Wendy's doesn't give me a choice. Oh, they'll take the cheese off if I ask, but accounting for inflation they've raised the price of the sandwich by around 60 cents to cover the cost of the cheese. It's not fair and a rip-off.
    The sign outside of every Wendy's restaurant promises that they sell "Old Fashioned Hamburgers." When one goes in to discover that do not have a single hamburger on the menu, they are engaging in false advertising. They are actually lying to and misleading the public. It's false advertising.
    We are a nation of fat people. For those who actually enjoy a slice of slime on their burger, fine, go ahead and get it. But it ought to be an option, not something restaurants force on people by making them pay for it whether they want it or not. Restaurants shouldn't advertise that they sell hamburgers when they only sell cheeseburgers. I would hope that the government officials who investigate false advertising would at least look into this.
    I'm not going to say I'll never enter a Wendy's again. But I know when I get a hamburger there that I'm being cheated out of 60 or more cents. That puts them way down on my list. Way, way down.

Fight obesity by taxing high fructose corn syrup

    A new study says by the year 2030 42 percent of Americans will be obese. Needless to say, the experts are calling for more regulations, so of which will be highly intrusive into people's private lives.
    Yet nobody is calling for the one regulation that might actually help: a ban on high fructose corn syrup. Perhaps it was coincidence, but America's obesity epidemic began with the mass introduction of high fructose corn syrup into our diets and this product has been linked to obesity by numerous studies. Other studies don't find the link, but I am firmly convinced HFCS is the cause of much of our nation's obesity and other health problems.
    Despite its name, high fructose corn syrup is a highly artificial product which has to be manufactured. Food processors like it for one reason: it's cheaper than sugar. They care not one whit about our health.
    Why hasn't this dangerous product been banned? It's sort of like the case with cigarettes. It's virtually impossible to do double-blind experiments on humans, so even though there are correlations that can be seen there is not the type of absolute scientific proof that is needed to prove the product is dangerous.
    Because the product is so dangerous manufactures have gotten permission to relabel it as "corn syrup" or "corn sugar" when it is included in a product in order to fool consumers. The government has been willing to go along with this because it promotes corn production. Of course it also promotes obesity, diabetes and a host of other diseases, but nobody cares about that.
    We can work at the state level to solve this problem by asking our state legislators to tax products containing high fructose corn syrup in order to generate revenue. For example, don't tax all soda, just those with HFCS. If it discourages the use of this deadly product, all the better!

Tripping on Levaquin

    I had a visit to the Lafayette County Hospital this past weekend.
    I woke up last Thursday with minor chest pains and a general tightness in my chest. My stomach hurt. I was short of breath. I recognized the symptoms as those of a possible heart attack. But then again it might not be. I ate three aspirin. I would have eaten four, but I dropped one and felt too bad to pick it up.
    I laid in the bed an hour thinking about things, which seemed to be getting worse, not better. Finally I decided that the hospital was the place to be and I didn't even worry about a shower. I debated just quietly driving myself, but instead yelled upstairs for Jinny and soon we were on our way.
    The enzyme tests showed that I had not had a heart attack. But I still had minor (and a few sharp) chest pains and terrible shortness of breath. So I ended up getting a heart-cath to check for blockages. Despite having high cholesterol, the heart doctor described my arteries as "pristine."
    While recovering from the heart-cath my fever suddenly shot up to almost 104 (I was more-or-less out of it during all of this). Then the problem was found. I had pneumonia that apparently didn't show up very well on my initial x-ray. I was immediately put on heavy doses of intravenous Levaquin, a very powerful antibiotic with a rather notorious side-effect profile.
    The Levaquin made my stomach hurt. It made my joints hurt. It made my stomach blow up like a bowling ball. Oh, and it gave me a special insight into the vision world. There weren't bats flying out of the ceiling or anything, but the dreams were vivid and their was this kind of daydreaming hallucination that I really wan't used to.
    I was finally discharged, with instructions to take the Levaquin for four more days. The first night my stomach hurt and I didn't have the nurse bringing me a pain pill or two Ambien at bedtime. I slept poorly.
    I do remember dreaming that I was in some Hunger Games type situation where I was wearing a gold vest that I had to protect. Of course I was being chased with the object that I be killed. I finally met up with several friends/teammates, and we all had made shirts that were imprinted with our life stories which we shared with each other. The shirts were button-downs with a slightly neonish appearance, and they were all packaged up just like they were for sale at the department store. Shirts imprinted with our life stories. That's a weird dream. That's Levaquin.
    I went to see Dr. John Laurenzo, who I've seen off and on for years, and he replaced the Levaquin with another antibiotic. He also encouraged me to take acid reflux medicine on a regular basis. Long story, but I do have a problem, and he suggested that an untreated acid problem may cause the upper esophagus to narrow, which makes it more likely for food to go down the wrong pipe, which can then cause infection and pneumonia. Laurenzo is a strong believer in reflux medicine and promotes it with the zeal of a revival tent preacher. I tend to think these medicines are over-prescribed, but have concluded in my case that I need to take them all the time.
    If anyone knows anyone who specializes in making shirts imprinted with life stories, let me know. In the meantime, I'm saving the Levaquin, figuring that if in the future I can't afford to take a vacation I'll still be able to take a trip.

