Veteran's Day Reflections

Adapted from author: Nelson DeMille 

"Our country is filled with monuments to the men and women of the armed forces who served and who gave their lives. There is a monument in Arlington to the Unknown Soldier who represents all of the unidentified dead. There are and have been parades and special days set aside for the armed forces. But, for the dead, disabled, and discharged #veterans of the "secret war" there have been only private memorials in the lobbies or gardens of a few nonpublic buildings.

It is time to erect a public monument in the Mall; a tribute to the Cold Warriors who served and who got burned-out; whose marriages went to hell; who got shafted in bureaucratic shuffling and who died physically, mentally and sometimes spiritually. The exact nature of this monument escapes but it could be as a huge hole in the middle of the Mall, sort of a vortex, with a perpetual fog rising from the bottom, and if there is to be any inscription at all, it should read:

"Dedicated to the Cold Warriors, 1945-1989? THANKS."

This war ended, not with a bang, but with a whimper, and the transition from war to peace was mostly quiet and unremarked. There was no cohesiveness among the Cold Warriors, no sense of victory, no pomp and ceremony as divisions were deactivated; ships decommissioned; bomber squadrons put out into the desert. There was just a fading away; a piece of paper; maybe a check in the mail. In fact no one in Washington, nor anywhere, even said thank you."

EPILOG

Our returning armed forces bore the brunt and were the focus of protestors objecting to our nation's foreign policies. It was due to this domestic turmoil that when honorably discharged, many were "advised" to travel home in "civies." When they did finally resume their education or return to careers interupted, many were hesitant to disclose where they had been or what they had been doing for the previous four years.

Sad! Very Sad! They may have left their uniforms and their dignity behind... But they buried their pride deep inside where it could remain inviolate. The gratitude of our nation has yet to define the reality of our: "Cold Warriors."
Life has many itches...some should be scratched. Others? Not so much!

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE FOR BABY BOOMERS!

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE FOR BABY #BOOMERS!

Kid Rock, in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN stated, “I shake my finger at “The Boomers;” for the damage they have done.” Today’s headlines produce yet another deliberate defamation of Boomers: “Aging Boomers Strain Cities Built For The Young.” (Who built these cities?!!!)

Given the economic strife and the political turmoil that exist in our nation today, these types of headlines and scare tactics can lead to only one “final solution”...and it didn't turn out so very well the last time. Discriminatory and inflammatory headlines need to be addressed; they cannot be permitted to go unchallenged.

Over the past fifty years, boomers built this nation...they accepted the reigns and the responsibility from their parents who were known as “The Great Generation.” The infrastructure that we have today is a consequence of their blood, sweat and tears.

Boomers were also hustled off to fight for our nation…except that it wasn't by choice and they didn’t get to come home to parades of honor. When being discharged from active duty, we were “advised” to travel home in “civies” since our #servicemen were being spat upon by their own countrymen. And so we remained silent. When we did finally go to college, courtesy of a guilt laden GI Bill that was totally inadequate to the task, we realized that we were different from our classmates. We knew it...our lives had been permanently altered. We did our nation's bidding and our nation bid us adieu.

Now, in our senior years, Boomers and boomer #veterans are still being "figuratively" spat upon by a generation molded out of post revisionist history and selective amnesia. Boomers have permitted their “successors” to remain children well into adulthood and thus they lack the skill set and the accumulated wisdom necessary for benevolent despotism.

Those of us whose working lives are behind us find ourselves sinking in the mire of a wealth redistribution. Boomers continue to “give” all that they have worked their entire lives to secure, while that with which they are left is being taken from them.

Boomers should be known as “The Generous Generation.” Their greatest mistake was their magnanimity of prematurely passing on the reigns to “The Greedy Generation or The Entitled Generation”

(What else didn’t you like about the play Mrs. Lincoln?)

THE DAY AFTER YESTERDAY: Healthcare For Today!

Something of Value: 

by Robert Ruark: "Before you take anything away, be certain that you are ready to replace it with something of value."  

"What we have here, is a failure to communicate" 

If we are looking to remake a #healthcare system that is efficient and compassionate, why would we continue to preserve the very portions of the old health care system that were anathema to the mission? Why would we carry those out-dated portions forward into the "new and improved" healthcare system? Seriously?
"Don't bother reading it, just sign it!"

The major problem as I see it is: employer linked health care. It keeps people chained to jobs, which prevents them from pursuing brighter horizons. Healthcare benefits provided by an employer were always meant to be an optional benefit and were an inducement to attract and retain the best and the brightest. 

