Alright, all you folks out there screaming “NO! NO! NO!” to the Obama administration’s healthcare plan, you’re entitled to your opinion. You don’t like his plan? Fine. Let’s hear yours.

Seriously. I’m listening.

Leave it as it is? That’s working for you, is it? How nice for you! Evidently, you’re just super-lucky and have never been very sick. Congratulations. Or maybe you and your family have amazing health insurance from some little company I’ve never heard of because I’ve worked for or had insurance with the four largest health insurance companies in the country, and let me tell ya, they didn’t work for me. I get to pay a lot of money for health insurance, and then when we get sick, they pay a little bit of the bill.

So those people who are very sick, those people who don’t have health insurance or those people who have crummy health insurance just have to suffer? Very nice. How Christian. How family-values. How Republican.

I’ll be very honest with you - Obama’s plan is not my ideal. It worries me, as does all change. Change is scary, but in this case, SOMETHING has to change. The status quo is not working, and when I hear people say, “Leave it alone. It’s fine,” I think, “Don’t be such a chicken. Let’s make a change. If it doesn’t work, we’ll change it again, but you’re a fool if you think America can’t improve.”

People say, “It’s going to cost too much.” Do you know how much the uninsured already cost us? Homeless people who walk into ER’s every other day? Uninsured people or underinsured people who never make payments?  Or consider the case of a friend of mine. As a hemophiliac, he contracted HIV/AIDS from a blood transfusion when that great Republican hero, Ronald Reagan, refused to act to protect the blood supply from the “gay disease.” (In his wisdom, Reagan chose the stick-my-fingers-in-my-ears-and-hum-loudly approach instead.) My friend was a teenager. His mother, like most mothers I know, could not bear to watch her son die, but his meds were astronomically expensive. Even if she’d been wealthy, she would’ve run out of money on them. So to keep her son alive, she took minimum-wage jobs and lived in poverty on purpose so she could qualify for Medicare. All you folks who think her son should’ve just been allowed to die, would you have done any differently? (Say “yes” and you’ll either be lying or admitting to being the worst parent ever, but feel free.) So we taxpayers paid for most of my friend’s medical bills, and you know what? As a Christian, not to mention his friend, that is okay with me.

Anyway, do you know how many BILLIONS of dollars the health insurance companies make every year? Why do we have to give these paper-pushing middlemen that money? Why couldn’t we just eliminate them and give the money directly to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, researchers and other people who actually DO something? The CEO of United Health Group made $1.6 billion dollars in 2006. That’s one CEO at one insurance company, and that’s disgusting.

The other big point the opposition brings up is somehow the Canadians’ fault. Evidently, Canadians have to wait in long lines for doctors and beg for treatment from their legislators. Of course, I have friends from Canada who have told me that is not true, but what do they know? So all the Republicans point to Canada and say, “Look how awful they have it up there!” Guess what? Canada’s not the only country in the world with universal healthcare. There are other models, better models. Sweden has government-funded health care, and it appears to be working very well. (Have you ever seen a Swedish person? They’re beautiful AND healthy!) Their system is universal, but very decentralized compared to Canada’s. Surely, if the Swedes can put together a universal healthcare system that works, we bright and industrious Americans can too!

The current American system is essentially Social Darwinism. I find it ironic that so many conservatives support it. They hate Darwin’s evolutionary theory; they hate it in school, but in healthcare, they’re all about “survival of the fittest.” If you don’t have the money, die. If you don’t have insurance, watch your kids die. Republicans will, however, fight to let you buy a semi-automatic to off yourself with if you don’t want to suffer a prolonged death. If you don’t have insurance and get pregnant, though, they still want you to have the baby. Good luck with that.

So we’re back where we started. Our healthcare system doesn’t work. It may have worked fifty years ago when people worked for one company all their lives, insurance was simpler, and medicine was more primitive. Nowadays, people change jobs all the time, insurance companies have come up with ingenious ways to make billions of dollars without really covering anything, and we have miraculous cures most patients can’t afford. President Obama wants to do SOMETHING.

You don’t like his plan? Fine. What’s YOUR idea?

Please. We’re all listening.

Governor Sarah Palin announced yesterday that she will resign as governor of Alaska at the end of this month.

Okay. Weird.

Her reasons are a little muddled, but here is what she said in her press conference:
1. “I am not wired to operate under the same old ‘politics as usual.’”
2. “I am taking my fight for what’s right – for Alaska – in a new direction.” (Anchorage Daily News, 7/3/09)

She spent a lot of time enumerating her many accomplishments as governor. She spent some time answering those who criticized her during her vice presidential nominations. She spent a little time talking about her family. So I’m confused.

She has accomplished so much as governor that she needs to quit now? If you’re trying to justify a decision to step down and convince your constituents that it is “what’s best for Alaska,” shouldn’t you play down what a good job you’ve done?

I’m inclined to think this is a stunt designed to gain more attention and maintain the “maverick” label she and McCain worked so hard to attain: however, this seems like a pretty risky gamble. She and McCain also tried to garner reputations as defenders of the Constitution and representatives of “real America” (Palin, 10/16/08). Well, the constitution of Alaska sets up the governor’s job as a four-year gig. The people of Alaska hired her for a four-year job. Does that mean she would be a “lame duck” for the next year and a half? Yes. Since she decided not to run for re-election in 2010, she would have the “lame duck” label. That is the way the Alaskan constitution is set up. Palin said she rejects the “fun some governors have as lame ducks… travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade” ((Anchorage Daily News, 7/3/09). Fine. Keep working to effect the change you wanted to achieve, Gov. Palin. Don’t travel. Don’t have “fun.” But don’t chuck your constitutional role out the window along with the faith of your constituents.

If I were an Alaskan who had voted for Sarah Palin, I’d be pretty ticked off now. Evidently, many Alaskan Republicans do feel this way. As I read through the many reactions to Palin’s announcement on the Anchorage Daily News site, I saw many people who felt betrayed by the woman of whom they had once been so proud. Not only did she take 3 months out of her job to run for vice president, now she can’t even be bothered to complete the term she was elected to? Taking office in December of 2006 and stepping down at the end of this month, she will have completed 32 months of her 48-month term. If you subtract the three months she spent campaigning with McCain, that’s 29 months working as governor of Alaska. In private enterprise, she could be sued for breach of contract. Is that what “mavericks” do?  Let down the people who elect them to serve?

Finally, I noticed a rather odd omission from her speech. I guess I expected her to say something about wanting to spend more time with her family. Not because she’s a woman, but because most politicians talk about their families when they announce a decision like this. Also because she was supposedly such a family-values candidate; however, she said nothing about leaving office to spend more time with her family or her children. Every time she mentioned her husband or her kids it was to use them as a supporting detail: “I choose, for my State and my family, more ‘freedom’ to progress,” “this decision comes after much consideration, and finally polling the most important people in my life - my children.” Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Sarah Palin prides herself on being different. Perhaps that means spending more time with family is not high on her priority list.

This announcement is just another move in a long line of unusual decisions by Sarah Palin. I understand her desire to do something other than “politics as usual,” (Anchorage Daily News, 7/3/09) but often politicians do the same thing as all their predecessors because it is the right thing to do. Like serving out the term for which you were elected as defined by the constitution of your state.