Poor, pitiful, Georgetown coeds can pay $65,000 a year on school, but can't afford birth control

    Much has been made about Rush Limbaugh's rather crude comments toward Georgetown Law School student Sandra Fluke, who he called a "slut" on his radio program. While I think Rush went a bit overboard, as he often does, Fluke's basic dishonesty certainly is designed to bring out the worst in people.
    Fluke, if you will remember, wanted to testify before Congress about the plight of poor Georgetown law students who couldn't afford birth control because the university wouldn't supply it to them for free through its health plan. In particular she cited the case of a classmate who needed hormonal birth control not to prevent pregnancy, as the friend is a lesbian, but to prevent ovarian cysts. Even though entitled, her classmate was unable to get her prescription filled and thus suffered a serious cyst. Therefore, Fluke argued, all women should get free birth control.
    I suppose it never occurred to Fluke to seek a law addressing her classmate's problem. In short, any insurer refusing to cover a hormonal birth control prescription that is given for other purposes would be subject to civil or criminal penalties. It's that simple; problem solved.
    But that's not enough for Fluke. She insists that all the other poor, underprivileged Georgetown girls who want to have birth control need it for free, too. If the insurance company isn't forced to give it to them for free, there's just no way they will ever be able to afford it.
    Tuition for one semester at Georgetown is almost $24,000, or $48,000 per year. Add $17,000 per year in living expenses and these girls have at least $65,000 to spend on going to one of the most elite law schools in the nation. I'm sure most of the rest of us spent far less on our schools.
    Of course, when these girls graduate they will have it made. The average private sector starting salary for a Georgetown Law grad is $160,000 per year.
    I think it's a great idea to use birth control while enjoying the gigantic sex orgy known as "Georgetown Law." But I find it outrageous that these overprivileged, oversexed coeds expect America's working men and women to pick up the tab for their extracurricular activities.
    Limbaugh's comment's were outrageous, but not nearly as outrageous as those of Fluke. These Georgetown women need to buy their own birth control. If they can afford $65,000 on college, they can afford $10 or so a month to avoid pregnancy.

