Column for August 23, 2012

I am sitting at my desk with a medical bill in front of me from Johnston Health.  I shouldn’t have a bill in front of me, but I do.  2012 will be known in our home as the year of medical bills.  The year is not even two thirds over and we have already spent more on medical bills than in any other year.  Three of us have been to the eye doctor for routine eye exams and new eye glasses.  My son has a birth defect and we have been to UNC Children’s Hospital several times for consultations, an MRI, x-rays, and more consultations.  There are plenty more trips in store for treatments.  I have been to the doctor numerous times for small things, some of which turned out to be larger, pre-op visits, a cardiologist visit, EKGs, and a bunch of other tests.  In addition to that, my third son, Benjamin, was born in April.

Since we live right here in Johnston County, we would prefer to get our medical care right here, if possible.  Two of my sons were born in the Women’s Pavilion at Johnston Medical.  My son had his tonsils removed at the new Johnston Health Center in Clayton last year.  In general, we have received acceptable care from the Johnston Health system.  We just have not received acceptable “back office” support.

After our son was born earlier this year, we got statements about the costs associated with the delivery.  I have an excellent health care plan through my employer, for which they and I pay a good amount of money.  The benefits package with my employer is one reason I have stayed there almost 18 years now.  In my lifetime, I have gone through periods of not having any health coverage, sometimes for up to seven years at a time, but this was a conscious choice on my part in seeking my career path.  Even after insurance coverage, there were significant bills.  We paid them all.  Within a couple of months, we started getting small bills in the amounts of approximately $120 and $140 from the hospital.  We had no idea why, since we had already paid the post-insurance amounts.  We paid those bills, too.  The amazing thing was that we started getting collection agency calls on those bills not long after we got the bills.  After paying a $140+ bill, we quickly got a refund check for the exact amount we paid.

Just within the past two weeks, I got another bill for just over $170 for the post-insurance balance due from my preoperative screening in April.  I have not paid that bill just yet since we just received it for the first time.  Well, just today I got a nasty automated collection agency call telling me that this bill was past due.  I have not had good success with trying to get information from people who deal with bills in the Johnston Health system.  I have dealt with ignorant (by design) clerks who don’t have access to the billing system but can take money.  I have wrestled with telephone systems that lead me to voicemail jail or to extensions that nobody answers.  Finally I went through different prompts upon calling again and got a customer service representative who was all the way in Chattanooga.  Yup, she was in Tennessee, not anywhere near Johnston County.  Fortunately, the lady with the cute young voice was very helpful, verifying that the billing was done twice, the refund was legitimate, and that the $170 bill was not past due.  Perfect.  Or so I thought.  Later in the day, the friendly neighborhood mailman delivered a bill from Johnston Health for the same $140+ charge that I just had determined was paid in full.

Another newspaper in the county has been fairly critical of the Johnston Health Board of Commissioners for seeking an alliance with other health care systems.  Personally, I am in favor of such a thing and have written so in this very publication.  If a larger, more experienced, and efficient system can bring better health care, better financial management, and especially better billing practices to Johnston Health, I am all for it.  I have a stack of medical bills in front of me from UNC Hospitals and I don’t have these sorts of problems with them at all.

Johnston Health has evolved and come a long way from its inception.  The county is one of the fastest growing in the state and nation, so we will eventually need to keep pace with the growth.  I just hope that better management will lead to better customer service.  I shudder to think what the system will be like when Obamacare is in full swing.

Column for July 19, 2012

If you are like me, you look around you, watch the news, and wonder why you even bother with some things.  Quite honestly, I have been trying not to be so cynical lately.  Since I only have one column per week in which to express my opinions, I don’t want to take that one opportunity and rail on the same things time after time.  Sure, there are some core messages and values to which I do and always will adhere.  However, I don’t want to make every column about how Obama, Congress, the Supreme Court, our Governor, government, high taxes, and socialism all stink and how far from the vision of the Founding Fathers we have strayed as a nation.

