where in the world is all the time?

time to save the world,
where in the world is all the time
so many things I still don't know
so many times I've changed my mind

guess I was born to make mistakes
but I ain't scared to take the weight
so when I stumble off the path
I know my heart will guide me back

-Erykah Badu, Didn't Cha Know

Medicaid and Missiles

Congress is currently responding to the problems put forth with The Bush Administration’s 2009 budget (also see the Senate’s “real explanation of the 2009 budget”).

The budget (released Jan 2008) calls for a 30% increase in defense spending (but interestingly, no spending at all on Afghanistan or Iraq after 2010, and only partial funding until then) along with huge cuts in virtually every social service sector (education, clean water, transportation, even renewable energy sources!), with healthcare, specifically programs like Medicaid and Medicare, bearing the brunt of the burden.

Brilliant. Just when the country is in an economic slump – when people actually NEED social services – cut them. Because Medicaid has traditionally been funded by federal funds matched against States funds, these cuts shift much of the cost of healthcare to the State governments, which are even more short on cash. The Center for Budget Policy and Priorities gives the breakdown on how all federal funding of state programs was cut.

The proposed tax cuts would cut Medicaid spending by 17% over the course of 5 years, and would stop increasing funds to Medicare, even as the baby boomers have expanded the number of people qualifying for the program. The cuts reduce payments for school clinics, nursing homes, and teaching hospitals, virtually removing the minimal health safety net we have in place. Much of the Medicaid cuts would be to teaching hospitals, where the vast majority of people eligible for Medicaid receive care. The Greater New York Hospital Association calls it “the worst attack on hospitals, nursing homes, and home health services that New York’s health care community has ever seen from a United States president”.

Since 1965, Medicaid payments have been used to subsidize resident and intern training at teaching hospitals, which has always been justified as these are the clinicians providing much of the care for Medicaid recipients. Quoted by the NYT, Dennis G. Smith (the director of the federal Center for Medicaid and State Operations) says, “We believe that paying for graduate medical education is outside the scope of Medicaid’s role, which is to provide medical care to low-income people,”. It worries me that Mr. Smith (and our current Administration) cannot make the connection between providing medical care to low income people and paying the people who provide this care!

Congress has been fighting the whole way – and did manage to get the Children’s Health Insurance Act (SCHIP) reauthorized by the White House, albeit with some restrictions on income levels. Keep it up – I forget where I read this, but someone said that America prides itself on its government, not religion or culture or even our economic prowess, above all other qualities of a nation; that American politics is what defines us for the world.

Make us proud, Congress, make us proud.

****

See also: Senatory Clinton’s Statement about the budget and its effects on New York:
http://www.senate.gov/~clinton/news/statements/details.cfm?id=291885&&

"human being" as a verb ?

One of my dearest friends and I have a theory about the friends in one's life and the friends we miss (or don't) when they aren't around. This has come up in more than a few conversations in the past months as all us 20-somethings figure out with whom we connect and then how much of our limited time and energy we want to invest in creating a friendship/relationship with a particular person.

The theory has two parts, which go like this:

part 1: at any given time in one's life where one is somewhat stable (ie staying in a single place for at least a year) there are certain types of friends that one needs in order to be happy.

The specific types of friends that one needs are different for each person, but they are generally like "the friend I run with" "the friend I see bad chick flicks with" "the friend I call in a crisis" "the friend I go out dancing with" "the friend I talk about politics with" etc. And people tend to fill these roles, more or less, wherever they are, with the people around them. Not that each friend necessarily corresponds to only one role - in my experience friends tend to play several roles at once and often have changed the roles they play over the course of our friendships.

And this does not mean that these friendships are insignificant, on the contrary, these are the basis of most friendships -common interests and shared life experiences- and as each vital role is filled by a different person, that person alters all future expectations and standards for that role and by doing so changes the way in which one processes interactions and events from that point on. That's the stuff of personal growth.

part 2: Some of these friends only stay in our lives for a few weeks, a semester, or a year, some for many many more than that, and then there are the special few who although they also start as a specific role (or roles), through shared experiences and unique interactions, they alter their role into one that differs from anyone who occupied that space in our lives before them until they are the only ones capable of filling it. And this is when a relationship becomes one that goes beyond mutual experience and growth to a connection of souls.

****
"Ubuntu: a noun to speak about the essence of being human; umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person through (other) persons); you can't be human in isolation"
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"Human being is much more a verb than a noun"
-Rachel Naomi Remen (in Kitchen Table Wisdom)

Potential Plot Twist

I went out to dinner with a friend the other night and we talked about how she's become disillusioned with dating because she feels like when she meets someone, she already knows the steps they're going to go through, can see it all pan out, and end (much to her disappointment), because so far they've all ended. She explained it as "like watching a movie you've already seen a few times before - after a certain number of times, it's like, 'what's the point?'"

That's life. I told her. Plus all the parts you can't predict or don't expect. The interactions that change the course of your life forever - or for the evening - or at least make you consider a different way. And the reactions that surprise you, shock you, disappoint you even.

I guess I just feel the opposite - I see every interaction as a potential plot twist.

****
"Man is a romantic at heart and will always put aside dull, peddling reason for the excitement of an enigma...mystery, not logic, is what gives us hope and keeps us believing in a force greater than our own significance" - Bryce Courtnay in The Power of One (p.34)