It makes little sense to burden or inhibit an employer's objectives with the complications of healthcare administration... and then further complicate that regulation with IRS intervention and administrative oversight...and still further complicate their focused mission with the quandaries and the mires of investigating an employee's legal right to work or to reside in our country? How can this possibly create a fertile environment for innovation? Or, for the efficacy of healthcare? This unnecessarily complicated paradigm serves only to exacerbate the issues of unemployment, healthcare, right to work, immigration, taxation, migration, compensation, etc.


Demands placed upon employers for Healthcare and for immigration and investigative services are counter productive. Border security, which ensures the legal status and the right to work in our country is the number one mandate of a federal government...not of an employer! If that task were being done on the front line where it belongs, then others needn't be called upon further down the line. Terrorists seeking to do harm to the United States would not choose to enter at Kennedy Airport when we have made it readily apparent that the gates at our southern borders  have been thrown open and our men, women and children have been told to look the other way. Only when security is breached in a blinding flash are employers then held accountable for not checking the immigration status of their employees.


That established:

If we are to remain a compassionate nation, then The Bill of Rights needs to be amended to include the right of equal access to equal heath care... YOU paid for it! R&D; University Grants, Subsidies, and countless other public and private funding means. 

Let's face up to our realities. All of the statistical indicators would support a statement that contrary to the jingoist mantras and propaganda being perpetuated and promulgated, (See? My years in the service of our country taught me that word) we do not have "the best health care in the world." Waving the flag won't change the facts. While other nations are experiencing greater longevity and healthier lifestyles, we are actually losing ground. Our delivery system is failing us. Yet, we continue to pay the highest, most exorbitant rates in the world. Exactly what is it that impedes our delivery system? Convoluted Insurance, Excessive Administration, Fraud, Waste and Abuse. There appears to be nothing new in the health care law that would mitigate any of this. Or, that would indicate a willingness on the part of the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches of government, or law enforcement to address these issues. The malware from the old hard drive has simply been ported over to the new hard drive. (We are capable of writing completely logical code for software...it shouldn't be a stretch to apply the very same logical progression to a new and improved health care system. Better yet, get IBM's Watson to write a new health care bill for us! Seriously!)

Insurance was conceived to level the playing field...until they became "too big to fail" and were allowed to cherry pick. We hear from those who say, "I don't want to pay for someone else's bad behavior." We're already paying for uninsured motorists and Anthony Wiener. How fair is that? How does it possibly make sense that insurance companies are restricted to selling in their home state? We are a mobile population...why is National Insurance such a difficult concept?

Technology:
There is something abhorrent about profit motivated health care. It doesn't pass the smell test. Technology is deliberately held back in the name of profit. Few  providers in the healthcare industry want to shell out funds to remain on the cutting edge before or until they have realized all of their potential profit from existing or fading technologies. Are we doomed to rely on yesterday's technology while emerging nations jump right into the cutting edge?

We don't need to reinvent the wheel...successful healthcare systems abound in other nations. Based on a population of three hundred and forty-five million people, we actually have a distinct advantage. It shouldn't take a retired trumpet player to calculate the cost for a fiscally cohesive healthcare system. Let's see...One Trillion Dollars per year would be: $2898.55 pp/pa superannuated at 4% = $2782.60. Need more than $1T? Do the math. No matter how you cut it, we are paying way too much.
Fools figure and figures fool!

The Day After Yesterday Is Here!

PERSONAL HEALTH CARE - OWN IT!

“A Chicken In Every Pot”

A DOCTOR IN EVERY HOUSE-Preventive Medicine

Personal Healthcare - Take Control

At a time when we are threatened with the reduction or loss of #Medicare to seniors (who have paid into a dedicated fund during their entire working lives) and when healthcare costs continue to escalate exponentially when compared with all other financial indicators, and finally when reality hits us in the face that we are simply not capable of continuing in the direction we are headed; then the time is now! With regards to our own health, we need to take control and play a greater roll in that process rather than delegating it to others.

It is unconscionable and a source of national shame that this nation should be turning any portion of its population away from the urgent care for which they are in desperate need. #Healthcare to #Wealthcare? At a time when people have lost their homes due to government and corporate fraud and/or malfeasance, we cannot allow our nation to continue down this path. What next...mass graves for the homeless and those who have succumbed to a nation lacking in compassion and foresight? Aside from all else, our national dignity is at risk. This is the Twenty First Century! It's time that we climb into it. This nation's founders would have included health care as a fundamental right, and it wouldn't have taken twelve thousand pages to spell it out. R&D; subsidized education; grants...We paid for it!

