Amidst much chagrin, chest-thumping, and gnashing of teeth, this post highlights the problems of expanding public healthcare.  Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.  After all, the truth is the truth is the truth, lied Zano.  Government funded healthcare is complicated to the point of absurdity.  In fact, Managed Care has created whole swaths of self-important middle men and middle agencies that both spend and make oobs and gobs and loads of tax payer’s money while desperately trying to justify their own existence.  This is not uncommon in super capitalism land, which is another reason why this house of cards called the U.S. economy has less sustainability than a freshly baked Krispy Kreme in Crank Manor.

Today’s post focuses on behavioral healthcare, because when I’m not bitch-slapping nuns during wild crack binges, I’m out here in the field (fighting for my meals).  OK, that’s an exaggeration, I rarely use crack.  The fact is, some of these “big brother” agencies were created by Hillarycare.  They function as liaisons between the state and the actual behavioral health providers on the ground.  So, the state comes up with dumb, unrealistic—I really don’t have a clue about healthcare—mandates, and these middle agencies complicate the matter, add forms, shake, stir, and pass-on the love to those folks supposedly treating Uncle Louie for his tendency to wear aluminum foil on his head to block out the government transmitted microwaves (GTMs).

Many of these agencies are even for profit, which translates thusly: they get all the state money to distribute to the behavioral healthcare networks that they oversee, and, if they don’t spend it on the schizophrenic crack addicts in our streets, they get to keep it! It’s unconscionable…like appointing Dick Cheney Prison Reform Czar. 

These swaths of middle men siphon off tons of money from those most in need—the money allocated to actually treat people.  They create monitors to watch the mental health and the substance abuse providers on the ground, which, in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but in this peer-reviewed society gone wild (PRSGW), the pendulum has not only swung too far, but it has lodged itself into the side of Manute Bol’s head.

When you translate 500 “best practices” into 500 monitors, people in the trenches, the ones actually providing services can no longer function.  We stop having time to actually treat people and embark on a daily juggling act that even Squidward would find challenging. Let’s try this example: say some bean-counting, pencil-pusher decided that it’s best practice to see all 235 people on your caseload each week.  So some case manager somewhere will then run around to all 235 people and say, “Please sign this form to show that I was here.”  They will then—whether the person is drooling, tripping, or has a gun to their head—jump back into the agency van and speed away toward client 167.  But, hey, it will look great on that report for that bean counter.   My agency is not doing this, by the way (yet), but you get the idea.

This is happening all over the country.  The field is collapsing.  Put your stock in aluminum foil, folks, because the Uncle Louies of the world are going to need it.  The best example happened as my agency just announced the next round of massive budget cuts.  On the same day my agency raised our health insurance (a lot), slashed our PTO, and discussed lay offs, I heard a radio commercial during my drive home: Have you considered doing next to nothing while mental health care providers are being laid off in droves?  Join our middle men, bean-counting band of bad-karma case-manager cops.  Why actually do shit for a living, when you can move to a cushy, nearly pointless position in the heart of an entire colony of middle-management, like-minded Stepford Czars.

Now, I’m not saying all these folks are baby killers.  I have friends in several of these agencies, so I don’t say this lightly.  There are some impressive individual efforts, but overall this is a failed experiment (like American capitalism today).  But, overall, wrong career choices do have negative karmic consequences (just ask the Ghetto Shaman).

So the money these middle men receive for sanctioning mental health providers goes to hiring more of “them.”  So over time we end up with more monitors, monitoring less people that actually do stuff.

Someone at work joked recently “Therapy? We don’t have time for therapy.”

But you can bet we met all of our monitors for that month.  Rah!  If we can avoid treating anyone, we’ll do just fine.  These people must sleep at night by saying things like, we’re holding them accountable.  Of course no one’s holding them accountable. Hey, let’s have another layer of bureaucrats oversee them!  Yeah, that’s it, and eventually our healthcare system will resemble one of those Escher paintings from hell.  Oh, that’s right, it already does.  Fact: these folks shouldn’t be sleeping at night (not without Jacko levels of downers).   They are diverting money from places where it is sorely needed (aka, my checking account).

Our current healthcare reform debate is embarrassing.  To have important debates overrun with bullshit is depressing. This is important stuff, peeps; I’m talking to you Foxeteers. Just the facts, thanks, and leave the middle school rhetoric out of it.  The second healthcare wrinkle is legalese. Someone sues anyone anywhere in the U.S. and reams of paperwork are created in every nook-and-cranny of our system to assure this never happens again.  Oh, it won’t, because I don’t have time to see anyone on my caseload, let alone sleep with them. Lawyers, as usual, are at the heart of the problem.  This is where Tort reform is a must.  If a driver for my agency decides to have consensual nooky with a client in the back of the agency van (we call it the Mystery Machine, by the way, because of the mysterious things we find in it), of course, that staff person should be fired. The victim should not, however, be able to close the agency by successfully suing for millions of dollars in “damages.” Although, it is kind of fun watching a dissociative person drive a Dodge Viper through a county fair.