Sometimes, I want to withdraw from my passions about politics and religion.  I would rather not care about church doctrine, good government, and the direction in which our nation is heading.  I would rather spend the time that I invest into writing this column and doing my television show into doing some stock trading, taking a college class, or holding my three-month-old.  My infant son has quite a personality at three months.  He smiles and laughs constantly, is fascinated by the world around him, and even gives me looks with his eyes while he is suckling on a baby bottle that reflect the joy he is already showing at that early age.  I would rather be watching a toddler TV show with my three-year-old, who asks me all the time, “Daddy, will you lay down and watch Caillou with me?”  He loves to lie on my bed and watch his favorite PBS cartoon on my television.  I would even rather be watching some chick flick or TV show with my bride.  As I write this, she is watching “The Bachelorette” without me.  When I am stuck in a hotel room for work on a Monday night and it is Bachelor or Bachelorette season, I even watch the show in my hotel room just so I can talk to my sweetie and feel connected to her.   I don’t mean to exclude my nine-year-old, but he is usually in bed by the time I sit down to compose my rants. 

I would rather have no concerns about my town, my county, my state, or my country.  I would rather not ponder the dangers of capitulating to radical Islam, treaties that have no real benefit to America but rather usurp the Constitution, the sprint current towards socialism, the upcoming election, or useless laws that only serve to leave a legacy or restrict freedom.  I still have concerns about things other than politics and religion, though.  Actually, I was thankful today for the beating the economy has taken.  I just got a great interest rate for a mortgage refinance that is going to knock at least five years off the length of my loan and keep my monthly payment the same or lower than it has been for ten years.  If President Obama and a liberal Congress had not run our economy into the ground, I would not have been able to get such a low interest rate.  Still, I would rather have a booming economy, since it is better for the country as a whole.

I would rather count down the days until I take my family on a vacation to Great Wolf Lodge than read the news about how Governor Beverly Perdue just signed another thirty-eight bills into law and yet vetoed the state budget recently.  There are another twenty bills on her desk on which she must take a decision.  Fifty-eight pieces of legislation passed along to the Governor?  As I looked over the 38 already signed, I see a lot of stiffening this penalty, making that crime carry a harsher sentence, blah, blah, blah. 

Important works of legislation will probably be better worked and passed in 2013, after the next election.  For instance, I can’t comprehend the US House of Representatives attempting to repeal Obamacare recently.  It is a foregone conclusion that such a bill, even though passed by the House, will never make it through the Senate, much less through President Obama.  Such serious legislation needs to be passed with a conservative Congress and President.  Well, the same applies to the State of North Carolina when it comes to voter ID laws, dealing with illegal immigration, and spending.

I suppose that I could rail on how President Obama just bypassed legislation concerning welfare requirements with an illegal executive order after hypocritically threatening the Supreme Court over the possibility of overturning legislation that was duly passed into law.  Then again, this type of stuff is really getting old, and hopefully, short lived.

Sure, things such as these cheese me off no end.  I truly wish that I could just ignore them, go about my merry way, and be blissfully oblivious to it all.  But if I did that, I would be ignoring who I am and was created to be.

Column for July 5, 2012

This week we celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  I am going to quote what I wrote as an introduction to the Town of Selma’s ceremonial reading of the Declaration.  Hopefully, some of you got to hear it and the Declaration read Wednesday night.

“The American Revolution against Great Britain began in 1775.  On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution to declare colonial independence in the Second Continental Congress.  The vote on that resolution was delayed for several weeks.  On June 11, 1776, the congress appointed a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain.  One June 28th, a draft of that declaration was presented to Congress.  On July 2nd, Lee’s Resolution was partially passed by Congress,  declaring,  “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”   The declaration document was debated and revised, and on July 4th, the Second Continental Congress approved the final draft of the American Declaration of Independence”.

I consider July 2nd to be our actual Independence Day, not July 4th.  This is not just because July 2nd is my birthday, but because the actual vote for American independence came on that day.  John Adams thought much the same way.  He wrote to his wife on July 3rd, 1776, “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”.

The Second Continental Congress voted for independence to escape the tyranny they had been experiencing, which was enumerated in the Declaration, point by point.  Tyranny can come in various forms.  The Founding Fathers were keenly aware of this.  Samuel Adams, cousin to John Adams (and not just one of my favorite beers), said “How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words.”  Never has this quote been as poignant as it is today.

North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue has vetoed the state budget so that she can look magnanimous in her stance for increased funding for public schools.  This is nothing more than a ploy to build her legacy as someone who allegedly cares about children and education.  However, discerning people realize that it’s nothing more than political showboating.  The plain meaning of adequate funding is being perverted.

