The Sound of Silence

Work life has a way of eating at the soul of your other more important existence. 12 hour days can make me want nothing more than to sink into my couch and watch a baseball game on TV, especially as I've spent a good part of my day writing for my day job, not to mention bouncing from meeting to phone calls to production process massages. No, not the good kind of massages.

But I've made a pledge to reform the way I spend my extra-curricular hours.

Reform, ah yes, a segue. Reform, from the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary: to put or change into an improved form or condition; to amend or improve by change of form or removal of faults or abuses. My abuses of late have been too little exercise for a guy who was in marathon shape at the beginning of the summer and too much fast food (and maybe an alcoholic drink or two too many here and there). I'm still in pretty decent shape, so it won't take me long to get - ahem - back in the stride of things.

There's nothing like good old exercise to ward off stress. Less stress means a happier, healthier person. I like happy, and in this economy and growing national deficit, I figure living a healthy life is the best choice to enable me to remain in working shape well into my 70s so I can continue eating, another of life's pleasures I've grown accustomed to.

And, yes, I think you know in what direction I'm headed. This meandering essay brings us to the thème du jour ... health care.

Let me predicate this by stating that I'm NOT 100% sold on ObamaCare, as there are some very, very big loose ends. I actually found myself chuckling during the President's speech to the joint sessions of Congress two weeks ago when he admitted as much.

Now, let the record also show that I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but the Republicans consistently speak of this as a health care revolution. Maybe they think it might as well be one, as reform is a bad word to the conservative right. But that's not what reform means. Still, I constantly hear and read others' distortion of the truth, (at best), when they say Americans don't favor health care reform. They in fact do, in some way, shape or form. The figures being cited in the media, blogs, the supermarket check out line like to confuse the latest poll numbers of American support/disapproval of the current Democratic plan with actual support of doing the right thing to make health insurance more affordable, regulate the insurance companies from dropping coverage with no reason, reform malpractice insurance, etc.

Americans, at least the ones I know, very much favor health care REFORM but want to make sure Congress gets it right (or as close as possible by these morons) because such a law will be PERMANENT. There won't be any rolling back. Ask any one if we need to find a solution to health costs that are spiraling out of control and you'll hear a hearty "Amen." I have health care and, hell no, I don't want to lose it ... but do I think it can be better? Hell yes. I welcome constructive change to a $45 co-pay on every doctor's visit (and I have a PPO plan that more and more is looking and acting like an HMO). If you don't think that such high costs incurred just in walking in the office door don't keep sick (and poor) people away, I have a boat load of tea in Boston Harbor to sell ya.

Reform is very much needed, so for Rep. Boehner and his Republican cronies to say Americans don't want reform shows how out of touch the party remains with the American people, or at least how manipulative they can be. I'm the first to admit I don't have the answers, but I do know that a comprehensive bill that makes sense is mandatory... I'm not sure sure that's ObamaCare. In fact I'm quite skeptical of a plan that promises to not raise taxes yet shares no specifics how it would work aside from health care rationing, which is even worse than what we have now. But I do know that the Republicans haven't brought to the table one viable solution. How can they when they don't favor reform in the first place?

And here we are stuck in a world of white noise. It might as well be silence, which is not always golden. It wouldn't be so bad if such condition didn't indicate to me that I might be losing my hearing. That would require another trip to the doctor. Here's hoping I can pay for it.