Whose Healthcare is it anyway?

From the Nevada University Medical Center:

“Our people are really torn,” said Brian Brannman, UMC’s chief operating officer. “We want to take care of people who are ill. We’re proud that we can save lives. But our employees are also worried about the survival of UMC. They know that the appetite of taxpayers for helping undocumented immigrants is limited.”

Since April, UMC has been spending about $2 million per month providing emergency dialysis services to 80 illegal immigrants, Brannman said.

He projects that these services at UMC could run more than $24 million in the current fiscal year.

In each of the five prior years, the hospital provided the same emergency services to half as many illegal immigrants for a little more than $1 million per month.

Brannman said the hospital receives no reimbursement from federal, state or local sources to provide this life-saving treatment for people who have entered the country illegally.

But under federal law, any patient who shows up at an emergency department requesting an examination or treatment for a medical condition must be given an appropriate medical screening to determine whether there is an emergency. If there is, treatment must be provided.

“When we’re projecting a budget deficit of $70 million for fiscal year 2010, you can see that $24 million in dialysis treatment that’s not reimbursed is an awfully big chunk,” Brannman said.

UMC health care professionals say discussion of how to reform the nation’s health care system must include how to shore up taxpayer-supported hospitals, strained to the breaking point by following the law to care for those who are breaking it…

…”The federal government kicked the can down the road on the immigration issue and gave the bill to us,” Brannman said. “This is a federal policy failure that is driving huge health care costs to our citizens.”

Balancing Act

This is the time of year when the best commercial on TV comes on. It is a bunch of ecstatic parents singing "It's the most wonderful time, of the year!" This is a "back to school" commercial for Staples. Most parents are still trying to piece together childcare and all in the weeks post camp but pre school year. Most moms are beginning to run out of "rainy day activities" and some even will guiltily admit that they can not wait until their children leave them to return to the routine of school.

One of my friends blogged about Lisa Belkin who has written some articles and books on the topic of "balance". I agree with her that most of us just try to do our best and meet the challenges before us. The rest of it is the polarizing stuff that women tend to beat themselves up with, and why? I don't hear men talking about "balance" very much, do you?

I have met Lisa and she had attended a networking group I helped to found. She lifted some of the stories she wrote about from things she heard, no crime there of course! I don't think I have really learned anything "new" from this type of writing and instead I think a lot of women find reason to judge one another.

There are a lot of "full circle moments" as we age. You think back to the choices you made, or were forced to make and look at what happened--good bad or unexpected. Mostly it is all good. If you have the right attitude.

Of course this is the first year that we are sending our 18 year old to college and it is a bit more bittersweet than earlier years where the quiet that descended on the house was so welcome after the first bus came and went.

I guess what we all have to remember is NEVER WISH TIME AWAY.

Pretentious

Last night we saw a movie prior to its release entitled Cold Souls which has a very interesting premise. It stars Paul Giamatti and it is about the idea that one could extract one's soul and put it in storage. The joke is that all NYers put everything in storage and that god forbid it should ever be shipped to NJ, they would be horrified. The other funny bit is that his soul looks like a--chick pea. And that is just about the gist of what is worth watching. The director, Sophie Barthe spoke and was a very pretty, very intelligent, very French, very pregnant young woman. She was very definite in her "art" and her opinions. I really enjoyed the first third of the movie. And then it took such a dive that I actually could hardly stand to watch Janet Maslin ask her questions.

The definition of pretentious is "he act of pretending; a false appearance or action intended to deceive. A false or studied show; an affectation". And that is very much what this film was because she was trying to meld together Woody Allen's Sleeper with all the French surrealist films but ultimately ripped off some of the ideas from Being John Malkovitch and other movies of that genre. It is completely derivative.

Part of the film centers upon the play by Chekov Uncle Vanya. All of a sudden the movie turns into a Russian moody and dark "play" about mules carrying souls back and forth to Russia. It completely loses us there. It is at least 30 minutes too long and is filled with scenes of Paul staring off from the icy shores of St Petersburg (?) and then from Brighton Beach. It hits you over the head with metaphors and devices but to me they were all a cheap trick. It could have been so much better. So much more interesting because of the idea of what a soul is and what it could mean and it almost goes there. But it failed, in part because she actually sacrificed the ideas and the humor to make it an "important film", a film that touches on what a young Frenchwoman thinks is "art" or references other "important works". In a way, by doing this she is no more than a copy of a label. Not Gucci but Gocci.

