Its been a while!

So I deleted all of my old post... a lot has changed in the political arena since those anyway! The biggest news these days is Tiger Woods alleged affairs, Obama sending 30,000 more troops to Afganistan, and the ever so controversial and never ending health care bill. With Tiger, basically I wish him the best and don't really think it should get so much public attention. It sucks that cheating on your spouse is such a common occurence these days, but I personally believe the only things which guide morals are fears of the consequences and the respectful fear of God that comes from a personal relationship with him. I don't expect non-believers to live Godly lives and so I'll refuse to judge harshly those who I don't personally know as professing Christians. It does piss me off when people professing to be believers is Christ refuse to guide their lives by his teachings and remain in conflict to what Jesus taught. That was a really big soapbox and not at all the point of this updating of politics as I see it.

Obama recently announced he has decided that continuing the Afganistan war is necessary and he is committing another 30,000 U.S. troops with an 18 month timeline to being drawing down troop levels and handing over power to the Afganistan government. Its hard to criticize the decisions of a president to go to war or not; because lets face it... I don't have any of the information he has. Here are my only issues worth noting:

1) If you are going to go to war, you do whatever necessary to win. To me this means that if a war is important enough to begin or stay in, then it is important enough to dedicate everything necessary for that war. My philosophy: ALL IN or ALL OUT
I wish Obama had said either, its not worth it so we are coming home or said its so important so we are sending all of the forces we can possibly send in order to finish the mission and come back home.

2) Stop giving Obama a hard time for taking his time and analyzing the situation! Seriously, we have been there for 8 years, what is another couple months to make the best decision with all the information possible!

The all so important issue of health care reform is buzzing. The current bill is about 2,100 pages long and no one is quite sure what aspects are in it. Basically, nothing will be clear until the final bill comes out, so instead of criticizing a bill I don't know; I'll just state what should and should not be done.

Needed aspects of reform:
+Tort reform to protect doctors and hospitals that are trying to do their business as best as possible from having huge insurance expenses to cover lawsuits. Patients wronged by neglict or blatent incompetence should be compensated, but it should be understood that medical procedures and consultations have risks. Tort reform would bring down costs, while also allowing attention to be placed on real wrong-doings, rather than every little case lawyers can manage to convince someone they are owed money.

+Insurances should have to cover pre-existing and other medical conditions which are treatable and not directly caused by actions of the patients. This means people with genetic and other issues they are born with should not be allowed to be discriminated against. The very essence of insurance is the whole group sharing cost so the minority with uncontrollable issues get the help they need.

+Money is the main issue! Increasing the number of people covered is the second issue! Please keep it that way!

+The bill should be organized, stated, and compiled in such a way that is understandable, manageable, and addresses issues in a practical manner. Address issues, not idealogy

+There should be interstate competition in this global economy. If you have a computer or credit card issue, you talk to someone in India. So whats the big deal with having an insurance company in Georgia or in Illinois? Competition=lower prices and more options

+Preventative care and routine exams should have to be required under insurance plans. Cancers and other diseases are easier to treat at early stages, so lets catch them then.

+Insurance plans should be patient centered, not employer based. People change jobs all the time and shouldn't have to lose their current coverage.

DO NOTS of reform:
+DO NOT model it after the failing medicare program. We already can pay for it so why follow it as a template or even expand it.

+DO NOT create another huge web of government agencies overseeing everything. Regulation is necessary, but there are many aspects of government that currently operate horribly and fixing those could save us lots of money instead of creating more of those agencies.

+DO NOT just push something through to say you have accomplished something. Slow down, take the issues and develop the best solution for them. YOU CAN'T FIX EVERYTHING, SO PRIORITIZE and fix the biggest issues. After the big issues are fix, then fix the little ones.

I'm sure I'll post specifics once the final bill is released. It will be interesting to see how the process goes, because as of this week... about %55 of Americans didn't want the current health care bill passed. Hopefully, they make the changes they need and communicate them to the public. Only then, will people change their minds.