"Health care 'reformers' keep talking about getting us more health insurance. Then they talk about cutting costs. This is contradictory nonsense.

Insurance, whether private or a government Ponzi scheme like Medicare, means third parties pay the bills. When someone else pays, costs always go up. Imagine if you had grocery insurance. You wouldn't care how much food cost. Why shop around? If someone else were paying 80 percent, you'd buy the most expensive cuts of meat. Prices would skyrocket.

That's what health insurance does to medical care. Patients rarely even ask what anything costs. Doctors often don't know. ... Patients rarely ask, 'Is that MRI really necessary? Is there a cheaper place?' We consume without thinking.

By contrast, in areas of medicine where most patients pay their own way, service gets better, while prices fall. ... This shouldn't be a surprise. What holds costs down is patients acting like consumers, looking out for themselves in a competitive market. Providers fight to win business by keeping costs down and quality up.

Yet politicians keep telling us the solution is more insurance. And they mean insurance not just for catastrophic diseases that could bankrupt us but also for routine treatments. The politicians are so oblivious to reality that they are on course to make things worse."

--ABC's "20/20" co-anchor John Stossel

(Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Works that way with everything if you look at it. WalMart undercuts the local shops when they move into townand once they get you there, prices start going up. Makes sense healthcare would work the same way. Doctors don't work for you and your money anymore -- they work for big pharma and the government. What you want, who you want to see for this or that, what treatments you want or refuse don't play into any of it. You're just a tool to get money into someone else's pockets.)

Fencing, bugs, rain...and some H1N1 links

We are, despite rain and nasty storms moving around us, back out today with fencing. It's not going as planned at all.

Big surprise, right? Does anything go as planned? Fencing sure doesn't, at least not in our case. It has taken 2 full days to get the first 350 ft of goat fencing up. Now, granted, you're talking one lone man and assorted children as helpers, but still...we should have gotten farther along than that by now.

The main problem isn't the lack of help, or the rains, or even the temps being high...it's the fact that I live on a 20 acre CEMENT homstead. I am not exaggerating at all. I am being very descriptive and very literal here. My dear husband isn't some weak milksop. He isn't one of those sorts without commonsense or ingenuity either. What we lack in equipment, we make up for in brain and willpower here. (Good thing, too, because we lack a lot of equipment!)

We are going about fencing the old fashioned way...post hole diggers, tractor puller, and a 75 pound post pounder thingie. We are going bush with half the fence for lack of a more direct (or even indirect route, for that matter) across the back section. We've been sawing, chopping and pulling weeds grasses and brush to clear a pathway for the fence.

We can't use the post hole diggers at all. The ground is too hard. Even with the wicked storms that have crossed through soaking the ground decent enough. They won't break the surface, period. A neighbor was adding to his pasture and literally sheared his auger in two putting in post holes.

So, no wood posts period on our fence. Maybe when the autumn rainy season strikes we can go back and add them in. For now it's metal T-posts and standing trees for fence runners. And the T-posts don't go in any easier. What would take a fairly short amount of pounding to put in is taking a long while of pounding :o(

Let me tell you, that blasted fence ain't going no where, that's for sure! No Quickcrete set up for us -- I cultivate that right here in my clay soil.

The goats are doing great. Everyone gets along with everyone else, the buck is such a sweetheart, and with the youngest addition to our new herd our blind goat has a companion. Abigail, the 4 month old has taken to KatiBug straight off. Cotton, our female Great Pyr, is intimidated by the buck. He had a male Pyr, so that could be his main problem with her. Once Buddy was put in the temp pen he calmed right down and ignored Cotton. We'll keep her with the ladies I guess and let the boys have a 'bachelor pasture' to themselves :o)

Well, here are the articles on the pandemic updates and cytokine storm information. Use what you can and store the rest of the inforation for later when you might wish you still had it. I'm off for more fencing....

http://www.survivalblog.com/asianflu.html

This is a great article with good practical advice as to protecting your family during another wave outbreak of the H1N1 flu this coming fall.

SurvivalBlog.com has a good post about H1N1 updates in terms of vaccinations, mutation strains and cytokine storms. Good reading with plenty of links to resources with even more information I have issues posting links 'as is' between my reader and the cell phone posts here, so just go to http://www.survivalblog.com and start reading :o)