Nov 22nd- arrive in Jax @ 11pm.

Nov 26th- Thanksgiving

Nov 27th- shopping, go to Gainesville?

Nov 28th- FSU game, visit with awesome Gainesville people

Dec 2nd- Fly to NYC, visit with awesome NYC people

Dec 8th- go to Boston, visit with awesome Boston people

Dec 12- Fly back to Jax, sister has Christmas party

Dec 13- Jags game

Dec 17- Jags game

Dec 25- Christmas stuff with family

Dec 31- 5k run in Jax

Jan 3rd- back to Sydney

Lots of dates with no plans so we can be spontaneous.

Looking forward to seeing as many people as I can!

This instantly popped in my head:

Let me start with the necessity of health care reform.  There are tens of millions of people in the US without health insurance.  That alone is enough to make one sick.  If you just thought to yourself, “Fuck those people!  I have my insurance I like it and I don’t care about them!” then you can probably just stop reading now.  You aren’t going to like anything I have to say.  It is also terrible to see people losing health insurance when losing employment, and to see insurance companies search for reasons to deny a sick person coverage for something they need.  Getting health insurance from an employer is great when it works, but too many Americans rely on their employer for it and if they lose their job, they lose their health insurance and can’t afford to buy insurance (because they lost their job, duh).  To me these things warrant reform.  Plus, premiums are becoming more expensive for those people that can afford health insurance.

Next point.  Politics.  This debate is highly divided down the red and blue line, which is sad.  It’s health.  We should want to take care of our fellow citizens.  I myself am a bluer person as most of you know, but I’ll try my best to look at this from up in the sky.  The president wants a public option in the bill.  More option, more competition, big insurance companies’ costs go down so they keep some customers (and most customers would stay with their current company).  Good, right?  Apparently not.  None of the Republicans in the Senate would vote for a bill that contains a public option.  They keep saying they are for health care reform, but they just want to go a different way to get there.  I’m not sure what that entails, but it smells like bullshit to me.  Some of the Democrats in the Senate won’t vote for a bill with a public option either.  This is not about what the constituents want, it’s about money and politics.  These Republicans and Democrats are littered with money from health insurance companies and drug companies.  Support the bill with the public option and that money vanishes.  Boy, it must be a psychological battle for these Senators.  Hmm, polls show most Americans want health care reform, so do I choose constituent support for my next election or do I choose the money?  I know, I’ll talk to my friends at FreedomWorks and we will attempt to scare the shit out of everyone by lying about what will happen if this bill is approved.

Seriously, people.  Read this article, specifically the part about damaging misperceptions (a nice way of putting it).  There is a link in the article to a pdf file of the poll if you want to read that as well.  Death panels? I can’t believe someone would make up something like that.  It pisses me off even more because I work in aged care with families who have relatives very close to death.   This misinformation has really undercut the importance of end of life planning.  The rest of the things are also not true and the fact that people believed them in the first place was initially funny.  Now that they’ve been debunked though, we have willful ignorance.  There’s nothing better than outshouting your opponent, then plugging your ears and making weird noises to drown out the truth, right?  Just throw out the word Socialist as much as possible and doctor pictures of the president to look like Hitler.  Yeah!  I am past the point of believing that these shouting people at the townhalls even care about health care reform.  After all, most of them wouldn’t make enough money to see their taxes go up to help pay for the reform and they would probably see their health insurance costs go down.  So why be so vehemently against it to the point of threatening violence?  I feel like it has a lot to do with the fact that our president is black.  I can hear the sighs and the “oh, come on’s” now, but I’m being serious.  I’m watching old, white people crying,  standing in front of microphones, and saying they want their country back.  What?  What the hell does that even mean?  Back from what?  Someone please give me a decent explanation, because as of right now I’m calling out those people as racists.

So, I’m going to wrap this up now.  Please share your thoughts with me on the whole thing.  To my Republican or Democrat friends who make less than $200,000 and are against the public option, can I ask why?  Is it because you don’t care whether everyone in the country has insurance?  Is it because you feel like out of some small government principle you have to be against it?  And if so, why support such big corporations who are thinking only of profits, not you and yours?  Is it because so and so has friends in Canada, and they said that this terrible thing happened?  Please let me know, because it doesn’t make sense to me that so many people would be opposed to this.  Maybe the media is making it seem like more people than it actually is.

Since I’ve lived in Australia for two years, I’ve learned a lot about the health care system here, which is a public plan for everyone and a private option for those that wish to pay extra for it.  The system has it pros and cons like any system, but at least everyone is covered.  You can check out ozhealth, an outline of the system here.  There is a pdf on that page.

Happy reading y’all.

Peace!

-Ronnie

I don’t have too much to update you on.  I’ve just entered my 3rd and hopefully final year as a research student at University of Sydney.  My thesis is coming along but I still have loads of writing to do.  Not to worry, as I also have more time now that I’ve stopped tutoring Health Science classes.  I will miss the money, but not the time that it took up.

My other job as a research assistant in an environment design/person-centered care study is going well.  The job has taken me to parts of New South Wales I probably would not have traveled to otherwise.  The job is easy, takes little time, and pays well.

Married life is going very well.  Kristi and I just celebrated our one year anniversary and I feel that we’re closer than we’ve ever been.  Cue the cheesy music.  We’ve just started some outdoor renovations on the side of the house to remove a bunch of small rocks and build a raised garden bed.  If anyone wants some small white rocks, I’m the person you should talk to.  The job should be cheap except for the bricks and the hours of manual labor.  Anyone feel like helping us scoop a shitload of rocks into bags?

On the leisure front, I’m playing poker about 3 nights a week now.  It’s cheap to play and I find it a pretty relaxing escape from work-related things.  Kristi will play sometimes, but I wish she’d play more because I think she’s pretty good.  We’ve also been watching a lot of movies.  We just saw Public Enemies on Friday and are going to see District 9 tonight.  We rarely go out to the theatre because it’s $17 per ticket or something ridiculous.  I’d much rather pay $2 a movie for my Bigpond subscription (Australia’s Netflix), but there are some movies that should be seen on the big screen.  I still need to see HP 6.

And on that note, I should get back to work.  Those of you in the States that are reading this, we’ll see you during the holidays.  I’ll leave you with a picture of my beard.

-Ronnie