Imprisoning a Child for Life

I notice too many people are devoid of empathy. They are little better than the criminals they criticize in that they cannot see another's suffering. Criminals are often victims of our dysfunctional society. We failed these kids and now we want to lock them away and throw away the key. Exactly how many children have you rescued from the ghettos of America? Exactly how many children have you saved from abusive drug addicted parents? If you never had to grow up in a living hell then I think you ought not to jump to conclusions about who ought to be treated with compassion and who should not. These forgotten children are neglected until they commit some terrible crime. We spend millions to keep them in prison but hardly lift a finger when the first signs of trouble show up in school. We should be ashamed of ourselves for failing our youth yet again. America has grown to be a highly dysfunctional and corrupt society and the signs are all around us. The knee jerk punishment squad needs to realize we already have the world’s largest prison population, and the largest military budget maybe we need to change our priorities and how we solve our problems.

Unfortunately, our youth today may be sadly lost to a value system that evolved from the depths. As for those who are educatedly challenged and do not have the mental capability to mature and conduct their own affairs, the dreaded "institutionalization" probably should be the alternative to setting them up to be influenced to re-offend. By "institutionalization," I do not refer to the prison system, but life in a structured setting that allows them to flourish to the best of their capabilities, be away from the wrong elements of society, and enjoy the securities they so desperately need and deserve. Many parents of challenged children do not have the knowledge or social resources, forget the monetary resources, to raise, nurture, and maintain these children, now turned adults, with forever children mental capabilities, in their homes without serious consequence to all.

Reform and Your Premiums

Why is the debate about making health insurance affordable and not making health care affordable? Where is the analysis of what is driving up the costs of health care, making it unaffordable, and addressing the underlying issues? - free care by hospital ERs (the most expensive place for us to deliver free care), malpractice insurance/tort reform (also contributing to unnecessary procedures), the army of bureaucrats within hospitals and physician groups to deal with the various insurance companies (including Medicare), drug pricing, common medical errors and hospital acquired infections, lack of quality/price transparency...I'm sure the list goes on. Those who have insurance, myself included, have no idea what the costs are of various procedures or the disparities between providers. Therefore, there's no incentive question them or to shop around. For example, I recently learned that my child's pediatric dentist charges $150 per tooth for a sealant intended to prevent cavities because her teeth are grooved (aren't they all?). My own dentist, performing the procedure on adult permanent teeth, charges $75 per tooth. Not only is there a significant price disparity, but I as a consumer am not convinced that the procedure is really necessary since she will lose these teeth in a couple of years. How much of us really know what's being paid on our behalf for routine medical checks or procedures? Everyone's answer to this is single payer, but I don't trust a national system subject to shifting political ideology and Congressional oversight...particularly when there seems to be no discussion of government officials taking part in this system. I agree the insurance companies need to be removed from the equation, but in order to also address all the others feeding at the trough there needs to be more personal responsibility for health care and its costs - perhaps that means paying for it like any other consumer service.

Abortion and Health Care Reform

What a joy it must be to live in a truly free country. Either abortion is legal or it isn't. Since it is a legal medical procedure every health plan should pay for it. We are supposed to have freedom of religion in this country, but certain parties are oblivious to that. The pro-life crowds are hypocrites who only care about life in the womb, but care nothing about the lives of people who have already been born. It's time they kept their religious beliefs to themselves, and stopped forcing them down the throats of everyone else. Most religious beliefs are based on fairy tales and mythology, and have very little to do with morality and ethics. They are based on nothing but control, especially the control of women.

It is not rational to force a woman to bear and then raise a child she doesn't want simply because she had sex. Where the ‘respect for life’ is when unwanted children are born into the world? Many of the world's criminals were mistreated as children because their parents didn’t want them. I don't see society stepping up to raise these children who are born to reluctant mothers/ parents. Pro-lifers only think of the birth of the child- they don't consider the life of the child.

Abortion needs to be covered by any health care insurance system. It is ironic that those who would deny abortion coverage in order to protect an unborn human life care nothing for ensuring that any baby born, including those with severe disabilities, have a means of support medical or otherwise once they are out of the womb.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/opinion/01thu1.html

Mr. Obama and Mr. Hu on Warming

Howsoever important the global issues of common concern are, the national policy actions, due to domestic compulsions and varying perceptions of national interests by respective governments, are rarely guided by them, unless, of course, a common catastrophe or extinction threat does become imminent. The problem of climate change though happens to be one such issue of common global concern, yet there seems to be little prospect that a major breakthrough would be achieved either at the current get together of 100 and odd world leaders at the UN or at the forthcoming Copenhagen UN summit on climate change. For, instead of realizing individual role and responsibility for causing climate change through excessive energy consumption and burning fossil fuel, leading to greenhouse gas emission and warming of atmosphere, the member countries of the UN do seem to be generally indulged in mutual accusations. Thus, unless there is an agreement on a common policy framework to tackle the problem of climate change, and the member countries do show some genuine commitment to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emission in order to keep the atmospheric temperature to an agreed safe levels of 2 degrees Celsius of the pre-industrial stage, there is little chance of any progress on this front. In this respect, a clear acceptance of the judicious and pragmatic principle of 'historical responsibility and distributive burden sharing with equity' could become the starting point. Simultaneously, the western industrialized nations too should agree to help developing countries fund and transfer clean technology to facilitate their transition to green economic development, which might lead to a win-win situation for all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/opinion/23wed1.html?ref=opinion