I've been thinking long and hard about government health care, especially after we published this piece by Missouri state Rep. Chris Kelly earlier this week.

President Barack Obama, of course, wants to get government into the health care game as well. In the conservative press and among my more conservative contacts, I see a lot of good arguments against it. No. 1 on that list is cost, especially as it pertains to those who don't pay in the same amount, if any.

I have no desire to help any able-bodied person who is just too lazy to work. I expect other people to pay their bills, live within their means and not be a menace to the public good. In return, I'll show you the same courtesy.

You and me are all cool, right?

So my primary beef with government health care is the fact I don't want my tax dollars paying for some lazy bum's health problems, especially if they're of his or her own doing. Party all you want, but don't come to me to pay the bill. In return, I won't ask you for help paying my monthly premiums. Deal?

What is the solution? Well, it begins with tort reform. If you protect doctors and hospitals better from baloney lawsuits while still giving recourse to legitimate plaintiffs, insurance rates will go down. It may take a little corrective legislation to get them down, but they'll go down and the big companies can still make a nice profit.

With insurance rates down, doctors and hospitals won't be paying as much in premiums, and their fees can come down. Plus, with insurance rates down, more people will be able to afford it.

At the same time, you have to address the prescription drug problem. Let's take advantage of NAFTA and bring Canadian drugs into the country to compete. U.S. companies will drop prices like a bad habit.

And if you are going to have some form of government health care, it should be limited to vouchers. I'm all for helping the poorest among us who legitimately need assistance until you can get back on your feet. But let them have the freedom and responsibility to choose their own insurance, their own doctor and their own course of actions. And if you find anyone abusing the system, throw the book at them.

Now, let's get real for a moment: Do you see your government ever getting all of that done in any kind of efficient manner? I'm betting no; hence the title of this blog.

So why not try it. Maybe it will do some good and we'll all be happily surprised. And if it fails miserably, maybe then we can take up my free market ideas. But right now, government health care seems better than the status quo. Let's compare and contrast:

Major arguments against government health care                                                     Major arguments against current system
It's expensive                                                                                                                     It's expensive
It's inefficient                                                                                                                     It's inefficient
Lack of choice in insurance plan                                                                                       Lack of choice in insurance plan
It goes against America's free market principals                                                               It goes against America's free market principals

Now, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I'd like to share some ideas of how this could be negotiated at the state or federal level. Specifically, if conservatives are going to give government health care a shot, what should they get in return? After all, it's a big risk they'd be taking, and surely you need to find some spending somewhere that will help offset the extra costs.

Proposals:

• Flat tax. If you truly want to solve the problem of class warfare and end the argument over who carries the tax burden in this country, this is the way to go. I'll pay my X percent, Bill Gates will pay his, you'll pay yours. Thereby, nobody gains or loses because of their success. And I'll leave it to someone much smarter than me to figure out what X is.
  
• Tobacco money. Too much of it is tied up in smoking prevention, and it's a waste of money. If you don't know by now smoking kills you, I don't know what a prevention program is going to do. Yes, keep some of the money in cessation programs -- those are important when people want to quit. But take the prevention money and put it into the budget.
  
• Earmarks. Just stop them. There are just some things we can't do right now.
  

I'm sure there are plenty of other good ideas out there that could be discussed as well.

The bottom line is this: Do something. The status quo isn't working.

So much for the HMR diet. We lasted about a day. It took me another week or so to find the time (and courage) to blog about our failure.

Here's what we didn't like about the diet:

• The shakes tasted OK, but they were like drinking liquid Ex-Lax. I'm sure that's intentional, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind.
  
• The pre-made dinners were OK, but they were sure small. I supplemented a lot of fruits and veggies, but I still found myself hungry all the time.
  

So much for trying it for three weeks. Luckily, we did get our money back -- sort of. Two of Jenny's co-workers who love the diet agreed to buy the food from us, so we only ended up losing about $50 on this experiment.

