Obamacare - Total Deception

Let's take a quick look at what one of the nearly forgotten policies enacted recently has actually done for the people, specifically, for the patient in need. When the policy was proposed, originally, I knew there was something off about it, there was too much press and too many conflicting explanations from both sides of the political fence. So what I did was read the thing.

Even after modifications made, the law itself is nothing more than a ploy to give insurance companies a free meal ticket. Sure, it stipulates they cannot discriminate for any reason, but if everyone has to buy the insurance they will still accumulate massive compulsory profits. Originally that was all that bothered me, and it's a pretty huge problem. That was before I had to deal with the medical industry at length, which resulted in me doing a bit more work on the issue.

I did one thing that patients are not suppose to do, I looked at my hospital bill. The prices for some things were clearly inflated for no reason. I detailed much of that in previous posts so I won't get into the specifics of what I saw. This was before the law was enacted, this is what the taxpayers had to pay because the doctors won't give me the one surgery I need to get back to work.

Then it hit me, if everyone has to pay into insurance, then no one will have any control of the actual costs of medical care ... except the doctors. Suddenly this house of cards had a basement, a dark and frightening one. The notion that a patient needs insurance to pay for something as simple as an exam is, on it's own, ridiculous. It would be like saying you couldn't buy a loaf of bread, instead you gave your money to this other guy and he bought it for you, but the grocery he went to would decide what bread you got, how old it was, and how much it cost.

That is what insurance really is, it's a middle man that can hide the actual costs from the person who is suppose to benefit from what the actual provider gets to decide is right. All rights to your healthcare, all choices, all your freedom is gone in this scenario. Other countries implemented national health care, and it works. It works because the patient still has control of their healthcare. What we have in the USofA is nothing short of a scam.

Of course both doctors and insurance providers would be on board, and they all were. The amount of profit that doctors and insurance providers get in this bargain is outrageous, especially considering how poorly cared for our patients in the USA already are. We spend more money on healthcare, yet have one of the lowest health ratings in the world, and it has nothing to do with our diets. It has everything to do with our complacency, accepting something that is presented to us on a silver platter, even if it's stale and moldy.

Information - Why the Free Information Has Increased It's Value

This era is often called the Information Age, a time when information became free, and at our fingertips. I have spent the last decade reading scientific papers, often donated by scientists who love to see someone fascinated in their area of expertise. I have watched lectures, of varying levels of education, for free on various sites. I have discussed this information with others, scientists in the fields and those studying them. All because I have the most insatiable sense of curiosity.

My primary focus has been on biochemistry, medicine, and neurology. This has brought me into neighboring fields of study to help supplement the information. I finally took a break then looked back on everything I had learned, refreshing my memory, basically. Suddenly it dawned on me, I had just learned enough to earn master's degrees in at least three fields of scientific research, and it didn't cost thousands of dollars. Far from it, most of it was completely free, often just for the asking.

First, what drew me to the fields was my strong background in chemistry, and a fascination with how chemicals interact with each other. When I learned that complex organisms were really walking chemistry labs, my curiosity got the better of me, I dove in head first. Picturing the chemical interactions within the human body became a way to relax, tracing the rout of a single carbon atom through all the chemical reactions while it travels into and out of the various cells. That sense of knowing something set my mind at ease during hard times.

But that's not the meat of this post, what I am illustrating is just how much more valuable information is today than ever before. Sort of the inverse of supply and demand constructs. One would think that the huge influx of free information, with all the excess junk also mixed in, the value of the information would fall to nothing. The junk is, luckily, not the reason for it increasing in value.

The reason it has increased in value is the same reason many lobby groups in the USA are trying to censor and control the flow of information, people can learn more than those who pay for it. This creates a huge imbalance of information in the real world, one which has upset many of those with higher educations to the point of decrying the internet as a whole. The phrase "where'd you hear that? Off the internet" is meant as a slur against those of us not stupid enough to pay for what we can get for free.

When I go to a doctor I have to pretend to be stupid, actually, the moment you betray even a small amount of knowledge in something, the rage that fills their mannerisms is plain to see. They genuinely hate you just for knowing even one thing that they spent thousands of dollars to learn. Professionals cannot tolerate any competition, nor do they like having their elitist clubs threatened by something they cannot control. So in spite of the fact that I know more about what's going on that most doctors, I play like I am ignorant so that I can get what I need from them, a second opinion and the proper medication legally.

I made the mistake of letting my general care doctor learn of just a small amount of what I knew, my diagnosis was accurate, her diagnosis made out of anger was not. Another doctor even said she was wrong, and stated my diagnosis was correct, even though I did not let him know it was my diagnosis. So the information I have learned is more valuable than the information they have learned, only because I learned it out of curiosity, for almost no cost, while they spent thousands in the hopes of making millions for that same information.

This does not mean you should take everything you read online as fact, far from it. You must sift through a lot of junk sometimes, forming connections online with various professionals can help, many of the ones who frequent the internet social sites are always too happy to talk about what they know. Scientists, real ones, who frequent social sites are also very happy to show off the papers they write that have passed peer review, meaning they are as close to factual as you can get at the time. That pesky peer review method, where everyone and their mother tries to destroy your hard work through any means possible, but more papers are withstanding this barrage every day.

