Thumbody's lying...The high cost of care and the power of nope...

re: why medical care costs so much and how saying "nope" can help

 

by Tammy de Leeuw

Head Nope Dealer

Politics aside , Obamacare's biggest Achilles' heel, in my opinion, is its' failure to answer the very real question: "Why the heck does medical care cost so much in the United States?"

Recently, I discovered perhaps a few small reasons why medical treatment in the USA can cost more than the entire GDP of some countries. (hint: it isn't because our technology is sooooooooooo superior)

In a rush to get my kid off to school, I nearly cut my thumb off on a can lid and wound up in the hospital emergency room with a towel wrapped around my hand.

I couldn't even remember the last time I was at a hospital other than to visit friends, so the process for getting treated was a bit mystifying to me.

First, I waited two hours to get called in.  Then, I went to triage, had my blood pressure and weight checked.

A doctor looked at my thumb for about 30 seconds as I explained to him exactly how I had managed to cut it.

"Yep, you really cut it deeply." he advised me. (gee-what gave it away?  The blood-soaked towel?  The red spots on my shirt?)  

I am sure this lengthy exam set the insurance provider back at least $500.

After the doctor's "examination," I was sent out to the waiting room once more, with no explanation.

About an hour later, a white-coated woman came up and told me to follow her.  I had no clue what this next phase of treatment entailed and was more than a little baffled when we entered a room labeled "X-Ray."

"What are we doing here?, " I asked.  

"The doctor ordered an X-ray," intoned the tech, not looking up from her clipboard.

"What? Why?  I told him I cut my thumb on a can of ravioli.  What in the heck would an x-ray show you about a that kind of laceration?"

The tech looked at me as if I had just questioned the law of gravity or something.  "Well, the DOCTOR ordered it," she said gravely, as if my very life depended on blind acceptance of this statement.

I closed my eyes briefly and drew upon the power of NOPE as I told her, nicely but firmly that I did not want the x-ray and I didn't want the insurance provider billed for it either.

You could have heard a dust mite passing gas.

It must have been the first "nope" this tech had heard, because she scurried out of the room to inform the person in charge the patient wasn't down with being unnecessarily exposed to deadly radiation.

She returned, led me quietly out of the room and back into the waiting area, where I entered my fourth hour of waiting with my towel wrapped thumb held above my head.

After 4.25 hours total wait, I finally got to see a nurse, who rolled up a table with a needle on it.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Your tetanus shot," she said cheerfully rubbing a prep pad across my arm.

"Uh... I don't want one of those, " I responded. 

A shocked look similar to that of the tech crossed the nurse's face.  

"B-but.  You said it's been more than ten years since your last tetanus shot.  You need this.  It's part of standard protocol," explained the nurse, a nervous tremor in her voice.

"No thanks," I said.  "Do you know how many people got tetanus in the entire United States last year, I asked.

"No, no I don't but..."

"Fewer than 100.  Out of 300 plus million people.  More people choked to death while eating Taco Bell than got tetanus," I replied. ( I seriously didn't know if that was true, but I wanted to make a point.)

"Also, are you aware what's in that shot?  They still use mercury in the adult version and there is "bovine extract."  What the heck is cow extract?  And you want to put this into my body... for no good reason?"

The nurse was flustered and ran to get the PA, who seemed a little suspicious of me.  For a moment, it looked as if they were going to refuse to stitch me up.  So, I added , "Besides, I have really, really awful allergic reactions," I said.   This wasn't true exactly but after nearly 5 hours in a smelly, noisy hospital, I just wanted out.

"Oh, why didn't you say so?" said the PA.  She entered "allergic to tetanus shot" into the computer and proceeded to stitch me up without further comment.

All of this made me wonder how many times a day this same scenario plays out all across the United States. 

What if EVERY visit to the ER comes with at least one unnecessary procedure that costs an extra $500?     What if hospitals are secretly padding their bills to make up for budget shortfalls?  Or they are getting "incentives" from drug companies to push their vaccines and medicines?   What if they do it only because patients are too conditioned to trust the doctor and never ask questions?

In a way, we are all responsible for the high cost of medicine in America.  Until we start questioning treatment courses, the safety and necessity of drug protocols; until we start saying "Nope," to CYA procedures and bill padding, costs will remain high.

Be a better informed patient and flex your NOPE muscle.  Doctors aren't gods and they make mistakes.  It's up to you to control your own healthcare and to not believe everything you are told.

