It’s the beginning of 2010, and I’ve gotta set my goals! Last year I gave up buying plastic water bottles, and it worked! I recommend it to everyone. We saved lots of money, and got attached to our water bottles and filtering system. It works just fine, and now we’ve got more room in the refrigerator for BEER! ☺

So here are the resolutions:

• More writing: journal every day, on paper. Some stuff didn’t get recorded last year because I didn’t want to share it with the world. So I need to organize my thoughts on paper first.
• More exercise: get in that gym, at least twice a week.
• More travel: including within DC. There are some great exhibits and museums that I need to see. Concerts and shows, too!
• Home improvement: continue to green my lifestyle, purge the junk and organize the good stuff.
• Taco night on Mondays: to simplify menu planning and because we like tacos. ☺

Wish me luck, and I wish you luck with your resolutions… if you’ve made them? If you haven’t yet, I hereby give you til the end of January to come up with some. We’ve got 11 months to go, folks. That’s a lot of time to pick something to improve on or have fun with.

Most importantly,

★  ♪ ♫   Happy New Year! ♪ ♫ ♪ ★

When I hear people worried that the Government is going to get between them and their doctor, I suggest they take a good look at the decisions being made about their health care dollars now.

My insurance tells me which doctors and hospitals I can go to, which drugs I can order, which orthopedic apparatus I can use should I sprain or break something. If I wanted psychological counseling, my insurance tells me how much of that is allowable. Seriously. Not my doctor, my therapist or the government. In my case, it’s Aetna that determines what is best for my well-being.

My insurance insists that I pay EXTRA for the birth control medicine that DOESN’T make me break out, because it’s BRAND NAME MEDICINE. That’s Aetna getting between me and my doctor. Why should it cost more for me to use the medicine that works better?

My husband decided to work for himself a couple of years ago. His former company offered him a COBRA plan. At $600+ per month! How is that reasonable? In the 90s I took advantage of the COBRA deal at less than $100 per month, and it was very helpful between jobs. But at over $600 per month, he was better off paying full price for prescriptions and hoping he didn’t break any bones until we came up with another solution.

I suggest that some government regulation of the health care industry is needed.

1. Prescription coverage should be simplified. Why can’t all drugs have one price? Why are there lists A and B? I remember my grandmother had a rainbow of pills to take, and I am rapidly catching up to her at 38 years old. This stuff gets confusing. There’s no reason for it, though. Why should I pay $1 for antibiotics and $60 for brand-name birth control? Even it out and pay $25 for each.
2. No one can be rejected for coverage. Even if we don’t reach the standard of requiring health care for everyone, we absolutely cannot reject people for pre-existing conditions. These are the people that need coverage most, and should be given credit for getting coverage.
3. COBRA has to be brought down to earth. $600 is not a reasonable monthly payment for insurance. And it’s not near what the estimates were for individually purchased insurance. So why was COBRA that high? We cannot expect a person who is leaving a job to pay such a high amount for insurance.
4. Dental and vision need to be included. These are medical benefits. Treatments for your eyes and teeth cost real money. Neglecting these parts of your body is just as dangerous as neglecting your knee or your finger, if not more so. Putting this insurance into a separate category is simply a joke.

We do need more, but these changes will put us well on our way.

The President has once again spelled out his thoughts on Why We Need Health Care Reform, in The New York Times Op Ed page, and I agree. I hope you’ll read his thoughts and chime in. And call your Senator and Representative.

UPDATE: Here’s the White House point of view, at WhiteHouse.gov/RealityCheck.

I fell flat on my face last Friday.

People use that expression, but like many other cliches, they don’t really mean it.

For me, this is the second time I’ve fallen flat on my face, and I should clarify. I did catch my face a bit with my right hand, my left elbow and my reading glasses. So the damage was less severe than last time.

Last time, I caught myself with my nose. THAT was a pure fall-on-one’s-face moment.

What I learned last time was useful this time, and I’m happy to share these tips with you:

1. Go to a hospital that has a plastic surgeon on call. (In DC, I recommend Sibley Hospital.)
2. If you didn’t get to choose your hospital, be sure to ask about that plastic surgeon. They really do things like stitches. I know.
3. Don’t let the doctor leave without telling you how MANY stitches you got. Even if you are a grown woman. People will ask.
4. Expect questions about what ‘cool’ prescription pain medications you might have received.
5. Also expect jokes about Rocky, bar fights, what the other guy looked like, and how drunk you were, even if you are a grown woman.

In my case, the answers are: 8 stitches (blue), no cool prescriptions, and I was sober, by myself and at work.

Or maybe I’m just saying that because of that first rule about Fight Club.

A couple of years ago, I got a frantic call from my husband. He’d been hit by a car on his way to work. I remember feeling so helpless — I was all the way across town, and I wanted to teleport myself to his side. I had so many questions and horrible pictures in my head. (Luckily he escaped with only some injuries to his arm and is now fully recuperated.)

In September 2001 I was helping run a government conference in College Park, Maryland. We heard a plane had crashed in Manhattan. We wondered if we should let our attendees know. Then the second plane crashed in Manhattan and one crashed into the Pentagon. Almost everyone at our conference knew someone who worked at the Pentagon or nearby and the conference screeched to a halt. Everyone had someone they wanted to contact, to check on or to let someone know they were okay. The Twin Towers were tragic, but the Pentagon was HERE. And we KNEW those people.

Last Monday, June 22, 2009, will unfortunately be as memorable a date for a number of families in the Washington area as September 11 is for many Americans. The Metro crash on the red line brought sudden, senseless tragedy on at least 8 families (of the 9 who died, two were a married couple) and it’s hard to forget a day like that.

But even more families probably got phone calls like I did, letting them know that their loved one was on one of the trains that was involved in the collision. Some of them had to track down their spouse or son or daughter at one of the area hospitals.

That is a frantic search, and a painful period of not knowing what state your loved one is in. And any survivors with serious injuries may be dealing with corrective surgery for months to come. And health care bills and insurance nightmares. This Metro crash is going to change their life for the foreseable future.

All my love goes out to all of you who were involved in that horrible Metro crash. I haven’t forgotten you. Even though we also lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson this week, I still care most about the Washingtonians that are suffering.

If your New Years resolution has to do with losing weight, working out, or saving money, check out http://www.livestrong.com/ – I dare you.

This is a great tracking site for those of us who need someone to check on us to make sure we’re doing our homework. Also great if you just need a friend to commiserate with you.

The basic premise is DARE to change your life. And take your friends with you. Lance Armstrong seems to recognize that it takes strength to make change in your life, whether that’s coming back from a life-threatening disease or paying off your credit card. Either way, you need support from friends and strangers. And here it is, in a bright, friendly website with easy to use web 2.0 tools. No excuses. It’s been around for a while, but they just launched an iPhone/iPod touch app that syncs with the website.

Make your resolutions, folks. I dare you.