Woodstock CT Café

The following letter was mailed to Joe Courtney on Aug. 7th or 8th and copied to the Hartford Courant and the Town of Woodstock First Selectman’s Office. The letter was probably received by the recipients on Aug 10th or 11th. The author is a Resident of Stafford Springs who shall remain unnamed because we don’t know who actually mailed the letter to the Cafe on August 11. We received it today Aug. 12th.For those who don’t know, Mrs. Kaeding mentioned in the letter is Margaret Wholean of the DTC and former First Selectman. Admin

by Barbara Calkins 

Woes of Work 

My parents always told me it was wise to earn my way
But I simply must protest the fact that work just never pays
When I actually made good money, I paid the labor toll
Of ever growing aches and pains and now my bodies old
I lost and found a new job that doesn’t break my back
But the pay is half the wages and I just can’t live on that
So I try to work much harder, to live within my means
Though despite consistent income, my costs have all increased
I can’t control the taxes, I can’t control the rent
I can’t control the idiot we’ve got for president (Bush)
So I don’t buy any extras and I try to pay my bills
But without a raise or break on gas my efforts fall down hill
I work the extra hours, I do the extra deed
I wear the many duty hats and press at excess speed
But no matter what I’m saving or what extra bucks I bring
I am treated like a loser while the IRS is king
Though I’ve broken all the records of the sales folks come before
I never get a thank you and I’m always asked for more
I’m thought of as a number, and while that makes no common sense
The willingness to let me go keeps me serious and intense
And no matter how I shine here, I rarely get a raise
So I’m thinking this is just crazy and I should really change my ways
I might start my own endeavor and really take control
But by time I raise the start-up funds, I’ll be very, very old.
I once thought I’d use up savings, or cash out my IRA
Except the economic crisis has swept that entire dream away
So I guess I’ll have to take it, this freaking daily grind
And smile at rabid customers that chew on my behind
I’ll just have to live on less than and pray for better luck
So please forgive my deep resentment now, ‘CAUSE I DON’T GIVE A F**K!’
Just make sure I get my paycheck, and let me have my beer
Because my future feels abandoned by the dreams I held so dear
I’ll get up tomorrow morning though it may sound a little odd
But as bad as life is feeling now
At least I have a job.

© BJ Calkins 2008

by Newcomer

In following your discussion, I would agree that preventive care is key. Even some private companies that have developed incentive programs for employees taking up exercise, smoking cessation, and other preventive measures are finding savings in group premiums.

Your lenghty discussion of HMO’s can be summarized as follows: HMO’s suck. Ask any one of us who’s been stuck in one. There’s limited choice of physician; limited to those physicians who are “in network”. We learned many years ago after my mother suffered from severe illness for 11 years that there is a definite difference in care and service received from one doctor to another and from one medical facility to another. Even receiving a service as basic to some as dialysis, one would think that one dialysis center is as good as the next and costs the same as the next. Nope. The expression, “it pays to shop around” applies here. It pays in terms of actual cost savings but it also pays in terms of quality of care received. If only our Senators and Representatives could come up with a system that would encourage consumers/patients to shop around for the health care services they receive.

Think about it. We shop around for our auto insurance and our homeowner’s insurance, don’t we? We have the option to beef up those policies for ourselves as our circumstances and budget allow. If we want more coverage, we can add it by purchasing different levels of coverage within one company or by purchasing a rider to a base policy. And if we’re in a car accident, the government, nor the insurance company tells us who we can see to have our car fixed. The insurance company will certainly try to dictate that to us. Some states though have a law prohibiting this and allowing consumers to choose their own auto body repair shop.

Why don’t we do the same with our health insurance? Why don’t we have more choice about something as important as our own health? Right now, my health insurance is through my husband’s employer. We have no choice of more than one health insurer. His employer has an exclusive contract with one provider. The only “choice” we have is if we want to contribute less $ from his pay for the HMO or more $ from his pay for the PPO. I take the PPO everytime so we can at least choose our own health care providers. And now, even in the PPO, I have to get pre-approval, which is new this year. Read the rest of this entry »

by Pencilneck

I think the CBO report captures the problem in a nutshell in stating “In sum, expanded governmental support for preventive medical care would probably improve people’s health but would not generally reduce total spending on health care.” The report goes on to say “not only preventive services but medical services more generally could be evaluated in order to encourage high-value services of both types and discourage low-value ones.”