 Access to cutting edge health care has always presented us with a socio/economic dilemma. How do we provide the optimum available care to the greatest number of people? How much are we willing and/or able to pay for our biological health while considering the realities and the dynamics of our overall economic health? If the goal is to provide the greatest number of people with the very best available diagnostics; the most up to date knowledge base; a most comprehensive, complete and centrally located medical and personal history; safe data storage; early intervention and a course of action based upon the most complete intelligence gathering and organizing capabilities, for review by the best practitioners in the world… and all of this available to the greatest numbers of people…well, the technology is right in front of us. The adage: “I don’t know what I don’t know” is at play here while despotic corporate and government interests would just as soon keep it that way. Knowledge is power! Knowledge in the hands of the few maintains the elitism and the status quo for those who already have it and who would deny it to others.

The personal computer in most every home provides the raw computing power to be all of these “experts on call” to each and every one of us. At the very least it can preempt time consuming and unnecessary telephone calls with nested and multi-tiered menus, redirects and redundant or inapplicable messages, or a trip to the doctor or to the hospital. The computer is better at data research, data recall and cross referencing than any human being alive today. We simply need to provide it with the raw data in order for it to process, analyze and prescribe. Aside from proprietary software, the only factor missing is the interface, and yet these are either readily available or in production.

Medical records = medical knowledge. Would you rather trust yourself to keep your own records complete and accurate, or would you prefer to delegate that responsibility? Wouldn't you prefer to have instant and secure access to your own complete medical record?...the very same or even more comprehensive medical records to which those in government and corporate America already have unlimited access? Would you like to have access to the newest, most cutting edge technology available in the entire world? Or, would you rather continue to allow the American Medical Association and others to be the arbiters and gate-keepers of all medical knowledge bases? How many individuals have crossed state and even national borders in search of treatment or medications that remain unavailable where they live?

Many of us already have the means for interfacing with digital thermometers; and blood pressure cuffs while still others are doing their in home testing for diabetes and cholesterol. Everyday, new bio-markers are being identified for quick and accurate testing. (Bio marker blood test for Pancreatic cancer has recently been added to the rapidly expanding list for in-home testing.) Micro-cameras capable of expanding our own personal ability to self-examine, and cardio sensors that can give us an immediate, in home EKG are all current technology that will give us the ability to consolidate information and to have e-consultations with leading, world-wide professionals in the appropriate field.  You can even add a personal daily questionnaire to the software for diagnosis of a personal state of being or a wellness chart.

Based on your own credible input, along with readily available transducers, and a proprietary software package, your computer can instantly generate algorithms and flow charts so as to intelligently advise you and your family on the next logical course of action and which, if any, professional health service(s) you should seek.

My only remaining question is “why!” Why haven’t we done this already? It is the most obvious answer to our current healthcare dilemma! The alternative, I believe will be a future filled with a major portion of the population being administered to by non-registered individuals practicing medicine without a license and administering elixirs and potions while catering to those who have been excluded from conventional health care due to economic considerations.

Tools For Self Evaluation and/or Algorithmic Information Flow

Home Sensors Available: (Interface Standardization such as USB)

·         BP

·         Thermometer

·         Heart Rate

·         Galvanic Skin Response

·         Hearing

·         Imaging Devices

o   EKG/EEG-Neural Imaging)

o   Ultra Sound
    Magnetic Resonance Imaging

o   Thermal Imaging

o   Video Camera (Micro-Capsule or flexible tube)

·         Chemical Analysis

o   Blood Sugar/Glucose

o   Cholesterol

o   Pregnancy

o  PH

·         Semiconductor Transducers

o   accelerometers, gyros, capacitive, resistive, thermal and pressure sensors

·         Microcontrollers, hybrid MPU/DSPs, AD and DA converters

Home Sensors Envisioned:

·         Hand Held Non-Ionizing Imaging Device

o   EMG
   MRI

o   Bone Density

·         Developing Specific Antigen Recognition Transducers

o   PSA, BRACA, DNA, Etc.

Armed with all of this current information, the bio-feedback thus obtained will motivate, suggest and further guide us toward natural and dietary remedies along with a healthier lifestyle.

Due to economic considerations, (perceived & actual) the following list comprises those whom I believe would not look favorably upon this multi-faceted approach to personalized healthcare

·         Medical Clinics and Laboratories

·         Insurance Companies

·         Regulating Agencies

·         The Legal Profession

Going Forward:

Expertise Required:

·         Software Developer

·         Medical Adviser

·         CAD

Keep It Simple

I have dreamed some of the most beautiful music never composed; I have perceived some of the most exhilarating experiences never experienced, A dream perceived or a perception dreamed...does it really matter?