That is he key to if a source is valid, the scientific method has produced an explosion of solid information that is often shared freely by those who utilize it. So don't be shy, learn what you can. Open up the links to scientific research, talk to the scientific communities, discuss and ask questions. Seek the lectures shared by universities, for free, on media sites. Most importantly, fuel your curiosity. Start letting the elitists know that they are no longer necessary, they can be replaced if they don't shape up, if they don't start treating everyone right.

Suicidal Atheists

The folly of many religious people is that they believe, not believe and not know, that us atheists are inherently suicidal. That makes as much sense as saying you are insane for not jumping off a cliff because you don't know how far down it goes. The reality of this is completely backwards, and this works for agnostics as well.

The notion of not knowing something will cause you to fear it, that is one of the instincts that have given humans the advantage over some other species, like lemmings. If we don't know what's after life, we will fear ending that life because of that lack of knowledge, so to those of us willing to admit we don't know, it would be illogical to assume we'd want to end our life. Even our strong curiosity cannot overcome this fear, because it's permanent, as far as we know.

However, that also means the inverse is true, those who know there is life after death would lose that fear, they would be willing to get there as soon as possible, even to the point of being suicidal. We do see this in many religious people, suicide bombers are the best example. They believe they know something so well that they are excited to get to that life after death, so excited that they are willing to blow themselves up. But if they admitted to themselves that they did not really know, they'd be to afraid to end this one chance to live so quickly.

This is one of the primary reasons religious people are so willing to kill, the fanatics at least, they believe they know that there is something after life so they do not see it as robbing a living organism of that life, they see it as a release. The question that comes to mind is: why don't they just end their own life?

The answer is more actually a perfect example of the hypocrisy that religion breeds, the one reason this delusion needs to be addressed more than all others. They have doubts. No matter how vehemently one claims to know there is a life after this, no matter how adamant they are that their god exists, deep down in their subconscious there is a doubt that prevents them from killing themselves. They know that they don't really know, that they are just buying some cookie cutter philosophy spoon-fed to them by someone else.

Deep down, everyone is an agnostic atheist, even those who are anti-religion. The problems arise when you deny that you don't know, that is when you create your own delusion, you have to be deluded to believe something without any supporting evidence that exists outside of your own perceptions. The scientific method has given us a way to test evidence, to ensure that the evidence holds true outside of our own perceptions by allowing others to test that evidence.

This is why religious people tend to hate real science. Yeah, I said "real" science. Anything can be called scientific, and who's to argue, however the scientific method is what separates real science from science fiction. Anything that exists in this reality can be tested, anything, that's a simple fact of the matter, one that cannot be denied by anyone with a functioning brain. That makes so-called miracles vanish, without even testing them, because for it to happen in this reality it would have to be tested.

That does not include things outside of this reality, but those cannot be tested within this reality, another simple, hard, and undeniable fact of the matter. We cannot cross the boundaries between realities to test what is outside of this one. That does not mean that other realities do not exist, nor that other possibilities are never played out, it just means this: What can be tested is reality, what cannot be tested is unknown.

It is that final fact that many of the new religious fanatics are perverting for their own ends, using it as a means to convince people that they know something more than they do. That is dishonest, for if you asked an atheist what's beyond this reality, an honest and true atheist would say: we don't know. But if you ask a religious person that same question, they will dishonestly attempt to convince you that they do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, making that not only a con, but also an outright lie. They have a doubt, lest they'd have gone there already and not be present to try to convince you of their lies.

That entire line of thought demonstrates the fact that a real atheist could never be suicidal, ever. Even when wracked with pain and suffering, and atheist will still fear the end, because as far as we know it means we cease to exist. Not existing anymore is even more frightening to the human mind than eternal torture, so much in fact that it is the only reason our species has survived long enough to extend our own lifespan.

For many years I did not worry about quitting smoking, to me it was something I'd get around to eventually but was not in any real hurry. I was raised religious, and even after leaving that religion, even after admitting to myself I did not know, I held to the hope that there may be something after this life. That one belief caused more damage than anything I knew. Recently I pondered what was after life, what it would be like to be dead, and I kept drawing a blank, literally. All I could imagine was simply not existing.

That scared me, it frightened me so bad that I actively started resisting the smoking addiction, paying attention to when I smoke, how much I smoke, and reducing it. That fear kept me awake at nights, I still wake with a start sometimes as my dreams will often feed on that fear now. When I think about being dead chills run through my body. The reason for this is that when I went for surgery recently, I got to experience not existing for several hours. When I woke I was in a panic, not because of the surgery itself, but because my mind knew there was something missing, time, sensory input.

The surgery had gone wrong, I was under far longer than I was suppose to have been. Recalling what it felt like, that absence, that moment of knowing that I did not exist for a short period of time, it frightened me. But instead of turning to religious nonsense, instead of running to the arms of some con artist with an easy answer for comfort, I started thinking about the entire matter logically. Now, I not only fear being dead, I also feel remorse for all that we have lost, the people who could have contributed so much to our species, their knowledge and wisdom being gone forever.