The 'HCI'

Don't worry, I'll get around to the weird title in a minute. It has to do with those annoying sets of initials that seem to define so many conversations these days. I sort of figured I'd jump in and give it a try.

Just to get started...as is the case for most people, I may not know what I'm talking about all the time but I do have an opinion. There's two things that everybody has, an opinion and an...anatomical feature...we'll just let it go that everybody really does have both and hold off on the PG rated details. The difference between the two is that very few people will show you the latter (the fewer the better actually) while nobody's shy about the former. Hence my presence here blogging at all; I'm just wagging my opinion. That might indicate that I'm not the least bit bashful about my POV (see, there's another one of those annoying sets of initials) but you'll never have to worry about anything else I have.

Onward and upward: HCI...That's 'Health Care Issue' which I abbreviated in the first place only because I knew I'd get tired of typing the whole smash repeatedly before I got done. As I mentioned, the world runs on initials anyway. You know; USPS, DOT, CIA, BFF, ROFLMAO, what's one more? Besides, it makes you sound like you know what you're talking about if you bat around some initials or an acronym or two. It's not quite as good as name-dropping but it works.

I got thinking about this sort of thing (the HCI that is) even before I got sick but spending a week in the hospital and watching it in action really got the wheels spinning. Don't get me wrong, I received incredibly good care and everyone I came in contact with was top-notch. It's not the people on the front lines or the work they do, it's the system that they and we have to put up with.

With all the fuss about the issue flying around the 'net and the news, it's hard to know where to start chewing on it. What I do know is that we need to start talking about it like adult humans and quit screaming at each other. Whatever system we come up with at the end of the day and it's price tag will haunt us and our heirs for generations. This is important folks so we'd better knock off the lunacy about unplugging Grandma, get on with solving our differences and get some work done. Aside from that, if I hear one more idiot raving about the horrors 'they' want to do to you or your finances, I might really need health care after I poke out my own eardrums to make it go away. The 'they' who want to do so much wrong is usually anybody with a different political affiliation from the set of lungs doing the hollering or Heaven forbid, someone with the ability to think for themselves. OMG!

IMHO (there's another one), the whole mess as it currently stands is BROKEN (just capital letters, not initials that time). Words sometimes escape me but a few like unworkable, wasteful and plain old failed come to mind. That may be just my opinion since lots of people, particularly the ones making the most money off it seem to be convinced that everything is OK. Public service entities (LOL) like insurance companies, HMOs, MMCs (I love this) and organizations of that sort are saying that an overhaul isn't needed because the system works...sort of. Well, that may be true but then again, Betamax worked too...sort of, but who's got one hooked to their wide-screen now? On the whole, it's obviously not working real well or we wouldn't be trying so hard to fix it. I heard one witty commentator the other day say that there really isn't a crisis so making changes may only make it worse. What? It limps along and wastes enough money to support most of the Third World and this is not a crisis? If it's not then I'm a little shaky on what you would call it. The sky may not actually be falling today but the odds are that Chicken Little will be right eventually and I'd rather it didn't fall on me.

There...that's my opening salvo. If I wasn't first-out to go to work tonight, I'd probably keep tapping away till the wee hours. I'm pretty concerned as to how all this will fall together or apart or I wouldn't bother to write it down in the first place. OTOH, I'm pretty sure the carrier doesn't want me to run a train after being up all day and blogging all night. I'm REAL sure I don't want to either. I'll come back to this one again...stay tuned.