So each lawsuit designed to “help protect” the consumer, actually puts an increasingly debilitating strain on the entire system.  As a therapist, if I have to fill out one more form for the lawyers or the Stepford Czars, I’m gonna start mailing my clients a form that says, “Tell me about your mother…” with an enclosed bill.  Speaking of which, this IS a bill.  Subscribe to the Daily Discord, now, or it’s your turn to clean out the Mystery Machine.

I guess I’m one of the more basal forms of life, for I had to read your integral whatever-the-fuck-it-was three times to understand it.  You are always looking for the psychological reasoning behind all that happens here on this whirling pile of dirt and water dat we call oit (well, you call it Earth, where I come from it’s oit). You subscribe  to the Ken Wilber school of thought regarding eternal happenings. I, on the other hand, subscribe to the Keith Richards school of reasoning. “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED.”

As you get older, which I really hope happens in your case, you will start to see that there just aren’t enough enlightened psychological reasons (EPRs) why some shit happens. It’s very Zen, but sometimes shit just happens. Wow, that’s some deep shit. 

Every day I am bombarded with severely mentally restricted people doing the most amazing things, while right next to them some brainiac is doing the stupidest frigging thing imaginable (like writing for the Discord). In both cases, the Richards principle holds true. The idiot who has a moment of clarity will benefit by it and possibly repeat it another day, and the brainiac will see his mistake and will hopefully reverse the flow of shit in time, never to repeat that mistake again. There are exceptions of course. Karl Rove comes to mind and so does Barack O’Bama. They can both be looking right at, but can’t seem to see, the tidal wave of fecal matter coming straight toward them (a political Poonami, if you will). They can miss the perfect shit storm, every time.  Ultra-liberals will pile money, in the form of a dam, hoping to stop the flow. They will soon realize they’ve exhausted the supply and get very brown indeed. Ultra-conservatives will create an ad campaign for “Natural Fertilizer”, and charge people to come and take some, “While supplies last!” fucking everyone in the process.  Doing a heck of job, Browny.

When the Saudis and that Al Qaeda guy got together in NYC and leveled those two mob constructed wonders of modern design (it was a wonder they stood up for as long as they did), we got exactly what we needed. Worf and Darth Vader all rolled up into one balding, overweight Vice President. There was no repeat for eight years. We all got what we needed at that point in time. Did it cost us freedoms? You betcha.  Should they have stopped before going into Iraq?  Si. But we are all alive. We got what we needed, not what we wanted. Now, let’s just assume that the major threat is over, which it most certainly is not. Is it time to move on and re-boot?  Absolutely.  We all need to get back to the things that made this country great (like half-priced naked body shots). We need to step back from the ‘protection at all cost’ mindset, but not TOO far back. OBama represents that one step beyond. He wants to move us so far from the Constitution that it would take help from the Hubble telescope just to read Hancock’s signature.

But, it is what we need now. A total re-boot. I just hope we can stop the pendulum before it goes too far in the other direction. That is where media comes in. The Media MUST be the festering boil on ALL Presidents’ asses. It is the only REAL system of checks and balances we peons can be sure of. When they stop doing their job, we are all in deep do-da. The only irritation OBama’s ass has is FOX News. The rest of the media doesn’t have time to irritate it, because they’re too busy kissing it. Until the media wakes up and starts to do their job, FOX will HAVE to do.

I can only hope that your wife is correct, and the spiral will never swing as low as the last time (she might have a point). Oh yeah, and Ron Paul is a jackass. You can not just walk away from the rest of the world; it doesn’t work that way. We countries need each other for commerce, as well as for the larger good guys to keep the bully kids away from our smaller friends. We need to interact for the benefit of all. And occasionally beat up Luxembourg for its lunch money.  You start walking away from decades old commitments, and the backlash will be very painful, like, Tom Delay’s dancing painful.

As far as higher and lower perspectives, we need both to survive, and we just saw why. Higher and lower perspectives exist on this earth, and always will. We will always need our very own “lower perspectives” to combat theirs. It’s just the way of things.

Oh, and Jimmy Carter is not anywhere near a higher perspective. He has been wrong all his life, and continues to this day his massive misuse of brain cells. Just look at his latest statement that is actually being repeated by many in the Liberal media. ALL PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH O’BAMA ARE RACIST?   Please, just go and trip in a peanut field somewhere.

