Monday, September 14, 2009

The diet game

So, I'm trying out a new diet. Maybe some of you know it, it's called the "Flat Belly Diet." Now before someone comes along and robs me of my masculinity, let me back up for a minute. For some time now, my girlfriend has been searching high and low for the right diet. Though I think she is extremly beautiful, she insists that dieting is the way to go.
After she settled on this newest diet, I decided I would provide some encouragement by challenging myself to follow the same routine she has to. That was my first mistake.
I'm only into the end of day one and already I can barely stomach the food substitutions that this diet passes off as food. However, according to the book's author, Liz Vaccariello, I'm supposed to lose anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds in 32 days. (Let's keep our fingers crossed).
Let me give you a breakdown of today's meals. According to the book, you are supposed to eat three meals and one snack. What the book doesn't tell you is that I would hardly call some of this stuff food.
In the morning I woke up extra early in order to make breakfast before going to work. Breakfast consisted of a small bowl of plain corn flakes (no sugar), half cup low-fat milk, two tablespoons of unsalted sun flower seeds and something called "sassy water."
From as near as I can tell, "sassy water" is what pond water would taste like if I decided to take a gulp. It consists of chopped cucumbers, lemon and something else I couldn't make out. AND you have to drink a whole pitcher of this crap by the end of the day for FOUR DAYS STRAIGHT!!!
Needless to say after my first glass, I wanted to puke.
For lunch, I had a piece of string cheese, 5 ounces of deli-style roasted turkey breast (no bread, so no sandwich) and 1 pint of cherry tomtatoes. I like tomatoes, but I can't stomach a whole pint of them.
I passed up lunch with the Manchester Chamber of Commerce for a plate of processed deli turkey breast and some tomatoes and another tall glass of "sassy water."
Around 3 p.m. I was supposed to eat my snack, but I decided, since I was working late tonight and wouldn't be home for dinner until bedtime, I decided to forego the snack until later. The snack consisted of frozen blueberries, a half glass of milk and another handful of sunflower seeds. Oh yeah, and another glass of "sassy water."
Wish me luck folks. I sure hope this diet is worth the cost of food and sanity. That double meat cheeseburger someone had for lunch today sure looks good.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The health care debate rages on

By Daniel Lai
Four years from now, there's an excellent chance some of us won't have the same health insurance we have (or don't have) right now. That's because members of Congress are gearing up to reform the U.S. health care system, and unlike in 1993 when then-first lady Hillary Clinton tried her hand at changing the medical system, this time the important players –– doctors, insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers –– seem to be on board.
I’ve heard a lot about health care reform this week, and I'll be hearing even more in the months to come. It's an incredibly confusing, complex issue.
There's little debate that health care reform is necessary –– President Obama, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, the American Medical Association and America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents the insurance industry, all have agreed the system needs to be changed, although they disagree on how to do it.
Fewer and fewer Americans have health insurance, and therefore cannot afford good medical care. Nearly 46 million Americans have no insurance, and 25 million more are underinsured. One major reason for this crisis is that many employers have stopped offering insurance to employees because of the high cost. In the United States, total health care spending was $2.4 trillion in 2007 –– or $7,900 per person –– according to an analysis published in the journal Health Affairs. The United States spends 52 percent more per person than the next most costly nation, Norway, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
If we’re in that bad of shape, I would think fixing a broken system would be a good thing. I have to tre lightly here since those that support a change are now conviently being labeled socialists or Nazis.
The fear about health care reform comes mostly from not being able to understand the wording of the bill. After speaking with Congressman Mark Schauer, who represents Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, I took him up on his challenge and read the 1,000-page bill online at the Library of Congress’ Web site.
Unforunately, I only got thru the opening statements befor all the legal jargon left me more confused than ever. I was left with no choice but to find another non-partisan source that could explain it to me.
A central point of the president's plan is to create a government-sponsored health insurance program that would be an option for all Americans, similar to how Medicare is now an option for Americans over age 65. He has also said he'd "like to see" prohibitions against insurers discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, and incentives for people to use preventive services and wellness plans.
This is a strong selling point for me because I know first-hand that seniors, such as my grandma, are having an extremly hard time affording their medicine and doctor bills. I also know firsthand how much a doctor’s office visit can cost without health insurance (both my brother and sister work part-time and are not offered insurance).
Besides saving thousands of lives by providing health care to the uninsured, health care reform has another huge advantage: it can drastically reduce future federal budget deficits. The vast majority of our government's long-term shortfall is due to exploding health care costs in the private sector. These spill over to the public sector, which currently finances about half the nation's health care costs. The United States spends about twice as much per person on health care as other high-income countries, and yet has worse health outcomes, including life expectancy and infant mortality.
The main economic reason for this colossal failure is that our system of private insurance and powerful monopolies is vastly more wasteful and inefficient than the health care systems of other developed countries.
Insurance companies spend tens of billions trying to insure the healthy, avoid the sick, and deny payment for claims. Pharmaceutical companies take $350 billion of our health care dollars for drugs that cost a small fraction of that sum to produce.
The Obama health care plan won't eliminate most of these perverse incentives and waste –– eventually we will need a truly national, single-payer system like Medicare to accomplish that. But it would be a big step in that direction, creating a nearly universal insurance system and laying the foundation for a sustainable system that can contain costs.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

An evening with the Kiwanis Club

Last week, I was approached by the Kiwanis Club of Manchester to be their guest speaker at one of their regular monthly meetings. At first I was a bit hesitant because I wasn't sure what to expect, much less talk about. However, the warm dinner atmosphere and exchange of jokes before the meeting on Wednesday, helped me to better collect my thoughts.
It was nice to see so many people interested in journalism and, more specifically, how some good ol' Texas boy ended up in Manchester two years ago. I look forward to being able to speak to other groups in Manchester and can make myself available for meetings just about any day of the week except Tuesdays.

D.L.