How Bad [sic] Do You Want It?

I have a saying over my desk–It’s not how good you are. It’s how bad you want it.

- mystery author Denise Swanson in interview with Diane Plumley

Performers, politicians – yes, I do believe that determination can count for more than talent in many of life’s endeavors. How determined are you? How hard are you willing to work? Are you stubborn enough?

There is another aspect to determination, and that is being determined not to go for what you want. Two years ago I decided to forgo coffee for the six-week period of Lent. Some of my friends thought I was crazy. “Why would you put yourself through it?” This year I raised the stakes: coffee, alcohol, and potato chips! Not a sip, not a chip! I’ve passed the halfway mark now and still in the race.

My husband asked the Why question, adding the obvious (to him) qualifier, “since you’re not religious.” I knew why I was doing it but had to think about how to articulate my reason to him. Okay, here goes: “It’s a way of demonstrating to myself that I’m not a slave to these things. I can live without them.” He nodded. He wouldn’t do it himself, but he could see what I meant.

Morning is the hardest time of day. I still get up first and still make coffee – for him. I just don’t have any.

The easiest aspect to this imposed self-denial is knowing that it’s only for a time-limited period. It’s like giving up doughnuts during pregnancy. Saying “No, thank you” for a set number of weeks or months really isn’t that hard.

Humans Lie; Hens Lay Eggs

The subject is not mendacity but “getting—or putting--horizontal.” The distinction is confusing in English, because the past tense of one verb is the present tense of the other. What a pickle!

“I think I’ll lie down for a while.” [Correct]

“Just lay the book over there on the table.” [Correct]

Two points need to be made about the simple sentences above. First, it isn’t a matter of humans versus the whole rest of the world (books and hens and such) but a matter of intransitive versus transitive verbs. (I heard those groans!) Unless there’s an object, you want the intransitive verb, in this case, to lie. That takes us to the second point, which is that dogs, when relaxing in front of the fire, are lying there, not laying, and the correct wording of the training command is “Lie down,” not “Lay down.” When, on the other hand, there’s an object following the verb, an egg or a book or whatever, you want the transitive verb, the one that can carry or transport its object.

It wouldn’t be so bad if that were the end of the story—but then along comes the pesky past tense.

“I lay down to rest and fell asleep for an hour.” [Correct}

“He laid the book carefully on the table, as if it were an egg.” [Correct: The addition of the egg was just to see if you were paying attention.]

Suddenly the spelling and sound of lay is correct for a human but only because it is the past tense of to lie, not to lay, the past tense of the latter being laid! We could take lie and lay into deeper waters, but why bother? Something tells me the distinction may vanish in my own lifetime.

Often, quite honestly, I almost wish I didn’t know the rules for using these verbs correctly, because the knowledge makes it so annoying to hear the incorrect usage. Embarrass my fellow human beings with public correction, I will not.

Okay, what about “Now I lay me down to sleep,” some of you are asking. Could it be that the confusion in English arises from this very source, the childhood prayer? It’s a tricky question, but note that ‘me’ in there. The speaker of this sentence takes himself or herself not only as subject (“I”) but also as object (“me”). Strictly speaking, it would be more proper to use a reflexive pronoun, i.e., “I lay myself down to sleep,” but of course the rhythm would then be entirely lost. Poetic license! Whether for rhythm or for rhyme, verse and song often depart from strict grammar, and there it’s just fine.

Question Re Bank Bailout

Okay, time goes by, and the country is still struggling to recover, and as review of the bank bailout continues, I have a question. I understand that it could have been disastrous (could have been--who knows if it would have been?) to fire all the experienced top people in the biz, but what would have been wrong with putting them on probation? Maybe for the remainder of their working lives but at least for 5-10 years? Instead of giving them bonuses, at taxpayer expense, rewarding them for lining their pockets while losing investors' money. Anyone have an explanation?

