horrifyingly bad coverage of the house health care bill

http://www.womensenews.org/story/commentary/091112/ageist-health-reforms-can-be-lethal

I've attempted twice to unsubscribe from Women's E-news, which I have received as e-mail for years, and generally been happy with as they cover women more than anyone else. They have always had a sickening tendency to believe whatever the hell the medical establishment in this country says, right down to negative commentary on breastfeeding and midwifery (altho more recently they have been improving).

But this was so bad I was shaking I was so mad. The idea that it is unfair to older women to pay more for health insurance, and that older women and younger women should be charged the same as that is more "fair" is just another transfer of wealth from younger people to older people. And it's not like we haven't already seen a shitload of that in our country.

She also mischaracterizes the expected savings in Medicare, in a way that makes her sound more like a Fox News pundit than a writer for Women's E-news. And then she has the gall to suggest that "hospice for all" would be a disaster. Well, it _would_ be for the hospital administrator who raised that prospect. For the rest of us? She thinks she can can predict your age based on how you wanted to be treated when you are elderly.

This is _exactly_ the kind of crap that causes women of a certain age to predict that, "oh, your biological clock will start ticking". Bullshit.

Both my attempt to unsub using the unsub e-mail on the e-mail, and the unsub e-mail on the website have failed. So I'm going to use what platform I have. Don't trust that woman. And question that source. It's so much more shocking when the sewage is being spewed by a source that was once worth patying attention to.

ETA: Would it be _so freaking hard_ to advocate a progressive income tax to pay for this program? There is already stuff in every bill to provide assistance in paying premiums to people who are poor, supposedly the category she is most worried about. Funding that assistance is a valid issue. Why transfer wealth from all the young women who are almost by definition poor? Why not pick on high income people specifically?

Today's activities include: grandma visit, varicella shots, playset assembly

C. arrived last night after T. (and A. and I, for that matter) had all gone to bed. And yet, before 11 p.m. T. got to see her in the morning before school. The rest of us hung out together. C., A. and I went to the Children's Museum down the road apiece. C. has been storing her bike here, so we rode our bikes over. We had an uneventful trip out, but on the way back, C. had to brake sharply when attempting to cross at the unpleasant intersection of Prospect and whatever that is. Her brakes were in the wrong spot and she was trying to signal and she went over. I don't think I have ever seen as perfect a fall in my entire life. I'm pretty sure K., my martial arts instructor, would have been impressed as well. Completely unhurt, other than a scuff on her shin. Her face didn't even get close to the ground.

I felt _horrible_ that that happened to her on an outing I arranged, but she was very kind about it.

We continued home and arrived safely. R. adjusted her handlebars and where the brakes were so there will not be a repeat of this incident.

The playset arrived earlier in the week, but we only recently got the dining room table moved out of the dining room and into the other half of the living room. Today, I laid out the alphabet/number/shapes playmat, and R. started assembling the playset while the rest of us went to the Children's Museum. We helped out intermittently upon our return, taking a break for an early lunch (takeout from Benjarong). C. left just before I went to get T. on the bike, and while at the preschool, I remembered I should have picked him up in the van while on the way to the doctors to go be the last shot appointment of the day for A., T. and I. Oh, well. I called to ask R. to get A. packed up and ready to go, and off we went. T. needed one for preschool, and I had tested no immunity a while back, so I figured we should all just get the shot at the same time, thus avoiding the so-small-it-might-be-more-theoretical-than-real risk of one of us picking up a case from T.'s response to the shot.