HB1005, an unelected political appointee to having way too much say in healthcare. Another run at government-run drug dens. Some physics for Friday: V has no meaning, only deltaV does.
HB 1005--putting the government further into your healthcare.
I wrote about the bill sponsored by Rep DeGruy Kennedy and others (see the first link below) not too long ago. I said I was hoping to testify at its first committee hearing.
Well, finally have a handle on when that will be. It's up for committee on 2/21 (see the second link for the bill's page), a Wednesday, which is tough for me to attend, so I wrote an open email and have already sent it.
This bill presents yet another government intrusion into your insurance and the free market, and in the fine style of Colorado Democrats, it does so by having an unelected official (the Colorado Insurance Commissioner) doing the work.
Well intentioned or no, there needs to be a point at which we say enough. Enough unelected, and unaccountable, people making decisions. Enough of the government interfering into the market. Not only is this decidedly NOT the proper role of government, but when is the last time the government got in the mix and people said "golly, letting the government handle this has resulted in the problems just melting away!"
If this issue is a passion, and/or if you have some knowledge about the issue to share, please consider emailing and/or testifying. Whether we agree or not, perhaps your knowledge of the issue would let you have the foresight to point out a mistake that we could at least fix now and avoid in the future.
Email below the links.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/if-his-bill-passes-degruy-kennedys?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb24-1005
An open email to the sponsors of HB24-1005, Health Insurers Contract with Qualified Providers, and the House Health and Human Services Committee.
Hello to all,
My name is Cory Gaines. I'm a lifelong resident of Colorado. I'm writing today on my own behalf and I write in opposition to this bill.
I read in a Jan 18th article by The Sum and Substance that Representative DeGruy Kennedy had put forth HB 24 - 1005 as a legacy, as something he sees as "...long-lasting improvements to the state's health care system."
I take a different view on this bill. I don't imagine that Rep DeGruy Kennedy is intending ill with this bill, but I think his bill will not involve long-lasting improvements.
This bill is, in fact, another overreach by the state government. It is in keeping with a trend citizens of Colorado have seen too much of laely: huge decisions being given to unelected (and unaccountable) government officials.
I think it is reasonable to argue how much government interference in society and the market we should have, and how much this intervention/intrusion has helped or hurt, but no reasonable individual would argue that the government stepping in on private affairs is consequence free and always a good thing.
This is a step, therefore, that should be undertaken with care to avoid creating a whole slew of new problems. It is also a step that should allow for those that get affected to be able to speak up and/or ask for solutions to the inevitable problems that will occur.
When you send weighty matters like healthcare and health insurance to a single office in state government, tasking a single unelected official to make decisions like these, you are setting this program up for difficulties.
One single individual, who is not accountable to the public, will not be responsive to the needs and wants of the diverse groups of consumers across this state. The same can be said for providers. He or she cannot possibly create a program that fits everyone. If and when problems in this individual's decisions come up, how sure can we be that consumers and their needs will get heard?
No. A single official, a political appointee, will be responsive to the person and the party that put him or her in that job. He or she doesn't need to talk to people--their job doesn't depend on it.
I urge this committee to tell the sponsor that the idea of being able to keep your primary care doc when you switch jobs is a good one, but the mechanism of this bill goes about it in the wrong way. I urge a no vote.
Thank you,
Cory
Another run at government-run drug dens.
I have posted numerous times in the past about some of the more progressive members of the Democrat caucus running so-called "safe use" sites for drugs. See the first link below for my most recent post.
In that post I said these bills were like the Terminator because they keep coming back. And, true to form, we have one this Assembly session. It's linked second below. This one's up for committee on Tuesday the 20th and I am hoping to be able to testify on it.
I am not sure if this bill stands much of a chance. Rumors I hear (and heard in the past) are that it's pretty well dead in the water because Polis is, in a rare instance of him showing some sense and standing up to the hardliners in his party, a hard no.
I still intend to speak if possible, however, because both this bill's sponsors and its supporters need to hear some opposing viewpoints. They need to hear about how I do not like the idea that I'm forced into supporting something I find morally repugnant.
That is, I do not want to, in any way, be helping someone do something that I do not support.
If you feel similarly, I invite you to join me in speaking up, either in person or in writing.
One last niblet. The picture I attached here is from an NPR article about a site like this in Vancouver. I put it up so you could note the contrast. I do not expect these places to look like a crackhouse, but the lighting and cleanliness do not matter. You can dress up and sanitize any number of things to try and make them seem less wrong. That changes nothing about the morality of the issue, however.
https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/govt-sponsored-drug-dens-like-the?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Foverdose%2520prevention&utm_medium=reader2
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb24-1037
When it comes to voltage, only a difference of voltage has physical meaning.
That time of the week again. Last post til Sunday so time for something informative not related to politics.
Shortly after the polar vortex a few weeks back, we had a warmup that felt like summer. I got curious to read up on polar vortices and in so doing found the article below which had the sad story of 3 adults dying after a downed powerline touched their car.
When they stepped out, they died. See screenshot 1 from the article.
I made a mental note to share this with my class and wanted to share with you as well, because there is a connection here to why it is that birds can happily sit on wires with hundreds or thousands of volts and not be harmed.
Let's back up a step. Voltage (sometimes also referred to as potential) is a measure of energy per unit charge. In other words, one unit of electrical charge moved across 12 V of potential would gain 12 units of energy.
But (and I'll skip the why), the value of a potential on its own has no physical meaning because you can put the zero point of potential wherever you'd like. Right now I am free to say that I am at 0 V, 115000 V, -5 million V, it doesn't matter.
The only thing that has physical meaning is a DIFFERENCE of potential. That is the only thing that has physical meaning because only where there is a difference of potential can you start to move charge.
That brings us to another way you can look at potential. You can think of it similar to a "pressure". You only get flow in a pipe or in the atmosphere when there is a difference of pressure, and thus the only way charge flows is if there's a difference of potential.
The common feature of the people in the car and the birds on a wire is exactly that. As long as the people stayed in the car where the rubber tires insulated them from the ground, they would have been at the same high potential as a bird on a high tension wire (see the pretty little dove in screenshot 2), and they would have been safe.
Only by stepping out of the car such that their hands touching the car were at a high potential with their feet at 0 V did they get hurt (if you read the article you'll note that the baby who thankfully stayed in the car was not harmed), did electrical charge cross their bodies and deposit energy into their tissues causing trauma and eventually death.
I'll wrap with a quick quiz question for you. Take a look at screenshot 3. It shows a potential "map" of voltages around a tree during a thunderstorm where charge is building and a lightning strike is imminent. This one's a favorite for use in my physics classes. As a help, think of this map as being the electrical equivalent of contour maps used to show various heights.
Which of the two cows would be more likely to get struck by lightning and or hurt by lightning that hit tree?
If you said Cow A (the brown one) you'd be right. See how her front and hind feet cross over two different voltage values? Compare this with Cow B where both sets of feet are roughly at the same voltage.
That difference in potential will make Cow A much likelier to have a current run through her.
That's it for today. Have a good afternoon and back at it Sunday!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/live-blog/winter-weather-live-updates-rcna134247