So increased preventive care would not reduce, but would not increase, total system costs, AND WOULD IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF THE POPULATION. Further, targeting preventive and medical services more rationally among high/low risk populations can improve the cost/benefit for those services, with the savings available to offset the expansion of care to the uninsured, a major benefit to the population as a whole.

As a side point, the report notes that savings from private medical insurance are not counted as offseting increased public expenditures, which I think biases the CBO’s result when talking about total systemic medical costs.

Take it in steps:

The CBO report says of preventive services applied to a broad population that 20% save money and 60% are breakeven; presumably, the last 20% lose money. The report does not say how much is saved by the first 20% or how much is lost by the last 20%. So applying these preventive services broadly will improve the health of the entire pool at some marginal cost or savings, of, say, “X”. This seems like it is probably worth doing and I think you have already drawn this conclusion if I am understanding you correctly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Becki and I were encouraged to visit Randy Morse’s potato and gourd patch after Randy received a lot of feed-back from the earlier pictures taken at the former Eddy Farm. This garden is located in the wilds of West Dudley. The pictures below were taken today after the highpoint of potato blooms several weeks ago. Nevertheless, this is a scene to behold. Look forward to an abundant supply of fresh potatoes and gourds in the coming months. I’m told that the Silver Queen will be ready in about a week and a half because of the cool summer. My favorite corn right now in the all yellow Golden Nugget.
[Click the thumbnail photos to see the full sized images.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to ‘Fagan’ we have the Woodstock Mechant’s website: http://www.explorewoodstock.com/

The Woodstock Merchant’s Association invites you to come and explore.

On Saturday August 15th, set SALE for a 1 day voyage to Woodstock CT’s fine shops. Each port will feature its own special SAIL. So keep your eyes on the look out for shops featuring a “Sailboat Banner.”  Drop Anchor and see what treasures yee may find.

“In these trying times we are all trying to just get by. Our businesses no mater how small do try to support our community as well as give back to the town.” a Woodstock Merchant

The notion that, if people took care of themselves, there would no need for a national health care system rubs me the wrong way. The use of premature mortality statistics by the CDC to measure unnecessary losses has established our needed public health priorities. The priorities only serve to dictate the need for a national health care system. On the health care delivery side, as the Norwich Bull reported on the 6th, Woodstock’s “Lee Wesler, a primary care physician, said he is frustrated with the mountains of paperwork required in health care and the restrictions of private insurance …he advocated for a single-payer system, where all health care would be paid for by a single fund.”

I recognize that the average person needs to do more to preserve health especially with regard to obesity, alcoholism, smoking, drug abuse, stress, diet, nutrition, etc. The national health care plan should address these issues (which are within our bounds of control).

However, we often are victims of our genes and/or happenstance in our lives which are beyond our control. For those of us fortunate enough to afford adequate health care, there is no problem. But for the large number of people who lack the resources that permit access to adequate physical and mental health care, relying on genes and happenstance are like rolling the dice to see whether you live or die prematurely. This misfortune extends to the children of these less fortunate. An extreme point of view here might be that these people should not be allowed to have kids like in China or Nazi Germany.

For the less fortunate there is no magic bullet. Read the rest of this entry »

see his complete announcement at http://courtney.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=141136

Here is an excerpt from the announcement:

“I am pleased to be able to announce this new federal grant for another eastern Connecticut fire department.  The work our firefighters and emergency responders perform is incredibly important to the safety of our communities and I will continue to support them in any way that I can,” stated Courtney. “I applaud the Bungay Fire Brigade for its proactive approach to meeting its needs.”

“I am pleased to be able to announce this new federal grant for another eastern Connecticut fire department.  The work our firefighters and emergency responders perform is incredibly important to the safety of our communities and I will continue to support them in any way that I can,” stated Courtney.

“I applaud the Bungay Fire Brigade for its proactive approach to meeting its needs.”

The Bungay Fire Brigade will be using the $38,000 grant to purchase and install a new cascade compressor air filling station.  The new compressor will be used to fill Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) tanks, which are critical to the safety of our firefighters.

The Daily Kos articles on last night’s meeting: article 1 and article 2 . We are getting traffic from the Daily Kos and CCAG. Thanks to CCAG and KOS.

