Foreign Affairs Friday: Quick Revisits

This week, I'd like to bring up a couple of happenings related to past FAF posts:

• Iran: While sporadic post-election protest continue, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is poking his hard-line allies with a stick, particularly over the issue of who will be his first vice president. He chose someone the Ayatollah didn't like. I'm not sure why Mahmoud would want to anger the people that saved his hide in the recent election. He already alienated those who want reform. Why alienate those fellow believers in the Islamic Revolution? Unless he thinks that public opinion of the Ayatollah has been diminished because of his post-election actions, and that this is Mahmoud's chance to claim more power.

• Moldova: They had their redo election, and the non-Communist parties won a combined 50.7% of the vote. This is good news, but it may be very difficult for these four parties to form and sustain a governing coalition. Ukrainian reformers have had trouble with that since the Orange Revolution, and Georgia is also struggling. A divided coalition with a bare majority faces a lot of difficulties in getting things done. Hopefully, with assistance from Europe, this coalition can persevere.
  

Today's second post about dead people or Twilight: A short review.

I watched Twilight last night. I didn't expect to like, I didn't want to like it - I mean, Bella is kinda annoying and stupid, or maybe just annoyingly stupid, and Edward, where do you even start with him? Let's see - he's over100 years old and interested in a 17 yr old, has no personality whatsoever, calls her his own personal heroin, creeps into her room at night to watch her sleep and looks like he is about to throw up 90% of the time. But there was one line in the movie I really liked.

He introduces some lady (she has a name, I just don't remember it) to Bella saying "This is my mother, for all intents and purposes." Be still my heart, someone else on the planetwno knows that is not an expression about "intensive purposes." Or maybe some of those people know what the expression is, they just can't pronunciate, either way, that is one of my yes-I-know-this-is-ridiculously-petty-but-it-really-gets-on-my-nerves pet peeves. I might just have to cave in and read the books.

Another Home Alternative

MacKenzie has written about home birthing before, but this NY Times article covers the other end of things: home burial. The article focuses a lot on actual burial of people on private property, but I think the more interesting part is about the care of a body in the day or two after death. Just like we've lost touch with the natural aspect of giving birth, we've done so with dying. People just don't know what to do in either situation, because we're used to just calling someone else to take care of it. Just as people have become more interested in birthing alternatives, they are thinking about after-death alternatives:

Advocates say the number of home funerals, where everything from caring for the dead to the visiting hours to the building of the coffin is done at home, has soared in the last five years, putting the funerals “where home births were 30 years ago,” according to Chuck Lakin, a home funeral proponent and coffin builder in Waterville, Me.

Not only does this seem to be a more intimate, personal experience than the funeral home method, it's much less expensive. Plus, much of modern burial seems wasteful. Why pay for an expensive coffin and vault, just to stick them in the dirt? And why pump a body full of chemicals to make it look good for an extra day or two? Charles Lindbergh had something like this done when he died.

But just like medical groups go to state legislatures to try to restrict competition from midwives, funeral directors are trying to restrict alternatives:

Recently, some states, with the backing of the funeral industry, have considered restricting the practice of home funerals. Oregon legislators last month passed a bill that would require death midwives to be licensed, something no state currently does.

Most people who do this go the cremation route, it seems. As far as I can tell, most cemeteries won't let you be buried without a vault, unless you can find a "green cemetery" that is set aside for natural burials.

I think this is an intriguing idea, one that I hope I don't have to consider anytime soon.

UHF: EcoSneaks

I didn't really feel like it was necessary to include this as an Undercover Hippie File, but Craig wasn't going to let me get away with buying them and not telling you.

You see, I needed shoes for d.c. I wanted them to be somewhat fashionable (i.e. even I didn't want to wear running shoes with skirts) but I knew we would be walking all over dc and my cute work shoes are okay for working in the lab all day but would definitely have given me blisters by hour 6 of our 12 hr sightseeing days. So off to the mall I went.

I had a type of shoe in mind but as soon as I saw these
I loved them. I didn't even notice till I was actually trying them on that they were Ecosneaks made by Simple Shoes (shoes for a happy planet).

Now, a happy planet sounds nice but I didn't buy them because the sole is made from recycles tires, or the lining is organic cotton and hemp, or they use old plastic milk jugs for the cushion. I bought them because I liked them. But since they costs less than the other shoe I also liked so I was getting them anyway, I will say that it's pretty cool they are so UH friendly. And they did an excellent job of keeping my feet happy during my trip too.

CraigCare

Obama's drive for health care reform seems to be floundering, which is good. Considering that Medicare is a fraud-riddled beast that threatens to swallow our entire federal budget in 10 years or so, I don't know how anyone can want the government to take over more of health care. And all the stories that come out of our neighbor to the north about long waits and denied treatments make the Democratic plan even more unpalatable.

Although Obama likes to set up the dichotomy of "my plan or nothing," there are other ideas out there. Here are my health care reform recommendations:

• Medical malpractice reform, to reduce frivolous lawsuits and the unnecessary procedures that doctors perform in order to avoid these lawsuits. This "defensive medicine" is estimated to increase medical costs by 10%. Texas has had good results from its medical tort reform.

• Allow people to buy health insurance across state lines. A lot of states impose ridiculous mandates on their health insurers, requiring them to cover acupuncture or in vitro fertilization for everyone. These mandates drive costs up. People shop nationwide for car insurance and mortgages, so why not health insurance?

• More use of "retail health clinics," like those located at CVS or Wal-mart. There, people can get quick, low-cost, walk-in service for minor ailments, usually from a nurse practitioner. These clinics reduce costs, free up emergency rooms, and expand access. Of course, doctors' groups oppose them.
  

• Tax employer-provided health insurance. There is currently not much of a link between the people that use health care and those that pay for it. People don't think about what procedures cost, because insurance will cover most or all of it. Similary, when people get insurance from their employer, they usually have no say in what plan they get. Taxing employer-provided insurance would push more people to get their own insurance, in which case they would buy the plan that is best for them, not for their employer. At my last job, my employer was definitely paying more for my insurance than I would have paid for a basic individual plan.

• Related to the above point, I'm not sure about offering tax credits for people to buy health insurance. It seems like offering such credits could cause inflation of premiums, cancelling out whatever good the credits do. Maybe these credits could be offered exclusively to the poor and/or the young.

• More use of Health Savings Accounts. These accounts allow people to have tax-free savings accounts to use to pay health costs, and are used in conjunction with high-deductible plans, which create incentives for people to shop around for health care and question the benefit and necessity of costly procedures.

• Much is made about the benefit of being in a group plan versus an individual plan for spreading risk around and decreasing costs. Currently, this is done by getting insurance at work. It seems like people could instead get insurance through other types of groups. For example, there are credit unions for people who work in certain fields or live in certain areas. Similar groups could be formed to get health insurance. People could also buy into plans through their college alumni association, for example.
  

Thoughts?