Now that I've had some time to reflect, I think the biggest thing we did wrong was jump right into it. We went from eating pretty much whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to a highly regimented diet plan that looks, tastes and smells nothing like what we've been used to eating. Gradually getting into the diet would have made it less of a shock and made for a better chance of success.

I will say this for HMR: They're on the front lines of today's social networking tools. When I tweeted that I was giving up the diet already, I got this reply back a short time later:
Someone in their marketing department sure knows what they're doing.

So the best part about dropping the diet? I was officially voted in as an assistant professor (along with my esteemed colleague Laura Johnston) at Friday's faculty meeting. My boss was nice enough to buy a cake for the occasion. Thank goodness I wasn't on the diet then, eh?

So it's been a good, long spell since I last made a real attempt to lose weight. In fact, I've been pretty well satisfied with just existing ever since dropping my gym membership more than a year ago.

But now Jenny and I are determined to try out a new diet that is being offered through her work, Columbia's Women's Wellness Center. The program is offered through Health Management Resources. The specific plan we're doing includes pre-packaged entrees and shakes, plus all the fruits and vegetables we want. As we're actually now on the cusp of doing it (we start in the morning), I'm having second thoughts.

No more Coke. No more sweets. No more eating what I want when I want. Instead, I'll be on prepackaged foods and shakes. I'm going to need a lot of support.

Then there's the whole taste factor, which is the big x-factor for me right now. The chocolate shakes mix with water and ice, or it can be whipped into a pudding. Somehow, this doesn't have me feeling hopeful I'm going to like it.

The food looks tiny. You get two entrees a day, each running around 200 calories. The Bean and Beef Enchiladas comes in an 8-ounce box. This portion size may not work for me.

Fortunately, you can sub all the fruits and veggies you want, which I'll no doubt be doing. You can have a third meal a day if you're really hungry, but mostly you should just drink more shakes (110 calories per serving) when you're hungry.

I can see how it works -- with foods so low in calories, you can't help but burn what you have in reserve. I can also see how tempting it will be to say forget it and grab a cheeseburger.

We have three weeks worth of food with the option of buying two weeks worth at a time after that. We get the food at a discount through Women's Wellness Center, but it's still an investment. Basically, we put our food budget for the next three weeks into this endeavor. So there's no turning back now.

I plan to tweet the experience on my Twitter account using hashtag #shapinupwithsherlock. I hope you'll follow me and give me some encouragment along the way -- it's going to be a long three weeks.

Here's a short video from Christmas of the family opening their presents. I made this as part of my training this week on Final Cut. Enjoy.

 

A little video I took on my cell phone today:

  

I'm spending a couple of days playing with Final Cut; I only purchased it six months ago, but I finally found some time this week to work through the video tutorial at Lynda.com and actually use the darn thing.

Here's the first video. Hopefully I'll have another one coming over the weekend:

 

This video is must-see TV: Click here for the Daily Show.

I would have gladly embedded it here if it weren't for the fact that Spaces (the host of this site) doesn't support it. This is why I'm seriously considering moving to WordPress. Grrrrr!

A friend of mine just asked me for this recipe, which is one I've shared with a lot of friends. It's incredibly easy, cooks in the crockpot in a couple of hours, and is some sweet comfort food on a cold day. Here it is.

Ingredients:
3-4 chicken breasts chopped into bite-size bits (raw chicken tenders, usually right next to the breasts, work even better)
2 cans of cream of chicken
1 chicken bullion cube
1 stick of butter
1 can of milk
1 onion, chopped
1 can of of dough to make jumbo biscuits

Mix all in crockpot except for the biscuits and let cook 5-6 hours until the chicken is completely cooked. Turn crockpot to highest setting. Take biscuit dough and tear apart little into little chunks, adding slowly to the soup. Let cook 30 minutes or until biscuit dough fluffs and slighlty browns on top.

One hint I've found with this recipe is that you can put it all together the night before and let it sit in the refridgerator. Then, let it simmer all day on low, then add the biscuits after work and have an easy, hot meal ready soon after you get home.