Health insurance is a problem.

If you have a nice white-collar job, you probably just look at what the company takes out and shake your head. What you don't think about, unless it's been forced on you, is how much you'd pay to match that insurance. Years ago, Congress passed the Cobra legislation that lets workers keep their insurance (at least for a while) if they're laid off. But when you get that Cobra statement, watch out--you're going to be out many hundreds of dollars a month to equal that company-subsidized plan.

Self-employed people, of course, don't get insurance from their employers. They have to buy it themselves. For many of us, that means buying a plan that will pay in the event of major hospitalization and writing checks for everything else. When I go for my annual checkup, it costs hundreds of dollars. Ouch. The situation is one where many people, and I was one, keep jobs they hate primarily because they can't afford to give up the benefits. The system is broken.

In the Mystery Writers meeting yesterday, we were discussing this when one author suggested that the government shouldn't pay any insurance for children. Their parents, she said, made the choice to bring them into the world. If they can't afford insurance, they can't afford children. I'm not sure I agree with the logic, but I absolutly disagree with the conclusion. Children do have to pay for their parent's stupidity. It is, unfortunately, a part of life. But really, we're talking about punishing innocent children for their parents' bad decisions. The parents aren't punished.

I think that our current system is so badly broken it's threatening to destroy our economy. There are problems with any approach. But ultimately, it's a national problem and requires a national solution. That is, after all, why we have governments. While governments aren't always the solution, they aren't never the solution, either.

All this is by way of saying I spent the day finishing my edits of Michael Paulson's DEADLY TRADE and shipped them back to him. I hope to hear from him soon on when he thinks he'll have them back to me so we can set a pub-date for this book.

I finished reading THE REINCARNATIONIST by M. J. Rose. Rose can write but I didn't like the characters, thought the plot was too reactive, and missed the whole element of why I should care. I gave it two stars based on her writing keeping me involved despite my problems. At least I finished it, which is more than I've done for a lot of books lately. Here's my review: www.booksforabuck.com/mystery/mys_07/reincarnationist.html. Now I'm readin FOLLOWING MY TOES by Laurel Osterkamp.

I'm going to make THE LAST MIND TRAVELER by Kate Rothwell the www.BooksForABuck.com book of the day. She's the last of her mind-controlling people. He's a revolutionary who overthrew their rule. But when he tracks her down, he learns that the ability to travel between minds is both a tool and a compelling way of seeing new approaches to life. This entire eNovel is only $2.95. Learn more, read the excerpt, or buy the eNovel here: www.booksforabuck.com/sfpages/sf_05/last_mindtraveler.html. Here's the cover (cover design by Karen Leabo):

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