The Camel, the Straw, and the Broken Back

I have been thinking and thinking about how to say this, and here is what I want to say: 

If the last straw had been the first, it alone would not have broken the camel’s back, but each and every straw the camel was asked to carry would have contributed its weight to the final result. 

Poem: "Watched Kettle"

Watched Kettle

Watched kettle resisting boiling point,

Toaster refusing to relinquish

       Or crisp the still-soft bread it holds,

Silent, stared-at telephone,

Cloudless, rain-withholding sky,

Bobber motionless on sun-struck water

Over baited hook awaiting fish—

All these stubborn deserts of waiting

       Stretch on day by day,

       While meanwhile

The children grow up overnight.

- P. J. Grath

November 3, 2012

Why Is American Medicine So Costly?

I read with interest the other day praise by a fellow bookman for libertarian politics. I became a big Ayn Rand fan at the age of 17 and clung to Objectivist certainties until my late 20s, when life experience, broader reading, deeper critical thinking, and subsequent gradual disillusionment intervened. The main charge made in the short piece that got me thinking about this stuff again was the writer’s contention that it is government interference in health care that has sent medical costs soaring. I want to examine that claim.

Certainly a statistical correlation can be found between programs such as Medicare and rising costs since World War II, but other, equally available correlations are left out of such a narrow focus. Three come instantly to my mind.

(1) First there has been the rise of the for-profit hospital. Hospitals used to be owned and run by communities and churches. They were not expected to “make” money but to provide care when needed. These hospitals were not free, but neither were their charges governed by the “free” market. Schools, libraries, hospitals—these were seen as necessary provisions of civilized communities for their members. For-profit hospitals have changed the landscape utterly. Younger people can be forgiven for not remembering a history they did not live through. My generation has no such excuse.

Along with for-profit came (2) more and more health and practice liability insurance "products." Insurance is not in itself a necessarily bad idea. In fact, the pooling of economic risk and sharing of economic benefits are (does this astonish you?) basically a socialist principle. But does anyone not realize that private insurance companies exist to make money? As much money as possible for shareholders and investors. The more you buy—and the less they have to pay out—the more money they make. As for liability insurance for physicians, can a doctor even without malpractice insurance in a for-profit hospital? (Any hospital?) Lawsuits would certainly put profits at risk, and reducing risk to the company is what actuarial calculations are all about.

Also in the postwar period came (3) advances in medical science. These have brought Americans more and more expensive testing and treatment options, and they have also made equipment more expensive to hospitals. Not only are more people kept alive longer (some of them only "alive"), but because more and more new tests and procedures and treatments and equipment all the time come to be regarded as “ordinary care,” the cost of ordinary health insurance continues to go up correspondingly. 

Put it all together and look at the expanded picture again. For every case of a Medicare patient costing big bucks, there is a corresponding case of a healthy person with private insurance whose physician has ordered a dozen expensive, often unnecessary tests, "just to be on the safe side”; a man or woman “suffering” from the usual effects of aging and taking prescription medication to hold those “symptoms” at bay; or a comatose patient in a hospital bed being kept “alive” as long as private insurance is footing the bills.

Americans want to live forever, they want to stay young forever, and those who can afford to pay top dollar in their futile search for the Fountain of Youth make it almost impossible for those of us who would be content with basic care to find no-frills providers and institutions. It’s like looking for simple, basic dental care, when the way dentists make money these days is with expensive cosmetic procedures. Who wants to serve the lower end of the market? That won’t pay off medical school debt or help meet malpractice insurance bills!

My point is that private insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, scientific advances, and the race to the top of the medical market all fit perfectly well into the free-market, libertarian model. Why is American medicine so expensive? Blaming government interference is simplistic, narrow thinking. But it’s got “sound bytes” working for it.

It's Far From Over

Anyone who thinks fall color is over is walking around with eyes closed--or, more likely, driving around with eyes closed, which is even scarier.