I ♥ dead dinosaurs

The Crank

How many people are aware that September 17th, was National Constitution day? My guess is “seven”.  Two-hundred twenty-two years ago on Sept 17, 1787, thirty-nine men signed the U.S. Constitution, one of them reportedly sober (the sober one was not John, “I’m going to sign this sucker so big!” Hancock).   This document built the foundation of the greatest nation in our world’s history (besides China).  Not a democracy, but a representative republic like none other before, where individuals through their chosen representatives govern themselves.

The concept and the framework of the Constitution was nothing short of brilliant, limiting the federal government’s powers and insuring the states and individuals their freedoms and liberties to pursue happiness, property, and prostitutes, by using their own labors and God-given talents, to reach what others in their homeland only dreamed about, aka, a cute red-head with big floppy breasts.

The founders sacrificed their families, wealth, virginity, and in many cases their lives fighting for what they knew could be the greatest nation ever imagined. In the end, their efforts to create a truly free society came to fruition, and their dreams were realized (bouncy, bouncy).

It’s unfortunate so many have allowed the desecration of our founding documents and so many beautiful women.  Over the last hundred years, starting with the progressives (liberals) in the republican party, to the new progressives (liberals) in the democratic party, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, have become nothing more than outdated pieces of parchment that on rare occasion become a nuisance that libs occasionally trip over on their road to socialism (not to mention they make great scrap paper for Daily Discord rough drafts).

Schools today are merely a tool to indoctrinate our youth into socialism.  Teachers see the founding documents as obstacles in the pursuit of government control over our lives.  They neglect to introduce or teach the students about these documents.  Although every seventh grader knows exactly how to properly insert a penis into a studded, glow in the dark condom.  I miss school.

I ask my readers to take a little time to visit the National Archives on the web, or you can access the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and other Amendments to the constitution by breaking into some of those big, important looking buildings in downtown DC.

Did you notice the Eye of Mordor atop the Washington Monument in the left column of this very website? That’s not a metaphor. OK, maybe it is, but the fact remains we are losing the very structure that has sustained this country for over two hundred years.  The sounds you are hearing are our forefathers, as the Crank puts it, whirling feverishly in their mausoleums.  So why not do what the public schools will not; educate your children on the history and founding of this nation. If people today fail to understand what was sacrificed for freedom, they can never really understand what freedom is.  Now, if you will excuse me, I’m only renting this room by the hour.

Folks are finally taking notice of how the media has reduced the political debate to something akin to a cafeteria-style food fight.  Each side only lobs the meatballs of mutiny when the opposition party is on cafeteria duty.  Both patriotards and libertards (roughly 80% of the pop) are ready and willing to storm the Bastille, but for all the wrong reasons.  MSNBC tried to start a revolution to oppose Bush, and rightly so, and they got roughly forty-percent of the U.S. armed to the teeth with tiny condiment packets of petulance.  Then they tried to stop the food fight amidst the coronation of King Obama. Try as the libertard media might, those tater tot-toting Teabaggers came all the same (God bless them).  In fact, they are marching on Washington right now.  They are not exactly sure why they are marching, but the next ‘Fox Transmission’ should further terrorize them enough to dodge the tartar sauce of tyranny and counter with the two-fisted fish sticks of freedom!

Since Obama took office, the most anti-American, anti-government rhetoric has transitioned to the right.  You see, patriotards only love America when they’re fucking it up.  God forbid someone else should get a crack at it.  But as long as the Teabaggers allow their movement and message to be hijacked by the Hannity’s of the world, they are destined to be drenched by the pre-frozen rib-a-cues of repression.  Here’s a recent excerpt from Republican blogger, Andrew Sullivan, who landed a wad of hot mozzarella smack in the face of Teabaggers everywhere:

“Here’s a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.”

Of course, the last part is wrong.  Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the American people.  Many believe this dark road the patriotards and the Teabaggers have taken will ultimately back-fire on them like a cafeteria taco in an H1N1 victim.  But Sullivan is assuming that people are going to wise up, while the Flynn Effect and our educational institutions tank outright.  Sorry folks, but stupidity is likely to get more, not less, traction in the food fights to come.  This is why yelling something like Death Panels right before a vote will always have a chilling impact on legislation.  And, NO, Mr. Crank, Palin was not basing this statement on fact.  Patriotards like to yell shit and then try to connect the dots later, kind of like Iraq.  If there really are death panels in the UK, Palin didn’t know shit about them. Besides, they already exist here and now.  Life and death decisions are made every day here in the U.S., only with private insurance companies the decisions are based on cash and for Obama’s public option the decisions would be based on, er…cash. 

