June 27, 2011 – Write From Karen

So apparently, the Obama administration is collecting “evidence” via mystery shoppers so they can blame doctors when ObamaCare fails. I’m also quite certain that the “survey” is being put together so that the Obama administration will have sob stories to produce during the 2012 elections.

Mark my words.

The “official” reason they are even doing this is because there is an increasing alarm over the shortage of primary care doctors. And there’s a shortage of primary care doctors because the doctors know that if they take patients on ObamaCare, they will lose money because ObamaCare reimburses only a fraction of the cost and being the government, their reimbursement will likely be slow coming.

Anyone who thinks it’s a doctor’s duty to help them for FREE needs to wake up from la-la land. The real world doesn’t work that way, no matter how much we WANT it to.

Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

The government is predicting that 30 million Americans will gain health coverage when the new law (just typing that leaves a sour taste in my mouth) goes into effect.

‘These newly insured Americans will need to seek out new primary care physicians, further exacerbating the already growing problem’ of a shortage of such physicians in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a description of the project prepared for the White House.

Here’s how the government deception, oops, program, works: The mystery shopper will call a doctor’s office and will ask to see if the doctor is accepting new patients and if so, how long will they have to wait in order to see the doctor. If the shopper is asked what sort of problems they’re having, the shopper is instructed to say they have a fever, are coughing up green phlegm with a little blood in it. In other calls, they will request an annual checkup or a sports’ physical.

I would imagine most doctors would be reluctant to see a patient already spewing blood and would refer them to an urgent care of the emergency room to begin with, but you know, that only makes sense and apparently this administration doesn’t understand common sense so, go figure.

The government is eager to know whether doctors give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Access to care has been a concern in Massachusetts, which provides coverage under a state program cited by many in Congress as a model for President Obama’s health care overhaul.

In a recent study, the Massachusetts Medical Society found that 53 percent of family physicians and 51 percent of internal medicine physicians were not accepting new patients. When new patients could get appointments, they faced long waits, averaging 36 days to see family doctors and 48 days for internists.

Just another reason not to vote for Romney since he made the template for ObamaCare.

I wonder what will happen if (when) the Obama administration discovers that fewer doctors are accepting government health insurance? Will they MAKE them accept them? They can’t MAKE a private citizen, in their private practice DO anything they don’t want to do. I’m sure some doctors will comply with the “suggestion to take more government-insured patients,” but I’m betting MORE doctors just opt to quit their practice altogether. Why stay in a high-stress industry where you don’t get paid enough to recoup your expenses? Why stay in business if it’s more stressful to try and make ends meet because you’re not being paid enough to make your business stay afloat and just throw in the towel and give up?

And where does that leave us regular Janes and Johns? Fewer doctors and long, long, LONG wait times. Which means more people will not get the help they need and more people will either get sick and/or die.

Sounds like a heck of a deal to me.

And people being people? Will take advantage of the “free” health care and will request a doctor for every little sniffle because after all, it’s FREE! There will be no incentive to stay healthy because going to the doctor (one who will eventually see you), is FREE! Yippee!

Never mind that that “free” healthcare is costing what few taxpayers are left what little pennies they have left.

*sigh* Look. Our health care system is out of control right now. I will not dispute that. It’s expensive and there are indeed people who desperately need health care but aren’t getting it that have fallen through the cracks. But ObamaCare, which is designed to basically screw the doctors and make everyone pay for everyone else, is simply not going to work. It defies every economic factor – business just doesn’t work the way Democrats WANT it to work. It just doesn’t.

So what’s the alternative? For those that claim the GOP haven’t offered any alternatives … I’m here to say they have. The Republicans have been presenting these options from the very beginning but because it didn’t suit the lame-stream media’s agenda of making people more dependent on the government, they didn’t widely report these alternatives.

We have to clean up this mess and replace ObamaCare with something that will be fair to ALL people and that will not scare doctors away.

The question is – who’s got the balls to actually DO it?

ADDED: By the way, here is an article explaining just what is wrong with ObamaCare. This is coming STRAIGHT from the horse’s mouth – a doctor. If you don’t read it, you’re part of the problem. Half of the battle is staying informed.

Home Movies

Hot Rollers Used to Be How I Rolled

June 27, 2011June 27, 2011 Karen

I used to spend two hours, every day, hot rolling my hair. That, of course, was back in the days BEFORE children because we all know that spending two hours on your hair AFTER children is simply not going to happen.

I totally bought into the big hair style. It was fun to roll it, fluff it out and then use a whole can of hair spray (okay, not whole, but half) on my hair to make it stay. It was doubly frustrating for me because my hair would look AWESOME for about thirty minutes, and then it would start to droop, fall and soon I would just look like I crawled out of bed and was too lazy to comb my hair.

But I’ve reformed. I’ve evolved from those big-hair days and now have I virtually no hair.

I’m nothing if not extreme.

Okay fine, I have hair, but it’s the shortest it’s been … ever. Some days I LOVE it. Some days I HATE it. But I’m learning to live with it, I think. It’s certainly a lot easier to take care of and it literally takes me two minutes to blow dry it in the morning.

