Winter Break

I've been on vacation from work since the 21st. I didn't make plans to travel anywhere this year since I just wanted some time to relax in CT. I've used the past week to establish a regular routine at the gym, read, shop, and basically just relax.

I recently finished a very good book about the fast food industry and I am reading another somewhat interesting book about our ineffective tax code. Both books are reinforcing my liberal political views and my general contempt for our political system and how it caters to the minority that provide them with the funds needed to get elected as opposed to the best interests of our nation. I'll try to put up a short review of each book later this week.

I should clarify some comments from my last post. I think I was a little steamed about that story when I made my post. After thinking the situation over some more, I do not believe that an insurance company should ever have final say in approving high cost treatments for patients such as an organ transplant. It's clearly a conflict of interest, regardless of whether the intentions of the insurance company are pure. However, I don't think that these expensive procedures should be solely at the discretion of the physicians directly involved with the case either. If an independent organization that delegates and approves organ assignments to a specific patient on a centralized list after considering the details of their case, that should be considered tacit improvement for the procedure and the insurance company must comply (unless the insurance policy explicitly excludes transplants...but that is an unrelated issue). That's not necessarily consistent with what I wrote last week, but I think it's a more reasonable perspective after stepping back and trying to be as unbiased as possible.