Can the government make my doctor pay more attention to me than her computer?

I am a healthy active 26 year and I am grateful to have health insurance through my employer. But I rarely use it. The last time I went to the doctor I had an appointment scheduled for 11am. I arrived early, but ended up waiting until 11:45 to be called in. After which I was lead to a cold, sterile room and was told that my doctor would be in shortly to see me. But she never did; see me. I waited for another 45 more minutes, and the doctor came in, introduced herself and sat down in a chair on the opposite end of the room from me and she faced the computer. I thought to myself, “The computer is not sick I am!” She then asked me questions and fervently typed into the computer. She barely looked at me, she hardly touched me, (except for with a cold stethoscope) and she made her diagnoses wrote me a prescription for something and sent me off to the pharmacy. I felt cheated. The computer got more attention than I did. I won’t go back unless it’s an emergency. When I was a kid the doctor use to comfort me, talk to me and offer me that very potent physiological medicine of attentive listening, gentle appropriate touch and genuine concern. Doctors need to remember they can make us feel better, as well as cure us. I am for health reform! But it needs to go beyond insurance companies, and health plans, the whole culture of medicine needs to change. Doctors need to see patients as people not machines.

Free flow scat in the park

Spectrum of sound and sight.
Multilingual chatter of voices and laughter.
The crashing of the fountain fills my ears and its cool mist soothes my sin
like cool drops of holy water on my skin.
Jazz music floats through the air infusing its creative sound, and sensation into everything.
I can feel it all come together vibrating
as if searching for a tonal climax.
Encircled by cement sitting areas, park benches, and trees, I sit back and relax.

The food vendors send their greasy aromas out wafting through the air,
inciting a rebellion against my hunger,
catching my belly in its lies.
The hustlers are hustling, doing their dances with their quick shifty glances, twisted smiles, and half cocked bloodshot eyes.
The chess players strategize, the intellectuals intellectualize, and the politicos politicize.
The bums are bumming change, while the jugglers juggle, and the smugglers smuggle and the dealers deal,
the birds chirp and I am the thief on the bench trying to steal
a smile, or perhaps a glance, or even a batting of the eye.
I am the poet in the shade searching for the perfect line.
In fact I am a bit surprised
that in the park
more pigeons in flight and pedestrians don't collide.

Waiting in vain...

Watching the sun come up on the city, trembling in the dark as internal walls carefully constructed over time came crumbling down. Resting peacefully in the arms of dawn. A night to remember and to know that I was not waiting in vain.

E Pluribus Unum

A living organism.

New York is a living organic city that seems to feed itself and its people on its own activity, the constant building up, tearing down and destruction, renovation and construction. The diversity here is like no where I have ever seen or experienced. When the founding fathers designed this country as a nation based on the principle of E Pluribus Unum, I don’t think that they had any idea of how vastly that principle would expand. America is baffling to me. It is a dynamic, flexible, mobile, shifting country solid in so far as its constitution and bill of rights are allowed to manifest and provide a strong legal framework for the multiple chords that are brought into harmony to make us one. I am baffled that from so many we can truly be, and remain one nation, despite our divisions. This unity amongst such diversity is the greatest weapon we have, it is our most valuable asset and our greatest strength, and it is our foundation. Without it we will surely parish into the infinite sands of history. However our unity without our diversity, without being able to harness the multitude of diverging rivers and streams that flow throughout this country, without being able to create and maintain our dynamic unity open for all those willing to be open to it, our unity will be false and inconsistent with the reality of our time. And our survival depends upon our real and honest assessment, and acceptance and invitation of our vast global diversity of today. The more people that become Americans, live in, or visit America from all over the world the better. For who could want to destroy what they are a part of? But that means we must build an America where everyone can be a part of it if they so choose. A kingdom divided against it must fall, but a kingdom that embraces diversity and difference can adapt and survive. There is yet hope for the future…