Now THAT I can live with.

I just bought some hair wax the other day, but I haven’t played around with it yet. I’m not real sure what to do with it. I mean, I KNOW it goes into my hair, duh, but … then what? Do I scrunch it? Do I toss it? Do I spike it? I suppose I can do whatever I want with it, that’s what this wax product claims anyway.

I bought the cheap stuff. A lot of the wax were $15.00 and over. *blink* I was about to toss the whole wax idea when I stumbled across a can for $5 bucks. Knowing that you often get what you pay for, my expectations are suitably low at this point. We’ll see how it performs. But I would sort of like to make my hair look like Annette Bening’s, only with bangs, if possible.

I went and got my hair colored a few days ago. I wanted to wash the remaining red out of my hair. Red is okay, but I really want to go back to my natural color, which is more of a chocolate brown. (Okay, so it’s more of a mousy brown, but saying it’s a chocolate brown sounds way more sexy). When the gal rinsed me out and we sat in front of her mirror, I could tell, right away, I was going to HATE it. I could tell, even when wet, it was that clown-orange color – AGAIN. AARGH! My stylist could see I was not thrilled and suggested we put in an ash blonde color to tone it down. At that point? I was willing to try anything because I really don’t want carrot-colored hair.

It doesn’t go with my eyes, you see.

So, my poor stylist spent another 30 minutes on me putting in an ash color. But when she rinsed it out, I’m happy to say it did indeed take the remaining red out and it’s now that sexy chocolate brown.

I should rename this blog “The Hair Saga.”

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I’ve been busy digitizing our old home movies and capturing snippets to share with you all. Kevin and I were visiting my folks in this snippet and we were getting ready to do some sight seeing in Kansas City. Everyone was ready to go, but everyone was waiting for me to finish my damn hair. I’m not exaggerating when I said it took me two hours to get ready. After shower and makeup, I would hot roll my hair, and then have to sit around for about 30 minutes to wait for it to cool down. Then I would take out the curlers, fluff it, pick it, make it as big as I possibly could because I knew it would lose a lot of it’s body before the end of the day and then spray the ever-loving heck out of it.

Even though Kevin loved the big hair, I think he prefers not having to wait around all day for me to make that happen.

I also used to be pretty anal about not going into public without makeup on. I wanted Kevin to always think I was attractive and to be proud of me. (Which he will tell me, after reading this, that he always thinks I’m attractive, no matter what I look like – but come on, there’s sweet and then there’s REALITY). I was also feeling pressure to always look my best because Kevin’s mom is like that – the woman NEVER looks bad. I think in the 23 years I’ve known her, I’ve seen her without makeup twice and that was because she had eye surgery and wasn’t allowed to wear any. My MIL is also the sort of person who goes out into public wearing sequins, silver shoes and bright pinks and somehow, it looks RIGHT on her. So I was sort of trying to meet Kevin’s expectations, I think. Even though he would tell you that it really didn’t matter to him what I look like (then or now), I know that deep down he sort of compared me to his momma and I didn’t want to disappoint him.

Then the boys came along and *PFFT* – that perfect hair and makeup mentality sort of went out of the window because I didn’t have the energy to care. I routinely dropped the boys off at school in my PJ’s and oily, makeup-free face and didn’t give a hoot. I figured, you no like? You no look.

Now that the boys are teenagers, I’ve learned to compromise. I still make an effort to look nice every day, but I no longer freak out if I have to run to the store on “makeup free” days. (Which, granted, don’t happen that often, but they do happen).

And before any of you go all feminist on me and say, “HEY! Don’t feel like you have to dress up for ANY MAN,” let me just say, I try and look nice FOR ME, too. It makes me feel good about myself and if I feel good about myself, then I’m more confident and if I’m more confident, then I’m mentally equipped to handle whatever life throws at me.

I also want to look nice for Kevin out of respect for him. Just put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. I’d have a real problem with Kevin if he had a huge beer gut (a little pooch is cute, I think), never shaved, rarely showered and never bothered to put on wrinkle-free clothes whenever we got together with family. I can at least return the favor.

Just because you have a marriage license doesn’t mean you have a license to stop caring about your appearance.

But there’s a happy medium in there somewhere – it just takes a while to find it sometimes.

Politics

America is Not Perfect, But She’s Pretty Damn Awesome

June 27, 2011June 27, 2011 Karen

I don’t care what side of the fence you stand on, the concept behind this video, the sheer mindless drones that this betrays, has GOT to scare you, at least a little bit.

Granted, this is pretty dramatic. But maybe things like this will be what it takes to WAKE PEOPLE UP – our government would love to control us like this and I don’t know about you guys? But I have NO desire to become a puppet on a string, thank you very much.

I thought these videos were interesting: What would Reagan do.

It’s pretty refreshing to see a president who isn’t afraid to stand up and take the hits for our country, isn’t it. It’s time to elect someone who will defend our country, reinforce our values and STOP apologizing for our country.

(Just in case I lost you, I’m talking about Obama here).

We need to stop kowtowing to political correctness, and to foreign (and domestic!) dictators.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!