Rethinking Public School: How the State Kidnaps Your Child's Mind

re: the best website about public education on the internet

by Tammy de Leeuw
Professional Nope Dealer


Finally, there is a website out there which doesn't ask the usual "what can we do to improve public education?" but rather the less-obvious question: "Why should we even bother?"

Check out this video based on the writings of John Taylor Gatto:

Sad, and hopeful at the same time

re: from the kids (you know, the ones who really have to pay the price)

Truth About Common Core Part 2

 (read part one of this report here: 

http://audacityofnope.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

The Truth About Common Core- A Moneymaking Scheme That Will Leave You And Your Kids A Lot Poorer, Stripped of Your Privacy (And A Lot Less Educated As Well!)

by Tammy Caldwell-de Leeuw

and Teresa Kuhn, JD, RFC, CSA

Living Wealthy Radio.Com

Part 2: White Lies and Deception: Who is paying for common core...and who stands to profit?

  

Even a superficial investigation into the architects behind Common Core reveals that the program is not, as some have claimed, merely a way to design a more culturally-relevant curriculum and to evaluate teacher effectiveness.

Missouri’s Education Watchdog group observes:

“The Department of Education provides the legal symbiotic structure for Gates and Pearson.  Private corporations are developing (and the Department of Education is mandating) educational programs taxpayers are required to support.  It's nifty for Gates and Pearson, an easy job for Federal bureaucrats providing government job security and a complete travesty for taxpayers.  You are paying into a system in which you have no voice.  These companies are not elected and not answerable to any constituents except their stockholders.

You are paying into a system of crony capitalism based on unproven assessments and results that will make private corporations billions of dollars with taxpayer money.  And remember, it's all for the children."

http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/2011/12/symbiotic-relationship-of-bill-gates.html)”

Educational reformer and teacher Diane Ravitch concurs, offering an even blunter evaluation.  Ravitch writes:

“There is a word for this kind of anti-democratic collaboration between business and government, but we haven’t used it much since the 1940s: fascism.”

(http://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/carol-burris-my-concerns-about-the-common-core)

 

Loss of Privacy- For Students, Teachers, and Administrators

Common Core, like many other stealth “reform” and wealth redistribution projects, is deliberately obscured, awash in ample rhetoric and so much arcane terminology that it is difficult to sift out even the basics.  

 It is little wonder that many, if not most, parents don’t understand the enormous part it will play in building a national database that can be plundered at will for profit by educational vendors.

In fact, when Common Core was being put together, not even teachers had much input.  Anthony Cody, a veteran teacher and teacher coach in Oakland, California, tracked the progress of Common Core in 2009, writing:

“Sixty individuals, ONE teacher among them, will write national education standards in the next five months, in a secret process that excludes effective input from students, parents or teachers.

As teachers we spend a lot of time thinking about what we teach our students, and how to engage them in learning. When the National Governor’s Association (NGA) called for national education standards a few months back, some educators optimistically believed that we might be consulted in the process. After all, didn’t the entire No Child Left Behind fiasco teach us what happens when policies are enacted without the active engagement of the professionals expected to carry them out?”

(http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2009/07/national_standards_process_ign.html)

The Pirates of Education: Bill and Melinda Gates stand to make (more) millions from the taxpayer-funded database

Using standardized test results and teacher evaluations, Bill and Melinda Gates are building a database that will be used against children and teachers as noted here by Leonie Haimson of Parents Across America in the Huffington Post:

“This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the NY Board of Regents approved the state’s sharing of student and teacher information with a new national database, to be funded by the Gates Foundation, and designed by News Corp’s Wireless Generation. Other states that have already agreed to share this data, according to the NY State Education Department, include Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana and Massachusetts.

All this confidential student and teacher data will be held by a private limited corporation, called the Shared Learning Collaborative LLC, with even less accountability,  which in July was awarded $76.5 million by the Gates Foundation, to be spent over 7 months. According to an earlier NYT story,  $44 million of this funding will go straight into the pockets of Wireless Generation, owned by Murdoch’s News Corp and run by Joel Klein.”  ~ Leonie Haimson, Confidential Student and Teacher Data to be Provided to LLC Run by Gates and Murdoch

This Ain’t No Tea Party, This Ain’t No Disco, This Ain’t No Fooling Around…

So, after over 400 data points, including: religious affiliations ,voting habits, and living arrangements of parents are collected on your kids, a reasonable and legitimate question is:

Exactly who will gain access to this data and for what purposes?