The recent decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States on both the State of Arizona’s immigration law (SB1070) and on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) show that the quote by Samuel Adams to be glaring accurate.  To declare that states no longer have the ability to control immigration to their respective sovereign jurisdictions (as originally intended) is federal tyranny over states.  The Arizona decision along with the Obama administration’s refusal to enforce immigration laws cause states to shoulder the burden of educating illegal immigrant children, requiring large state education budgets.  The fact that Obamacare was ruled as constitutional as a form of taxation has forced the single largest tax increase in American history.  It takes away your freedom of choice over whether or not to carry health care coverage, and requires you to participate in commerce, whether you choose to do so or not.  That, my friends, is a form or tyranny.

The Supreme Court decision on Obamacare was a surprise to me, since I figured that even a high school civics student could have figured out that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was highly unconstitutional.  Sure, there were some provisions I liked in the bill, but they were small ones.  Sure, the health care laws could use revision, but this gigantic bureaucracy was not the way to go, nor is it the American way of doing things.  If the law is an exercise in tyranny, limits freedom, and is a major financial burden, then the parts I like are irrelevant and not worth the government’s interference and tyrannical power.

In the first paragraph, I quoted the brief narrative on the Declaration of Independence for a reason.  Folks, we started a revolution for far less than we are putting up with now.  When will we have had enough?

Column for March 25, 2010

There are some things that government can do well. Just this morning, my wife was remarking about how efficient the Town of Selma is about picking up yard debris and other items left at the side of the road. This weekend we did a lot of needed yard work. We also have moved furniture, boxes, limbs, etc. to the curb and they were quickly removed.

Compare that to the road kill that never seems to get picked up along side the highways of North Carolina. I have literally seen deer carcasses rot away to nothing after laying around for a month or two. The state, it seems, is not as efficient at managing the minutia as a small town. This is true of most things the higher up you go in levels of government.

The national government is good at doing a few things. They seem to be good at fielding a military that is quite capable of blowing things up and killing people. That is what I want a military to be able to do. The government seems to be good at building roads, which is good for all citizens.

The national government is not, however, efficient at running people's lives for them. The Social Security system is about broke. The Post Office is broke. The Medicare system is broke. And yet the same government that has run these institutions into the ground now expects us to trust them with our health care system.

I went to bed in a free country and woke up in a socialist nation this morning. "Welkum to Amerika, Comrades" is my greeting to you all. 219 men and women who are either willfully ignorant of or blatantly disregard the Constitution of the United States have voted for and passed sweeping health care legislation that is sure to be signed into law. Forget the fact that most of them have not read the bill much less understand it.

Just about every week, I have joined two friends of mine and taught on the US Constitution and read line upon line the notes from the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Nowhere can I find a single line or even a hint that the government should assist with much less regulate how you seek medical care. For that matter, I do not see where the Social Security system or Medicare is legal, either.

In order to buy the votes of some so called "pro-life" Democrats, President Obama has issued an executive order (also nowhere to be found in the Constitution) prohibiting the use of federal tax dollars to fund abortions, even though such a provision exists in the law. Sorry, but law trumps a presidential edict. So much for being pro-life.

There are a couple of other things I found that government does well. First, spend money. I do not have a problem with the government spending money on principle. I do however, believe that the spending should be parsimonious, legal, and done with great wisdom. Waste, fraud, and abuse are rampant in our state and national governments. Unconstitutional spending abounds at the federal level. I am convinced that if the national government would just cease all spending not permitted by the US Constitution, our national debt and budget would diminish to a fraction of current status.

Second, government excels at taking away freedom. Whether it is Selma's attempt at controlling land outside its town limits with an extra-territorial jurisdiction expansion and forced annexation or the federal government regulating your health care options, government is good at chipping away at your liberty.

James Madison said, "All that seems indispensable in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former." That is exactly what we have been doing in this nation since The New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt and further broadened under Johnson's Great Society. Now we have Obamacare and profligate spending with job bills and stimulus spending packages.

There is no way that we can continue this degradation in Amerika. We can not afford to go the way of socialized medicine, profligate spending, and redistribution of wealth. They have failed everywhere else in the world that they have been tried, so why, comrades, do we go down this same path here in Amerika?