Blog topic... a day late!

Better late than never, right?

This week's topic is the VMA's.

Submissions due by Friday! Thanks for reading and writing!

Taboo

“There’s no greater pain than the loss of one’s own country”

It’s my saddest part that I have never been to Tibet; I was born in northern part of India and my parents were forced to flee Tibet, my father was a very brave person but alas! when I was in 7th grade, my father passed away like a blowing wind without leaving any further address.

In India, we live in a very small house and we are eight children and I know how hard it was for my mother to look after us but I guess she is a strong women as she faced many obstacles on her way from Tibet to India….but I used to imagine myself in Tibet with green grass, high mountains and yaks….and I was happy in that world of mine but as I grew up I faced the real world and the real Tibet, that makes my heart break into pieces…

I have lived a life of a refugee and we have to renew our passport every year in the Indian registration office with a smile….I know how hard it is for us to go through that situation and I have my father’s family in Tibet whom we have never seen and I remember many years back that we were told that our father’s sister’s son died…but its sad for us, at least for me to react on that situation, of course there is a feeling of sadness but it hurts more knowing that we had not met each other….and what is left for us to do is except some prayers….and the worst part is that you’ve never met your relatives.

Honestly speaking, even though I was born in India and we have no country I' m still proud to be a Tibetan, proud to be a follower of H.H.THE DALAI LAMA, MAY HE LIVE LONG.

Now, the situation in Tibet is getting worse every second. In Tibet the Tibetans are not allowed to speak our language and most of the teenage girls are working as prostitutes…..they are forced to do this to survive and to feed their families….how could we blame them? In Tibet they are living a life of threat under Chinese regime….and I want to make it clear that when I say Chinese I don't mean the chinese people, it is the government and we are not against Chinese people.

Now, what I am afraid of is Tibet becoming a taboo….and gradually Tibet will remain as just a name….I'm afraid of losing myself and the rich culture of Tibet.

Sonam tsomo (chashutsang)

Low-maintenance health insurance

Richard D. Erlich

I was only half-listening each time, but I heard a couple times on the radio the assertion that what Americans want for health insurance is choice.

Well, here's one American who doesn't particularly want choice, or, more exactly, choice isn't something I want to need. What I want is what I had for my adult life up to retirement: decent coverage I didn't have to worry about.

As a student, I had access to student health services. I was convinced the student health service at the University of Illinois, Urbana — as opposed to the excellent veterinary-care clinic — was part of an AMA plot to turn young Americans against socialized medicine. Still, the health service was good enough for my undergraduate needs, and when I got older and started earning a bit of money, I supplemented the health service with Carle Clinic, at the time, a real HMO: a low-cost health-maintenance organization.

As a university faculty member and indirect employee of first the State of Illinois and then the State of Ohio, I participated in university health plans. I got insurance automatically, as part of my compensation package. The coverage was good; the co-pays reasonable — and when an insurance company bureaucrat got between me and my physician, I had the phone number of a university bureaucrat whose primary job was running interference for university employees trying to get payments from our insurance company.

The system was imperfect, but pretty efficient.

Shopping, period, is not my idea of a good time — yeah, I'm a guy — and high-risk shopping for something complicated and important is my idea of a very bad time. Shopping was also not part of my job; nor was arguing with 20-something punk insurance company flunkies. Time spent on health insurance would have been time I wasn't doing my job; as far as my employer and I were concerned, it would have been nonproductive, wasted time.

Now I'm retired, and my time is my own; but I'm close enough to death to really value that time, and I'm more anxious than ever to avoid shopping for insurance, reading policies, and/or fighting with corporate "minicrats" professionally obligated to try to deny coverage.

Fortunately, I've got Medicare — or, I think I do (I forgot to make quarterly payments automatic). And I have a pension and a secondary policy through my pension plan.

All Americans should have it as good, or better. Ideally, from this point of view, we'd have a National Health Service, or at least single-payer health coverage. In any event, what I want and what I think we all need isn't particularly choice but one system that is flexible, simple, automatic, and — including considerations of nonwasted time — efficient.



Richard D. Erlich is professor emeritus at Miami University, currently living in Ventura County, California.

This is currently posted on a site called SEDHE, run by a Miami Alum, and is tentatively scheduled for publication in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (it’s also on my myBarackObama page; but it looks like that is now invisible to search engines).
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