Countering Glenn Beck’s recent defamatory rant against Cass Sunstein, David Frum wallops the neococoon with the sloppy joes of justice.  This is a noble attempt to move the conservative dialogue toward some semblance of reality: 

“The ultimate happy ending of the story should not however close the page on this appalling episode of broadcast recklessness and political cowardice. We conservatives are submitting our movement to some of the most unscrupulous people in American life. This submission disgraces conservatism, discredits Republicans, and damages the country. It’s beyond time for conservatives who know better to join us at NewMajority in emancipating ourselves from leadership by the most stupid, the most cynical, and the most truthless.”

The patriotards are clearly the most responsible for breaking the country (only they haven’t figured this out).  Sorry, but the book The Collapse of America will have one chapter on Frank and Dodd, one chapter on Obama, and the other twenty-some-odd chapters will be entitled “W”.  Sure the libertards might have ruined us.  They are quite capable of doing so.  But, sadly, they never got the chance.

And make no mistake, the last showdown at the salad bar is coming.  The patriotards (forty-percent of the pop) are lining up on one side, under the guise of pro-life, pro-religion, pro-fundamentalism, and pro-free markets.  Meanwhile, the libertards (roughly forty-percent) stand for pro-choice, compassionate legislature, the green movement, eco-feminism, gay rights, and other socially liberal issues.   God, I hope the sneeze bar holds.

What both sides fail to understand is that neither faction owns the truth.  Both perspectives have valid points but both perspectives are mired in their own inherent ideology and stupidity, not to mention vanilla pudding.  And unfortunately both sides tend to champion the lowest common denominator.  Lately, there’s nothing more glaring than the Patriotard Menace.  They believe distortion after distortion until the truth ends up looking like Mr. Fabulous caught in a turbine. 

Healthcare debate update: I will now be paying $173 more per month for my family’s health insurance under this failing paradigm.  This happy news arrived after my last healthcare post.  I fear a public option too, but I don’t fear it nearly as much as those most in danger of personal economic collapse: those fightin’ forty-percent, the Italian dressing drizzled patriotards.

Michael Moore, Sarah Palin, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Rush “the salad bar” Limbaugh are all dangerously stupid individuals.  But our first amendment rights should prevail here.  They have the right to talk, but the size of their viewing audiences, particularly on the right, herald a rather gloomy forecast for our collective future. Stupidity resonates much further than it should.  Fear remains a key force in driving policy, and our media invariably never focuses on the real problems.  OMIGOD, Limbaugh reached the chicken salad! 

I hate to quote Pat Buchanan, because he’s been such a loon lately, but…

“We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others’ throats.”

And now for something completely different.  It’s time to implement a coup detater-tot on the libertards. A republican blogger, Jon Henke, appeared on the Rachel Maddow show last week.  They both agreed on a lot of his Republican criticism.  She glowed when he said, “the Republican Party has abandoned its intellectual roots.”  Say it aint so, Jon.  Henke admitted that much needs to change on his side of the aisle, but asked Rachel if she would start covering the mess on the left, aka, things like Acorn and the Spendulus package, which has more zeros after it than the S.S. Lexington.

At the very least, Rachel, try covering the libertard fringe with a hint of something once known as objectivity.  She was the most likely person on MSNBC to take this challenge, but she failed, miserably.  On a major cable news network, Maddow admitted she was not even willing to look at the other side of the debate.  It’s dead to her, like the week old ‘ham surprise’ hanging from the ceiling.  If I were Henke I would have called her out in those closing moments of the interview and battered her face with the perogies of partisanship.

I like Rachel Maddow, but Fox and The Crank are right on this point (happens once a year like clockwork).  If NBC is not going to be critical of Obama, EVER, under any circumstances, because the owners of NBC stand to make money on Cap and Trade, then they have officially sunk to the level of Fox News.  (Hint: this is not a good thing.)

To sum up, Mark Bowden from The Atlantic pointed out in his blog that no one is seeking the truth anymore:

“No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it [media entertainment news] for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all “news” is unapologetically propaganda.”

Hint: if Jon Stewart polls as the most trusted journalist, it’s time to resort to the Daily Discord.  Really subscribe NOW. And support our advertisers, er…as soon as we get some.

Much like the Frums, Sullivans, Wills, Bowdens, and Buckleys of the world, I too have flung my own controversial coleslaw to these ends.  In fact, I was one of the first to spit Jello from the cheeks of change.  Most rants in recent years involved the dismantling of conservatism outright.  I always wanted to fix it.  Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for his book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back.  His view will stand the test of time, and the Cranks of the world, who never identified the problem, can wallow in the burnt baked beans of human bondage.  So liberal media peeps, hit the showers.  As for the Wills, Buckleys, Sullivans, and the Frums of the world unite—shape of non-patriotardic.  And, for god’s sake, scrape that Thousand Island dressing off your nose.

P.S. You’re right about my last post, Crank.  At the time, I thought huffing all those cleaning products before my weekly blog was a good idea.  But, to win yet another round, I only reread my post three times before I understood it.  So there…