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Medicare, Sex Offenders, County Jails, and Gay Games

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

1.  Medicare -      Last week, I told you that my mother-in-law had just had a massive cerebral hemorrhage and was not expected to survive.  Thankfully, she did survive.  She then underwent an amazing catheterization procedure to repair the aneurism in her brain, and, while things are still dicey at the moment, we are hopeful that she will make a good recovery.  This medical emergency happened while she was visiting a friend in Canada, and, as a result of this experience, we have learned that Medicare does not apply outside of the United States.  (Nor can Canadians use their government insurance outside of Canada.)  Whereas private health insurers generally cover you wherever you happen to be when a medical emergency strikes, our wonderfully expensive, obligatory government medical insurance leaves us totally bare if we happen to have a medical emergency outside the country. 

2.  Sex Offenders -        Kentucky has just toughened its sex offender law to further restrict where sex offenders can live after they get out of prison.  This seems to me to be just another example of government officials taking “feel good”, meaningless actions in order to appear to be doing something to solve a problem.  Whether a sex offender lives 1500 feet away from a park or 900 feet away will not have any effect on his ability to commit further sex crimes.  So, this new law gives the government a new way to harass sex offenders after they have served time, but it does not make us any safer.  Why not do something effective, like provide better police protection, or lock up dangerous criminals for longer periods of time to keep them off the street?

3.  County Jails - Apparently, the county jails in Kentucky are able to operate too economically to satisfy some people, so there is an agenda by some people to shift control of the county jails to the state, which would increase the cost and further centralize the power.  The latest complaint is that county jails are too crowded, requiring some prisoners to sleep on mattresses on the floor, and that they do not provide extensive educational and recreational opportunities beyond GED and anger management training. The claim is that this will result in the prisoners’ being more dangerous and likely to commit more crimes when released.  But where are the statistics to support this conclusion?  My guess is that a prisoner who does not have the most comfy accommodations and who has to provide community service instead of playing basketball might actually be less inclined to commit another crime. 

4.  Gay Games – We know there are Special Olympics, which give mentally disadvantaged people a chance to compete in athletics, and we know that women, who are generally at a physical disadvantage to men in sports, tend to have separate athletic competitions from men.  Both of these situations make sense as a way to give disadvantaged athletes an opportunity to compete, but what’s with the “gay games”?  Does a person’s sexual orientation affect his athletic ability, so that homosexuals require an entirely different league from everyone else?  If so, it’s news to me.

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