The thing is, maybe I am just really disliking the film because I really wanted to like it and her and couldn't. Just like the movie, her interview with Janet Maslin turned for me when she describe the sci fi aspect of the film and how it is kind of like "the crazy little old Jewish ladies who would buy cyrogenics". How dare she! and I am really pissed off at myself for not asking about it. My friend said, oh but maybe she is Jewish. And that makes it better? Then I looked her up. She is french but was raised in the Middle East and Latin America in Iran, Abu Dhabi, Algeria, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, and Paris . She has been living and working in the US though, and making money here. I started looking through her interviews, all close to exact replicas of the questions and answers her publicist must have given Janet Maslin. Honestly, I felt duped. It was a "false and studied show" and certainly complete affectation. And then what capped it is her interview with the Village Voice.

Barthes admits the protagonist is ultimately an extension of herself: "When I wrote the screenplay, I felt very trapped mentally in this country," she says, mentioning George W. Bush, the war in Iraq, and Americans' complacency and—shall we say—soullessness. "I couldn't bear it any more," she continues. "I literally felt my soul was shrinking."

Yuck. She is so entitled in her attitudes and so pretentious NYer who moved here to go to school at Columbia. She pays homage to the "NY intellectuals" and the LA movie elites. She also sounded completely entitled--well I thought I might get "Woody" but I settled for Paul Giamatti attitude.

When you get down to it is utter pretension. As she is selling her movie now to Americans and reaching into their wallets she isn't calling us "souless". Luckily, I doubt anyone will want to watch it.

Feelin' Groovy

One of my favorite songs in the 70s was a song by Simon and Garfunkel about the 59th Street Bridge. I am not sure why that song was actually about the bridge. It is one of the last bridges left that you can take into Manhattan without paying any money. It is also the plan of the powers that be to begin to charge the public for every bridge and tunnel into/and maybe out of NYC. Is this fair? I mean how are the people who live in the city supposed to be able to live with all the taxes etc.
The same politicians who are supposedly so liberal and for the "little guy" are not aware of what it takes to get by. It now costs around $11 to take some of the bridges into NYC and the money doesn't necessarily go to those bridges.
This is now becoming a class system for commuters. The traffic has become so bad on the cheaper options, that if you have money you avoid them at all costs. (pardon the pun!)
Interestingly though, on most of the bridges and tunnels, it costs nothing to leave NYC. Maybe we should all take the hint.

A Foodie's dilema

My pal S was on the train this morning, reading the sequel (?!) to The Omnivore's Dilema, another book by Michael Pollan. We were discussing how confusing it is to eat.
Well, it is, stop laughing. Pollan posits that it is so difficult to know what is healthy or not because we are so confused by modern nutritionists. The fads of no fat, low fat, no sugar, etc have left us with no idea.
There was a study about word association with a terrific rich cake. The Americans answered something about guilt or health or something while the French (I think) answered celebration.

I think some of this is really caused by the rise of marketing and advertising in the 60s and 70s. Food became more packaged, more marketed, more focus grouped.

Aside from making me hungry, I am thinking....when does Madmen come back on TV?

Shared Fortune

The other day I was on the train with my "kitchen cabinet" . My cabinet is the group of amazing women I ride the train with who give me practical business and personal advice. They are usually right on target.
Sometimes I get to give some advice too.
Last week one of my friends told me about the job opportunity she got. It is really exciting to get the chance to enter a new career and new challenge, particularly in this economy and as you are getting closer to 60. I have a very keen intuition, which probably helps in what I do for a living.
In any case she started telling me about telling her business partner she will leave the firm. I asked if she cried. She said how did you know? I don't know, I just did. Then she told me that they shared their fortune cookies and the fortune was "it takes a thousand shots to make the first basket". I said, but that wasn't yours, it was hers. Again she said how did you know that? Then I asked what was hers, she said it was about flexibility and her friend/partner is very inflexible. She was saying that for story telling purposes, she attributed the fortunes to the opposite person.
I told her that she shouldn't do that because it is most interesting to me that they shared their fortunes.
What is a fortune anyway? It refers to money, wealth, to the future. And after all, these are all things that they shared for years. In the future, she may be able to give her ex partner business. And in this economy, that may be the best "shared fortune" of all!

High School Prom

Ahhhhh Prom. I remember going to mine with all of my friends. How wild it is to send off one's son to prom. That is A above with his date. I don't remember wearing sexy dresses like that, but maybe that is just my memory.
I was thinking back to how my friends and I all went together. We went to something called the "Gambol" which was held in our gym. This was no small affair and the gym was decorated like the set of a movie. In fact, you didn't know it was a gym, except maybe from the lines on the floor. My boyfriend had the post prom party and then we all went to Jones Beach. We "spiked" a watermelon and drank plenty, but then the drinking age was 18. We got to experiment when we were still at home.
Hey magpie, do you remember? Who did you go with?
Now the kids go to a fancy venue and then they head off to the shore or the Hamptons for the weekend. I bet they still experiment plenty but they don't talk about it as much.