Health care question: agree or disagree?

I’m writing today in a foul mood, having learned from an old friend with whom I’ve recently reestablished contact that he is going to be moving to Canada because he’s quite ill, has no medical insurance, and will not receive the extended treatment he needs if he stays in the United States….

Peope are nuts if they think free-market can work with healthcare. If you are having a medical emergency, how can you “shop around” for a good deal??? It’s impossible. Even if it is not an emergency, it often takes many visits to several doctors to get an opinion of what the problem is and how to treat it. Are we supposed to do that 3 times to get the best deal?

The only freemarket choice we end up having is to NOT get treatment and then we get sicker and die. While that does bring down the cost of health care, i don’t think it is the solution to cost control that anyone advocates (except for the most hardened and evil). And when it comes to decisions for our kids – that’s a damn hard choice for anyone to make.

For some reason, we never have any trouble coming up with money to bomb other countries and to maintain a military that is bigger than then that of the rest of the world combined. But taking care of our health is an insurmountable problem for some people.

I cannot understand it.

The world is awash in self-help books on nearly any topic you can imagine, and more books and eBooks emerge every day. The most powerful and convincing are self-help memoir, a blended genre that has not been formally defined. If you have the urge to teach people to do something you have done, the form is worth exploring.

Credible self-help books always include plenty of anecdotal evidence. The evidence may come from the authors’ lives or from other people they have helped. This evidence supports the validity of the material and creates a bond of trust between the reader and the author/expert. The evidence often takes the form of short anecdotes or case studies carved out of lives like a row of chicken livers displayed in a science project.

Inspirational memoirs recount how an individual overcame tough times or major challenges and lived to tell about it. These carefully crafted stories of strength, tenacity, resourcefulness, and other commendable traits are full of plot, conflict, tension, and character development. They have huge emotional appeal, leaving readers with the desire to overcome their own challenges, to be greater, better. To liberate their own greatness. But they are left to their own devices as they strive to do so. Purely inspirational memoirists refrain from offering formulas and guidelines.

Self-help memoir combine the best of both self-help books and inspirational memoir. The authors write gripping tales of experiences overcoming mighty challenges, then go on to explain how you can use their lessons to create the same results for yourself.

Two powerful examples:

LIBERATING GREATNESS by Hal Williamson and Sharon Eakes. Hal Williamson was diagnosed by experts as being seriously retarded during his early school years. While listening to the sermon in church near the end of junior high school, he heard a single thought that fell on fertile ground. He realized nobody had ever suggested he study harder. He decided to try. Hal retired as the lead patent attorney for a major corporation, his second such position. His life before and after that point has more twists, turns, ups and downs than the Screaming Thunderbolt roller coaster. The book is worth reading simply for his tension-filled page-turner of a story. But there is much more. Later in his life he discovered scientific explanations explaining his remarkable turn-around, and he developed a way of teaching others to use the techniques he had intuitively discovered. The book includes a step-by-step account of his process and its neuroscience underpinnings. Thousands have followed his example and attest to the success of the formula.

EVERYTHING MATTERS NOTHING MATTERS, by Gina Mazza Hillier. Gina begins her book about spiritual growth by urging readers to throw out all their self-help books — including her volume — and get on with the business of finding their personal path. Then she lays out seven steps readers can follow to live serenely in the midst of chaos. The steps are solid and well-advised. Nothing in her process is unique, but she does an outstanding job of presenting it in a fresh package, and the examples of her reported experiences as she developed her spiritual powers are edgy and thrilling. The book is not cataloged as memoir, but in the sense that it explores events from her life and what they meant to her, it qualifies as such. It includes a plot, plenty of tension, character development — all the elements of a great story are there, along with a clearly marked path for readers to follow.

If you follow Hal and Gina’s example, master the art of telling a fine story of your life experience, and combine that with specific instructions on how others can do the same thing, you’ll have a treasured resource that people will turn and return to.

State and Federal Courts have long struggled with balancing the interests of debtors and secured creditors when it comes to the issue of self-help repossession. Self-help repossession refers to a creditor’s seizure of property that is the security interest (or collateral) of a loan. For example, when a bank seizes a person’s car because he was delinquent on the car loan, the bank has performed self-help repossession.

Generally speaking, section 9-503 of the Uniform Commercial Code gives a secured creditor the right to take possession of collateral if the debtor falls delinquent on the loan. However, there are some limitations. For example, a creditor cannot repossess collateral if doing so involves a “breach of the peace.” A “breach of peace” is somewhat of an ambiguous term, however, the use of physical force to repossess a car for example would be considered unlawful.

Aside from litigation over whether a creditor has breached the peace, there has been a considerable amount of case law on the issue of whether a debtor is entitled to a hearing prior to repossession. The concerns to both parties are significant. The creditor is motivated to take possession of collateral quickly and inexpensively since delay could result in damage to the collateral, depreciation to the collateral, and/or time for an embittered debtor to thwart future repossession attempts. On the other hand, depriving a debtor of property without first being heard poses serious risks to the debtor. Often such “surprise” tactics leaves debtors without necessary housing or transportation. Further, repossession without a court hearing deprives a debtor without his “day in court.”

This is a similar argument to the one the plaintiff made in the Supreme Court case of Fuentes v. Shevin. That case involved the issue of whether repossession without judicial intervention violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as a deprivation of property without due process of law. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment only protects against state action. Since a secured creditor is considered a private party, it is immune from those Constitutional provisions. The subsequent case of Flagg Brothers v. Brooks contained a similar decision and creditor’s rights to self-help repossession have generally been immune against federal attack.

If you are a debtor facing repossession, you may want to be hasty in trying to resolve the issue with a creditor. Do not expect a court hearing first or you may find yourself without transportation.

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