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Health care reform is in the eye of the beholder
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder – perhaps, the same can be said for health care reform. Barack Obama’s health care reform which goes under the title – H.R. 4872, The Health Care & Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 - is now law. To describe it as “reform” is a misnomer. The positives accomplished are to provide health coverage to 32 million Americans who are either uninsured or under-insured. It has also made illegal the use of pre-existing condtions as grounds for denying coverage. But the other side of the coin is that Obama essentially gave away the store to the insurance industry. Despite…
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Reflections on my mother’s death anniversary
My mother in the early 1930s’ . Today is my mother’s death anniversary. Sarah Joseph died in 1965 at Trivandrum Medical College Hospital. She had turned 52 years of age two days prior to her death on March 18. Her death was an event that had lasting repercussions on the family in many ways. She was larger than life and had a certain commanding presence about her. When she walked into a room she was a person one noticed. One cannot help wonder how various events which profoundly affected the family subsequent to her death would have evolved had she been alive. For, at least, the first fifteen years after…
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Bureaucracy and a birth certificate
Someone once said: “Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible” Dealing with the bureaucracy in most countries is frustrating but the bureaucracy in India is ubiquitous and time consuming with no assurance of a positive outcome. Since purchasing our flat in Cochin, we have had to deal with varying levels of bureaucracy on a host of issues. Transferring the electricity at the flat into our name should be a fairly routine task but in Kerala, it requires the use of what is euphemistically called a “wire-man” to intercede with the Electricity Board to effect the transfer. The charge for the services of the wire-man ranges from R2,000 to…
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Unforgettable Munnar – in more ways than one!
Munnar is a beautiful place well worth visiting! Our visit started with something of a fiasco which brought to mind the axiom: “if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. We were offered an unbelievable deal in Munnar at what was described as a “resort”. As it turned out it was no resort – and, in fact, to describe it as a dump would not be an exaggeration. Frankly, if Ted Kaczynski – the “Unabomber” – who was a recluse during the latter years of his life prior to his arrest, living in isolation away from society in a rudimentary abode, ever gets out of prison in…
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Ayurvedic massages and my George Costanza moment
I love a good massage. It is in some ways the ultimate pampering experience. The first time I had one was in California in the early nineties. I was so hooked on it that I would have one with some regularity even though it was expensive. Spending $80 for a forty minute massage every couple of months was a bit of self-indulgence but it was at a time when I was making more money than I knew what to do with. After I retired, in 1994, massages were a less frequent occurrence. By the time we moved to Virginia, I’d tell my kids and others to give me a gift…