Not so random thoughts on health care

The following is the letter I sent today to my two senators -- Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad.

Dear Senator:

I wanted to express my fear about government-sponsored health care being an option for people who already receive health care as a component of their benefits package at work.

My fear stems from something that happened last year to my dad.

My father is 89 years old and retired from Continental Oil Company (Conoco) in 1985. For 23 years he had excellent prescription drug coverage as part of his retirement benefits. However, Conoco now has discontinued their private drug coverage and dad had to enroll in Medicare Part D through membership in AARP. Like a lot of seniors, dad suffers from Alzheimer’s so requires expensive medication, including Arricept and Namenda. These medicines appear to have arrested the progression of Alzheimers; however, under his Part D coverage, dad’s cost for prescription drugs increased astronomically as most of this year he has spent in the “Gap.”

Dad is a World War II veteran of the Pacific Theater, who worked hard his entire life. I’m deeply hurt that Conoco would dishonor their retirees by dropping their prescription drug coverage and go with the less expensive government-funded option.

I wonder how many companies would attempt the same thing – reduce their financial obligations for private health insurance -- if there was government-sponsored health care. That’s my fear, and that’s why I abhor the thought of health care reform meddling into private insurance.

I’m all for health care reform…but let’s focus on the real cause…outrageously high medical care costs. If tort reform is needed to reduce the costs created by malpractice insurance premiums and defensive medicine, then I urge you to focus on that.

And he volunteered for this?

Yesterday, September 5, five of us went golfing. Well, four actually golfed and Colton drove the golf cart for his dad. I had the privilege of being chauffeured around in a golf cart by grand-nephew Blake, who is in the eighth grade at Plentywood, MT, and doesn't have his driver's license yet.

Blake actually volunteered to drive our cart so I thought it was incumbent upon me to share my years of golf cart wisdom with him.

Now Blake was a little nervous behind the wheel as he didn't want to give his aged uncle a whiplash with some lightning fast acceleration. In fact, Blake was going too plumb slow.

In my family, where everyone has a Type A personality, we know there truly is only one speed on a golf cart and that's FULL speed. So after a couple of holes of very slow and cautious golf cart maneuvering, I could see this was a teachable moment.

There are probably as many ways to let your chauffeur know that he's going too slow as there are grains of sand on a beach, so I decided to take the direct approach. I simply squashed his naked foot and sandal onto the accelerator with my tennis-shoed foot. The golf cart leaped into action before Blake even knew what hit him. After that experience, Blake made sure the golf car was running at full tilt.

However, Blake didn't know 'rule number one' of driving a golf cart with Uncle Steve. So there was another teachable moment. Rule number one is always park Uncle Steve in the shade of a tree. Even if this means that Blake has to find a club and scamper across the fairway to hit his next ball and then scamper back to the golf cart.

There were a couple of other rules that Blake never caught onto...no matter how many times I expressed them. For instance, if he left the golf cart to go hit a ball, I would take it upon myself to move over into the drivers seat. However, when I hit my ball, Blake always moseyed back over to drive the cart again. This was a direct violation of one of my rules.

Still, it was a fun afternoon, and I think Blake really learned some things about driving a cart..."Don't volunteer to drive Uncle Steve's golf cart."

I'm posting a picture of Blake after he learned about golf cart etiquette, literally, at my feet.