Hi there!  It was nice meeting you last night, I just wanted to send you a quick note to say that I posted the videos on our site.  More are in our YouTube channel:  http://www.youtube.com/user/CCAGOnline

My brief recap and some highlight videos from last night:  http://ccag.net/content/woodstock-health-care-forum

These are the two best videos, IMO: 
1.  While explaining her health care situation, and how her Dr. is reluctant to order an MRI because her private insurance plan hasn’t been covering them, cancer-survivor Judith Stein is interrupted by a heckler who tells her to “switch”.  She promptly puts him in is place. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vucb0jBojZM

2.  The Woodstock RTC Secretary responds to Jenny Bass’ story by saying that the reason he doesn’t have any diseases is because he takes care of himself.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ_JGHERZhg

Online Organizer / CCAG

A video recording of the meeting can be found at www.ccag.net . Listen to Bill Sowka after the Jenny Bass statement.

by Meghan

Yes, you have to compliment Mr. Courtney for not taking the plan offered to Congress. What he neglected to mention is that he is still compensated the cash value of the plan. He can then put it toward a plan of his choice.

I have to agree with Mr. Sowka. Emotions were the attempted highlight of the evening. I also have to agree with his position of taking charge of your own health before expecting the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Ms. Bass related the heart attack suffered by her sister in law. It was during her pregnancy and it caused her to mis-carry the baby. That is sad and not easy to suffer through. Knowing that, did the doctor really think that trying to have another child was a wise move? She lost the second child also. Did she visit the doctor prior to her first pregnancy and have a thorough check up? They may have found the heart problem early enough to stop future problems.

Ms. Stein related that a woman on Medicare visiting family in another state had a health problem that caused her a lot of grief after the fact. She related that the woman had the wrong selection of Medicare and she wasn’t covered for all of the problems that she encountered. She said that the people she dealt with had complaints about health issues but all of them were on government run Medicare. She didn’t say that if that woman had visited her doctor for regular check ups they may have found the underlying cause of her problem. She didn’t explain that there are provisions in Medicare that allow for you to go out of plan for vacation travel. She didn’t mention that the paper work and sign up procedure for Medicare is a nightmare and it is her office that should clear these things up. She didn’t mention that at 65 you have no real option except Medicare.

The problems that exist in the insurance and health care fields are there but we shouldn’t be tossing out the existing system and replacing it with a untested government run one. One that in the end will creating untold expenses for our children.

Mr. Sowka has valid points, the ones that really should be the pillars upon which the system can begin the repair process. He enlightened me on the thugs that were placed around the room, I wondered who they were? I was wondering, after reading his post, what do the unions have to gain from supporting this farce of a plan? They do nothing for nothing do they? As luck would have it an email just showed up explaining that the union members are exempt from joining the mandatory plan. Being exempt will make being a member of a union more desirable, more members, more money for the unions. It will mean more unionization of business’ which will mean more business’ going out, closing. I for one could not afford to have a union in my place, I would have to fold.

Overall it was a fair meeting that didn’t really inform on specifics but it did let people think that their opinions were heard. All I heard was that Mr. Courtney has his mind made up and will stand behind the plan, if for no other reason he needs the future support of the DNC.

“We hope no schools have to close, but realistically, some schools will close this fall.”
“The decision to close actually rests with local school officials.”
“I’m dealing first and foremost as a parent. I want to keep my children safe and keep them learning.”
“School districts should use common sense. If you have one child sick, that’s one thing. If you have a whole host of children getting sick, that’s another,”
“Use common sense and encourage children to vigorously wash their hands several times a day and take other safety precautions.”
“Basically, this will be a tiered response. If there’s a handful of children at a school who might be sick, we want the parents to keep them home. If the numbers escalate dramatically, then we might have to close the schools.”
“The vaccine will be available by mid-October and that (he) wants schools to be principal sites for getting the shots.”
“The administration wants to avoid the chaos of last spring, when more than 700 schools in half the states closed their doors. There are about 132,000 public and private schools in the U.S.”
Duncan said at a swine flu summit last month that closing a school should be “a last resort, not a first resort.”
‘Every winter, regular flu outbreaks prompt a relatively small number of schools to close for a few days because of high absenteeism among students or staff.’
States and school districts should be preparing for the possibility of mass vaccinations.
Teachers should make plans to keep kids learning when schools do close.

Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education) was interviewed Friday on CBS’s The Early Show

by Bill Sowka

Thanks for posting Becki. Great pictures.