Researcher and education blogger Paul Bogush observes that.

“….  The National Education Data Model is a P-20 data resource. P-20 is a preschool to work data base.  Think of it as a group that decides what language will be spoken in the country.  The language used to collect and access data is determined by the NEDM.  Think of McDonald’s. They don’t grow potatoes, but they decide what kind, the size, shape, and everyone follows along.  Or maybe Walmart is a better example.  They don’t make the socks, but they give manufacturers parameters and the manufacturers could decide to follow or perish. 

The NEDM doesn’t collect the data, they will provide one stop shopping for the data about your children…data for free! 400 points of data on children, and more data on teachers, and more on other people.  It is supported but not maintained by the Department of Education and under the auspices on the National Center for Education Statistics. It’s against federal code for the nation to maintain a national database on our kids.  So they are getting around this by saying they are simply promoting data linkages across states, and if all 50 are linked into database that connects every single kid in the nation, well…the government does not consider that a national database.” (http://blogush.edublogs.org/2013/03/17/a-post-for-the-common-core-lemmings/)

Moreover, as Bogush discovered, the data collected at taxpayer expense with be available at no charge to for-profit educational vendors.

“…these people who will be accessing the data to create new worksheets, teacher training, software, and a million other things will not have to pay a dime.  You children’s information will be given to them for free.  But it gets better…there are already companies, led by the people who were in charge of the non-profit groups that created the database, that will be ready to sell the data back to the states.  You got that right?  Your kid takes a test, the data is collected by state, the state submits it to the NEDM, and then a company who has the kids’ achievement in their best interests, accesses it, organizes it, and gives it back to the state…for a fee.”

(In part 3, we'll discuss the implementation of the standards, the impact so far, and the responses of parents and educators.)

File under: common-core, common-core-pushback, national-education-policy, teachers-don't-like-common-core, common-core-realities, parents-against-common-core

10 More Things to Do To Combat The Ill Effects of Common Core

re: 10 More Things You Can Do To Combat Common Core

1 Become a Hunger Games Mom or Dad.
   Raise the next Katniss Everdeen or Peeta Mellark.  (check out this wonderful blog post on how to
   do just that) http://nerdywithchildren.com/how-to-raise-the-next-katniss-everdeen

2.Develop the inner strength to resist authority.  Resistance is NOT futile.  The powers that be just
   like you to think it is.   Dr. Milgram's experiments with obedience to authority in the 1960's
   seemed to indicate that most people lack the inner resources needed to resist authority.  In other
   words- "Welcome to the Sheepdom."  This doesn't mean you have to be that way, though.  You
   can leave the herd and develop your resistance chops gradually.  By saying "No!" to the smaller,
   but still irritating edicts of the State, you will gain the confidence you need to tackle more
   serious issues.

3. Your Own Private Field Trip
    Once a quarter, take your kids out of school and allow them to design their own perfect
    learning experience. You might be surprised  to learn what really interests and motivates
   your child.  Find mentors that can show him or her what it is like to do a particular job.  You
   might go to a local restaurant and have your kid ask questions about what it's like to work as a chef,
   take a trip to an art museum, sail toy boats in the pond, build a model of a pyramid, volunteer to
   clean up your neighborhood park, do a wacky science experiment in the kitchen, make homemade
   donuts.  Return some of the wonder, joy, and excitement to the life of your child faster than Common
   Core robots siphon it out.

4. Celebrate uniqueness wherever you find it.  Your preschooler likes to wear one blue sneaker
    one yellow sparkly one?  Your middle school kid wants to dress like Gaga on Halloween?   First-
    grader insisting on coloring the skies in her world green?  LET THEM!   I know it's a bit much
    having to leave the house with a kid dressed in a pink tutu, brown cowboy boots, and Spongebob
    t-shirt.  But, don't you think your kid is made to conform enough throughout the day?  Common
   Core is only going to exacerbate the death of individuality.
   You've got the right to be who you are- let your children know that they have that same right.

5. Take a higher learning course  Demonstrate the joy of lifetime learning to your child
    by taking a course in a subject of interest to you.  Discuss what you are doing with your kids, show
    them your texts and workbooks and explain the subject matter and why it is of interest to you. The
    fantastic startup Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) allows you to take courses from some of
    the world's most prestigious universities online- fort FREE.

