Somebody has got to do something about the cost of health care!  I injured a toe in basketball last month, bad enough that I had to go to the after hours insta-care.  They had signs all over the place touting their "$60 flat rate for all services."  I asked the receptionist about it.  "Its only for those without insurance."

"Ok, well I don't want to be fraudulent, plus my insurance will cover this and I'll just have to pay a copay," I thought.  Boy was I wrong.  My insurance is trying everything to not cover it.  The bill is for $550!  I received a denial of claim letter pending further investigation.  I had to fill out a form explaining all the details, and they still wanted more.  For some reason, they thought the injury must have been a workplace injury or car accident.  "Retards"  I thought to myself. 

Anyways, I am sure that they will end up covering it so at least it will go towards my deductible this year, but all in all, I would much rather go the $60 route!  Maybe I should stop paying the hundreds of dollars a month and just pay $60 for each visit.  I guarantee we don't see the doctor enough to make insurance worth it!

I'll have to look into the $60 fee a little more, because if we really can see the doctor and have all the services and stuff paid for $60, there is no reason to have insurance that I pay $600 a month for!  I suspect the insta care is being sleasy though and its just $60 for a doctors visit and you have to pay for extra services on top of that... 

The economy sucks.  Everyone knows that.  It seems like everyone knows someone close to them that has been laid off.  It is a scary time in America!

I read a column in the paper today that shows just how bad it really is.  Who would have thought 10 years ago that a fast food restaurant would have thousands of people lined up to submit applications, many of them willing to take ANY job.  Here is a portion of the article, which was published in the Las Vegas Sun, Dec. 17, 2008:

"

...meaning that by day’s end close to 1,000 will have applied for no more than 50 $10-an-hour jobs at an In-N-Out restaurant opening at Tropicana Avenue and Tee Pee Lane.

Some wore ties. Some wore their pants too low. Some were balding. Some owed two months of mortgage payments. Some spoke openly of suicide. Some asked this reporter for a job. Some asked the manager at the hotel hosting the event for a job.

Of the crowd, Blande Pittman, regional division manager for the chain, flatly observed, “We expected a high turnout, because of the economy and all.”

But Sharell Hewlett, who will be one of the managers of the new restaurant and had the front line job of handing out applications, said she found the range of applicants, from teens to retirement age, “incredible.”

"

Sore losers won't let go in California

Here's what I don't get about California and the recent Proposition 8 vote: Why all the commotion over yet another passage of yet another marriage amendment

This was the 30th time a state has placed either a constitutional amendment proposal or its equivalent on its ballot, and the 30th time the amendment has passed.

Thirty straight wins is formidable. It's downright Globetrotter-esque. The New England Patriots didn't even go 30-0.

In twenty-nine of those statewide votes, nobody threw a tantrum.

Granted, early polls predicted California would be the first state to buck the trend, and it did come fairly close with just a 52 percent passage, which tied South Dakota for the narrowest margin of victory among the 30 votes.

But in the end, half a million more Californians voted for the amendment that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman than voted against it. The final tally was 5,387,939 to 4,883,460.

Statistics intrigue the old sports writer in me, and I find the numbers that make up the 30-time winning streak very intriguing.

The great marriage election debate, and the streak, began with Alaska and Hawaii in 1998, continued with Nebraska in 2000, then Nevada in 2002, followed by 13 more states in 2004 (Montana, Oregon, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan and Utah), another two in 2005 (Kansas and Texas), eight more in 2006 (Virginia, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee), and finally Florida, Arizona and California in 2008.

In all, 58,911,741 Americans over the past decade have cast votes on the issue.

The overall score is 37,662,846 to 21,248.894.

If it were a football game, you'd change the channel in the third quarter and watch something else.

Some states have passed their amendments by huge margins, led by Mississippi at 86 percent and South Carolina and Tennessee at 81 percent each. Six states came in below 60 percent — California and South Dakota at 52 percent, Arizona and Colorado at 56 percent each and Oregon and Virginia at 57 percent apiece. Most margins of victory have been in the 60s — Utah was at 66 percent, which made us pretty close to normal.

Overall, 64 percent of Americans who have voted on the matter are in favor of defining marriage as a one man-one woman exclusive.