Catholic church brouhaha shows need for Obamacare repeal

    If you ever needed proof of the need to repeal Obamacare, look no further than the brouhaha over whether or not the Catholic church should be forced to offer birth control in its insurance plans.
    For the record, I support birth control. Although I don't believe making it more available wouldn't do much to reduce the illegitimacy rate, on the off chance that it would I am more than willing to support government programs to hand out free birth control through every health department in America.
    What I don't support is any plan that would force a church that is opposed to artificial birth control to purchase it, even if I think that church is wrong. In fact, I'm opposed to forcing anyone to purchase birth control or anything else. Obamacare doesn't allow for the slightest deviation from government mandate. Apparently everyone must now be cookie-cutter alike.
    The problem with our insurance companies and our government is that our government believes that the insurance companies exist in a Harry Potter land, where goods and services can be provided at no cost through the magic incantation of government edict. If the Catholic church doesn't want to pay for insurance, no problem. The government will simply require that anyone insured through the Catholic church be able to apply to the insurance company for birth control, which will then be provided to them absolutely free of charge.
    Since it's so easy, why doesn't Obama just order the insurance companies to offer all medicines for free? For that matter, why not require them to provide free houses to everyone and solve the homeless problem? Does anyone doubt that when the Catholic Church goes out to buy insurance that the insurance companies won't price in the cost of providing this "free" insurance? What a load of baloney!
    You see, each time the government makes demands on insurers, premiums have to go up. Want the insurers to be required to provide more mental health care? Okay, done. Your premiums have now gone up. Want your adult children to be on your policy (more likely if they are sickly, of course)? Okay, done. Your premiums have now gone up. Free birth control, higher premiums. More mandates, higher premiums. Want mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions? Okay, your premiums have just skyrocketed to Pluto and the quality of your insurance has gone to hell.
    Obamacare mandates health coverage. But employers who don't provide it will pay a small fine. Because of government interference, it will be much cheaper to pay the fine than to provide the ever-more-expensive insurance. Eventually everyone is going to be forced into a government "exchange," which is exactly what the socialists want. And the cost or tax on average Americans is going to get higher and higher even as our insurance coverage gets crappier and crappier.
    I happen to believe we need a system that will provide bare-bones health services to every American at no charge. To some degree this is already happening in an inefficient manner. But we ought to be able, as a society, to care for those most in need without tampering with the traditional relationship between employers and their employees, and insurers and their insured. We need room in our health care system for luxury plans, bare-bones plans, partial self-insurance plans and plans that don't cover birth control (or penicillin, or doctors whose names begin with a "Y," or anything else I'd like to exclude).
    What's at stake here is whether we will continue to live as a free and independent people, able to choose how we live our lives, or whether we will be herded along by the Democrats as socialist sheeple.

Birth control? Yes. Forcing Catholics to buy it? NO!

    Although I am opposed to making the Catholic Church buy contraceptives -- including those which in their minds may induce abortion -- I support birth control.
    As I mentioned in my previous post, most Catholics don't agree with their church's position. Some say as many as 98 percent of Catholic women have used artificial birth control at some point, and a majority disagree with the official church position on birth control (I suspect the 98 percent figure is high).
    The fact that most members don't agree with the church's leadership is frequently cited by those who support requiring Catholic institutions to provide free contraceptives to their employees. What a dangerous precedent!
    Is the government now going to step in every time it feels a church's leadership is out of step with its members? If so, we may soon see female priests installed while escorted by federal marshals who threaten to kill anyone who tries to uphold church law. Apparently a majority of Seventh-Day Adventists don't adhere absolutely to that faith's call for vegetarianism. Shall we now require Seventh-Day institutions to serve pork chops with the threat of jail or death to those who refuse to comply.
    It simply isn't the proper role of government to pick and choose which religious liberties to trample based on the government's determination of how strongly the rank-and-file membership agrees with a policy.
    As I said before, in addition to eroding religious liberty, I think just giving out birth control pills for free is poor economic policy. It ignores the fact that many women, through forgetfulness don't finish their cycles, and would quit buying them if using their own money. And it will encourage doctors to prescribe to most expensive brands of birth control because, after all, it's free. Far better to at least have a co-pay, with a higher co-pay for the more expensive brands.
    As a matter of policy, if the government wants insurance to provide something for free, it ought to be paid for by the government, not by forcing insurance companies or churches to pay for it. If the government wants everyone to have free contraceptives, then enact a dedicated tax and use the proceeds to buy everyone free birth control -- and count me as a supporter.
    That's far more acceptable than pointing a gun at the Catholics and ordering them under threat of jail and death if they resist, to violate the tenants of their faith.