6. Learn to ask more interesting questions.  Nowadays, "what did you learn in school?" is more
    likely to be met with shrugs of indifference, rolling of eyes, or "Nothing."  Instead of taking the
    same old same old approach, think of new, more intriguing questions to ask.  "So, what did you
    learn today that you remember?  "Why did that make such an impression on you?"  Get specific.
   " I see in your syllabus that you had a lesson on Asia.  Was there anything you learned about Asia
    that surprised you?  Why?  "If you had the chance to teach others about Asia, what would you
   tell them?"  "What is it about this particular math operation that is giving you a hard time?"  
  Use open-ended questions that force your child to open up a bit more and show that you have been
  following their progress with interest.

7. Send questions to your child's teacher about what he or she is learning.  Teachers are pretty
    overwhelmed these days, but most of them will read your email or text and respond as quickly
    as they can.  If you determine that the teacher could be personally hostile to CC, lavish him or her
    with extra attention and encouragement.  Understand that district policies and fear of losing a job
    might make it extremely difficult for a teacher to fight Common Core.  Let them know they aren't
    alone.

8. Learn everything you can about how to be effective in a parent-teacher- school district 
    meeting.
    If this means taking an online course in persuasion and influence or public speaking- do it!
    You might only have one chance at the bully pulpit- make it count!

9. Write articles, press releases, send photos, etc. to your area newspapers and radio stations.
     If you aren't media-comfortable, find someone in your inner circle of monkeywrenchers who
     is and set them up to give interviews to the local press.

10. Get the Big Picture.  Believe it or not, Common Core is just one cog in the bigger control freak
      machine.  It's important to know, understand, and be conversant about the context which has led
     to the promulgation of Common Core and other attempts to re-invent society.  Start with learning
     about the shaky monetary system.  Chris Martenson's excellent "Crash Course" is a good place to
     start.  http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse.  I also post a lot of interviews with experts
     on privacy, the economy, corporatism, Obamacare, etc. on my Youtube page.
     http://www.youtube.com/tammydeleeuw


Good luck and chin up as you throw your monkeywrenches like a BOSS!

Tammy de Leeuw
www.myblendedmarketing.blogspot.com
www.ibankonme.blogspot.com




    
  

Ten Things You Can Do Right Now To Push Back Against Common Core

re:beyond the chatter... do things that MATTER!

by Tammy de Leeuw


If you're chomping at the bit to get off Facebook and out in the real world of common core, here are ten things you can do, right now, to push back.

1. Educate yourself.  Know the FACTS and the FAQS and be able to articulate them to anyone and everyone you meet.  Remember, it isn't just soccer moms in mini-vans who are affected by Common Core- it's ALL of us.
2. If you use social media, tweet and post useful comments and information.  Don't just voice your displeasure.  Tell others about available resources, local Common Core meetings, names and emails of people in your area who are pushing the Common Core agenda.
3. Find groups in your state devoted to opposing Common Core and support them any way you can.
4. Write to the people behind this monstrosity- not just Arne Duncan, but Melinda and Bill Gates, the Walton Foundation, Pearson, and others.  Anyone and everyone you can find who is benefiting from  Common Core.
5. Join as many anti-Common core groups on Facebook as possible.  Join the groups in other states and let them know you stand with them in their fight.  Post notes of encouragement, tell your success stories and challenges.  Solidarity is paramount in this fight.
6. If you are a parent and your kid is being harmed by CC, tell your story.  Scan in homework assignments and let other parents see what Common Core is all about.
7. Start your own blog and share it with as many people as you can.  Fill it full of personal stories, videos, and links to resources.
8. Stay away from politics as much as possible and focus on the larger issue: the encroachment of the Nanny State on your parental rights.  Look for like minded people on the opposite end of the political spectrum and join with them.  This issues transcends mere politics.
9. Keep up the pressure. Let your local, state, and national elected officials know that they will LOSE votes.  This seems to be the only thing that grabs their attention anymore.
10.Find, sign, and deliver a Common Core data opt-out to your school district office.  Tell them your kid will NOT be taking their 20 plus tests and you will not be cooperating with building the database. 

Now that the genie is out of the bottle on Common Core, I believe the ranks of those who oppose it will swell.  We cannot allow ourselves to be marginalized or dismissed by a motley crew of corporate fat cats, bottom-feeding lobbyists, and parasitic politicians.

If this 15-year-old can do it, so can you!

Independent Thought Alarm

re: watch out for those independent thoughts...