That's more than 11 percentage points higher than the 52.7 percent mandate for Barack Obama.

And no one's protesting in the streets over that one.

But California won't let it go. The whining is enough to make a soccer player envious. Lawyers are headed to court to block the proposition. Others are demanding that the vote go back on the ballot in 2010. Proponents of Prop. 8 are being singled out for abuse by opponents.

Sore losing is having a field day.

Evan Wolfson, a California-based gay-rights lawyer who heads a group called Freedom to Marry, said, "There's something deeply wrong with putting the rights of a minority up to a majority vote. If this were being done to almost any other minority, people would see how un-American this is."

Polygamists of the 19th century might have something to say about that. And a thousand other minorities you could name who have had to fall in step with the majority.

How are you supposed to decide stuff? Rock-paper-scissors? Duel at dawn?

Wolfson sees the amendment(s) in terms of discrimination against gays who want to be married while not seeing that the absence of such marriage amendments would be discrimination against not only those who prefer marriage to be defined between one man and one woman, but against untold numbers of children whose world would be greatly changed as a result.

And that's a minority that can't even vote.

You can't have it both ways. Those voters in favor of the amendments aren't voting against gay rights, they're voting for a marriage tradition as America, and America's children, have long known it.

Voting for it in huge numbers, in fact.

Everyone seems to get that but California.

 

Lee Benson\'s column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.

It is funny to me how those preaching "tolerance" and "love" in the GLBT community are the same ones vandalizing temples and churches, ruining lives of members of the church (forced retirements, boycotts of products, etc), and persecuting members of the church for donating time and money to the cause to protect the definition of marriage in California. Our prophet counseled us to make a stand on a controversial issue.  We exercised our democratic rights and are now being punished for it.

Look at what Elder Neal A Maxwell, a leader in the LDS church prophesied 30 years ago (full talk at lds.org)

"Discipleship includes good citizenship. In this connection, if you are a careful student of the statements of the modern prophets, you will have noticed that with rare exceptions—especially when the First Presidency has spoken out—the concerns expressed have been over moral issues, not issues between political parties. The declarations are about principles, not people; and causes, not candidates. On occasions, at other levels in the Church, a few have not been so discreet, so wise, or so inspired.

Make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters, in the months and years ahead, events are likely to require each member to decide whether or not he will follow the First Presidency. Members will find it more difficult to halt longer between two opinions. (See 1 Kgs. 18:21.)...

This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions. Resistance to abortion will be seen as primitive. Concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened...

It may well be that as our time comes to “suffer shame for his name” (Acts 5:41), some of that special stress will grow out of that portion of discipleship which involves citizenship. Remember, as Nephi and Jacob said, we must learn to endure “the crosses of the world” and yet to despise “the shame of it” (2 Ne. 9: 18; Jacob 1:8). To go on clinging to the iron rod in spite of the mockery and scorn that flow at us from the multitudes in that great and spacious building seen by Father Lehi, which is the “pride of the world” (1 Ne. 11:36)—is to disregard the shame of the world. Parenthetically, why, really why, do the disbelievers who line that spacious building watch so intently what the believers are doing? (See 1 Ne. 8:33.) Surely there must be other things for the scorners to do. Unless deep within their seeming disinterest. … Unless. …  

If the challenge of the secular church becomes very real, let us, as in all other relationships, be principled but pleasant. Let us be perceptive without being pompous. Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.

Before the ultimate victory of the forces of righteousness, some skirmishes will be lost. Even in these, however, let us leave a record so that the choices are clear, letting others do as they will in the face of prophetic counsel.

I have been following an auction by the FCC for some time now (I thought Google would have it by now...) but I am still excited about it.  Basically, the FCC is auctioning off a huge chunk of airwaves and mandating that the winning bidder set aside a quarter of the airwaves for FREE INTERNET with pornography filters.  The FCC will allow the winner to create a subscription service with higher speeds, but the lower speeds will all be free and smut free!  I like the idea.  I hope Google picks it up.  I would not mind free garbage free internet in the home! 

For more about this, visit the Wall Street Journal article here:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122809560499668087.html