Healthcare Advertising

One doesn't have to be a Wharton Grad or a Harvard MBA to see that a major part of medical dollars are being used by Hospitals, Doctors, Drug Companies, indeed by the entire medical establishment, for ADVERTISING (q.v. on any TV program) to compete against one another for the dollar of the consumer, especially the sick consumer who has little choice when an illness arises. This broad net also includes the gullible consumer who is impelled to "Ask your Doctor if ________ is right for you," by ads that plant suggestions of possible maladies or conditions. It's just disgusting, and no one seems to be talking about it in this discussion of HealthCare.

And now we are seeing more "Harry and Louise" type ads threatening that people will lose their current meager and expensive healthcare coverage if the government does anything to subsidize healthcare - this is just more advertising dollars being spent, to prevent us from benefiting from a program that might help us financially and cut into the profits of these same medical advertisers!!!

The best thing the government could do is prohibit all medical advertising; in the absence of that, establish a government program that is NON-PROFIT, non-advertising, and competes with the for-profit industry that currently takes advantage of people who are sick to keep medical industry people in the acoutrements that come with ill-gained wealth (pun intended).

If you took all the money the medical industry spends on advertising, you could make a pretty good health system just with that. Imagine!

Henry Francisco, Special to

The Port Whitman Times

Public Radio FundRaising

PUBLIC RADIO:
Your fundraising, begging on the radio, getting in the WAY like a homeless person on a steam grate with his hand out, is frankly, boring, and barely relevant only to the extent that, IF your broadcast voices are to be believed (and one wonders if as many pledges actually come in and come through with contributions as one hears telephone rings during your fundraising interruptions), some cash is produced.

But to a large portion of your audience, those who have already contributed or those who don't contribute, they are a major turnoff, literally losing your listeners during the time the begging takes place. It would seem that the idea of radio is to keep people listening, not to repel them at this most important time, but I would venture to say this is exactly what your fundraising by begging actually does - repels us. Don't we see enough begging by the steam-grate set, the cardboard box set, the windshield cleaner set? What do we think when confronted with these people - and barely people, too - "Get a job. Do something productive, stop lying around waiting for the world to come support you. Earn your keep, 'cause we're tired of throwing money at you and seeing you descend further into your situation." Public Radio does do something productive, but your fund-raising puts you in their class.

Question: Do the people whose books and films and other projects rate an hour of your airtime pay anything for this advertising? Do they even rise to contribute the minimal membership level?

With the high degree of communication you have with your audience, it would seem that there would be better alternatives to raising money than naked begging.

Henry Francisco, Special to

The Port Whitman Times

"Born Gay"?

I probably was "born Gay."

At least, if you look at me, as a youth, and maybe even now, you might come to that conclusion; in fact there are those who have, and thus deprived me of things thought I ought to have had, given me things I didn't want, but more of that at another time. I am not now, nor have I ever been, or even thought of myself as, a Gay person. As an actor I've played gay characters, which of course is what led others, gullible others, to think I really was gay, er, am gay. But No, I'm not gay. I've experimented with homosexual acts, and found them wanting, of intimacy, of sensuality, of, ok, naturalness if you want to get biblical. Yet I am not afraid of gay, nor do I care much anymore if people think I am or don't, for I know what I am, and am happy with that.

But I realize there are people, strict biblical adherents, who are basically afraid of gay-ness, of homosexuality, to wit the movements in various states against gay "marriage" or civil unions. I also realize that if we who are "born" gay can claim so, we throw up a heavenly defense against such arch-anti-activists, using their own scripturalness as our shield. "God made me the way that I am." That's it.

I don't buy it. I still believe what you do (leave out whether you are this or are that), the way you approach life, love, sex, is a matter of choice, and even if you want to put a name on it, still your choice. It's a free country, isn't that what we all believe? So if we choose to be gay, straight, lesbian, bi-sexual, or celibate, it's nobody's business. Nobody's. And if we want to form a lifetime union with another person capable of making the same decision, okay. You choose your person, I'll choose mine. What counts is the legal rights of what follows such a union. Ay, there's the rub, does the partner have not only conjugal but legal rights such as survivorship, family insurance, or obligations of debt and liability? The rub to be sure.

In our make-your-choice world either of super-macho ballplayers or nerdy information technologists, of the cartooning of everyone from jet pilots to hamburger flippers, "gay" or "straight" are convenient boxes in which to store images of personalities when one's mind is not of a diacritical nature, and used to simply classifying and storing away icons for convenience. That's the kind of world we live in, here in the good old USA, where advertising rules the way we think, if not advertising, then the situation episodes that surround it. TV is boss, no matter if one watches news, sports, "reality," discussion, late-night, early-morning, after all it's just what's happening, and it's all happening at light-speed, in high-def. Hey, the real story of who we are is in the ads, where we are told what we might want and how to get it, what we might have and the pills to cure it, what we might get later and how to plan for it, our entire life, if we believe what they say, and the sad part is, when you come right down to it, mostly we do, when they are just ways to part us from our cash.

Back to this "born"-ness, this defense against those who would suspect that those who are of another mind than their own, might proselytize their offspring to get them to make a "decision" to be one way or another, a way not in concert with their own wishes. Frankly, I believe "born"-ness is a cop-out, a rationalization by gay people about the path they have chosen, when such a decision could just be made on its own merits, and to hell with the rest of the world and the way they might think. It's easier to say "Oh, I was born gay," i.e., "Born the way I am." - "and my circumstances had nothing to do with it." Please. Circumstances have everything to do with it, where you are born, where you grow up, how old you are when you start school, how big or small you turn out to be at different ages, all of it (Read "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell). Born is only one circumstance, one among thousands. Stand up, be a man, or a woman, and say I'm in charge of my own destiny, and I choose this or that, and I'll live with it. If you want to hire me or fire me, if my performance is more or less than you want, fire me for that, not for some silly none-of-your-business-ness.

The increasing examples of gay or lesbian couples raising children lends credibility to the argument that it is a decision, not a predetermination, that directs a person to either lifestyle. After all, wouldn't those raising children in a gay or lesbian home be the first to declare, and be even more firm in the declaration that the child has the right to decide, that the "parents" don't make any indication for the child as to how the child was born, only get to determine how the child is raised. The child thus has the opportunity to see first-hand whether the gay lifestyle is right for him or her, and that's the way it really is, until the "born that way" - ers muck it up with their theory of how God made us. How easy it would be for two homosexuals living together parenting a child, to lead that youngster into believing he or she was "born" this way or that, and thus indicate a direction for that young life. So you would think that gay persons raising children would be the first (and second) to deny the "born gay" rationalization, no?

Henry Francisco, Special to

The Port Whitman Times