On Thursday August 6 the notorious “Healthcare Townhall Meeting” roadshow came to Woodstock, being sponsored by the Woodstock Democratic Town Committee and featured Congressman Joseph Courtney of the Connecticut 2nd District. Myself and several other WRTC members were in attendance. The extent of turnout was striking, despite that no communication of this event was provided by the WDTC or by Mr. Courtney. In fact, there was no mention of this meeting on Mr. Courtney’s website and when I called his Norwich office to inquire why this was not communicated, the aide could not articulate a reasonable response. I found this lack of communication to be a little startling, undemocratic, and undermining of a fair representative process. I spoke to several people from area towns who voiced the same concern. Is it no wonder then that tensions run high in these meetings and ironically, the people complaining about this tension are the ones who created it. In fact, even the Villager newspaper, our local source for newspaper information, found out just that morning. Regardless, people obviously found out one way or another and the Woodstock Academy cafeteria filled to the brim. Mr. Kaeding and Marjorie Wholean did a fine job at crowd control and while tensions were obviously high and polarization quite noticeable, disruption was kept at a minimum. It was obvious though, that, as being reported, union thugs were present and squelched any kind of outburst dissenting by those oppose the Democratic style of healthcare takeover. Kudos to all for avoiding any YouTube moments.

After Mr.Courtney’s brief opening remarks, he introduced attorney Judith Stein, founder and Executive Director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Willimantic. She gave us some historical background on Medicare and the honorable service she has done on its behalf. She was a very passionate, sincere person, but what disturbed me about her comments were that while she seemed to be reasonably intelligent, her take on the issue was not so much informational or substantiative, but rather, she began to emotionalize the whole issue by personalizing it and raising her voice to an irritating and pleaful pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

See the pictures below taken by Becki.

I don’t think too many people (in Woodstock) knew about a Health Care Town Hall meeting being held this evening at Woodstock Academy. We heard about it from ‘Dbrownie’ yesterday and couldn’t find any official verification, so we were left hanging in the wind. We did finally hear about it from a verifiable source and that’s when we posted the notice.

So, I went to see what was up. The notice about the event noted a time frame of 6-7 PM, but the actual time frame was 6:30 to 8:00 PM. When I arrived just before six, there were not too many cars around. I had parked in front, so can’t speak for the rear parking lot. About ten of us were slowly walking toward the Academy buildings. The doors of the library and the gymnasium/auditorium were locked. There weren’t any helpful signs about either. Someone mentioned that it was to be held in the student commons, so we headed for the cafeteria. Once inside the building, there were signs pointing the way to the commons.

As we arrived, we were asked to sign in and put on name tags… a little odd, but effective for constructing a contact data base for the Woodstock DTC and getting a sense of where people were from. Margie Wholean and Jim Kaeding were busy with last minute organization details, pressing the flesh and generally trying to stay on top of the ever increasing numbers of people arriving for the meeting. One poster-sized sign was leaned against the wall of the hallway, having been confiscated from an energetic attendee. There was an orchestrated effort underway to minimize the possible intentional interruption of the meeting – a phenomenon, occurring fairly regularly nationwide. I learned later from Margie that they hadn’t put out a huge notification of the meeting in an attempt to minimize that possibility… that’s why none of us could find reference or notice of the meeting.

I was impressed by how many people came to this meeting that nobody knew about. By the time Courtney arrived there were easily 200 people in the room. An additional eighty or so arrived after Joe started speaking. I have to say, it was a little unnerving to see so many people at a Woodstock meeting that I didn’t know!!! My best guess is that no more than 15% of the 270-300 attendees were from Woodstock (the Norwich Bull has reported 350 attendees). Certainly there were a number of people that came from all over the Second District to support Joe. There were a decent number of Woodstockers from the DTC. But there were a whole lot of people that were from all manner of hill a dale in Connecticut. They were from Waterford, New London, Vernon, Guilford, Somers, Vernon, Moosup, Eastford, Scotland, Ashford… just to name the ones I can remember. Read the rest of this entry »

The crowd still assembling

More of the crowd

Turn page and see Jim Kaeding with Joe Courtney

Read the rest of this entry »

What: Health Care Town Hall with
Rep. Joe Courtney

Where: Woodstock Academy
57 Academy Road
Woodstock, CT 06281

When: Thursday, August 6th
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.