Jumping with my daughter

I was finishing a story on transportation and money and blah blah blah (those are the words that go through my head, sometimes, when I'm doing stories on transportation and money and blah blah blah) when my 4-year-old daughter walked into the room.

"Oh, no," I thought. "My privacy is shattered! My silence is broken! No work will be done! Productivity shall cease!"

The first words out of Anna's mouth were, "You have to leave the room. We're playing here."

I have to leave? "Really?" I asked.

Suddenly, I felt scorned, like I did the day my junior prom date stood me up. Work suddenly felt so incredibly meaningless to me.

"Can't I stay?" I asked.

"OK," she said. Then she adopted that tone and used those words that, if they didn't come from the mouth of a 4-year-old, would sound like some bad Sci Fi Channel script.

"But you must play with us!" she said. "You must play with us now! You must stop your work!"

She walked in with her 4-year-old best friend and started jumping up and down on the bed. They tossed whatever papers I had laying there, and threw them on the floor. One was a paycheck (it was already cashed) that floated in the air like a leaf and landed on my lap.

Next thing I knew, I was jumping on the bed, too, only I was doing it from my knees. The ceiling in this room is too low for a 6-foot-2-inch, relatively sane man to be bouncing up and down, from his flat feet, on an elevated bed.

All productivity did, indeed, cease. But I treasure these moments because I feel like every little jump, every little toss of the papers, every moment of just being there with Anna will help make her a loving, independent, strong, confident child and adult.

When it comes to dealing with children, I look at the sum of the parts. Who needs to schedule playtimes with your own son or daughter? They love and thrive on spontaneity, so why not meet them at their level?

Every little spontaneous moment, whether it's five minutes or five seconds, brings me closer. And all those moments put together, I believe, have made her a better child, a loving child and a caring child who knows that her parents will there for them, even at a moment's notice.

I look at my older boys and I see how they're turning out, and how they're turning out just that way. Neither of them are followers. Both of them seem to have a strong moral compass, even if our senses of humor can be - at times - pretty sick.

But they care when other people are hurting. They can't wait to tell my wife and me when they're succeeding. For years, before they got too old for it, they liked nothing better than jumping - on the bed, with us.

I hear from some people who say we coddle our children too much, that we don't give them enough independence and we have a hard time letting them go. These are usually the same people who endorse the warehousing of children in daycare centers and preschools that cram 30 children in a small room with one teacher.

"Stick them in daycare," people tell us. "Make money, man! Go to Wall Street, find rich pastures!"

Don't get me wrong - I totally understand daycare and I understand why it's necessary. We have had our children in some of those same places, though never for very long. But I don't know anyone who truly loves it, or views it as nothing more than a no-alternative solution.

My wife and I have chosen the poorer alternative, even though it has us juggling schedules and working multiple part-time jobs.

But it's also opened up our schedules so we can be there, at that moment, when my daughter looks up at us with her big blue eyes, with her bangs dangling over them, and says:

"Wanna jump?"

Trick or treat? Nope, says the government. April fools!

You gotta wonder when a governor says he's going take a pumpkin scooper to a state budget, and scrape so much out that there's nothing left but the mushy skin.

Well, welcome to New Jersey, where it's Halloween year-round because the state's fiscal picture is a never-ending horror show.

Every year, it's the same thing: Governors somehow find money for programs they can't pay for. Or they cut money for programs that people need. Or they double-talk people into telling them that they didn't raise their taxes when, in actuality, they did just that (trick or treat!).

This year, New Jersey's Governor Christie has a laundry list of things he's slashing with his large budget axe. There will be cuts to state aid to schools (geez, you gotta wonder if that's going to lead to property tax increases, no?). There will be cuts to higher education.

And, of course, there will be cuts to everybody's favorite target: Aid to services that care for the disabled and the ill.

Take New Jersey’s reductions of reimbursement rates to pharmacies serving Medicaid beneficiaries. As a result, small pharmacies won’t carry all prescriptions and patients will be discouraged from getting them filled.

Any increase in state revenue from co-pays would be dwarfed by the inevitable costs of emergency treatment, hospitalization and other services to treat individuals whose conditions worsen because they discontinue medications, Debra L. Wentz, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies, Inc.

“Co-pays and reimbursement reductions impose a barrier for individuals who already struggle to pay for rent, food and utilities," Wentz said. "The state should not further burden them with co-pays, forcing them to choose between prescriptions and other needs."

Ultimately, untreated mental illness, whether due to an individual’s inability to pay for medications or lack of access to treatment, inevitably costs the state billions of dollars every year.

As a result, the state loses approximately $5.6 billion each year in lost productivity.

“In these difficult economic times, funding for any type of program or social service could be on the table as a potential budgetary cut," Wentz said. "It is unconscionable to force individuals with mental illness to forego treatment and face dire consequences in their lives, which can include not only hospitalizations, but also homelessness or incarcerations – and these consequences are also very costly to the state."

It's the kind of thing that makes me feel like we're living in a world of helplessness, that the only solution to everything is to cut, cut, cut until the backbone of society breaks in half. We look for inspiration in our political leaders; instead, we're left as victims of fiscal larceny, forced to give back when we really need to give more.

I've been listening a lot to the legendary comedian Bill Hicks lately. Bill died at 32 of pancreatic cancer, but he left a mark as one of the greatest stand-ups of all time.

Bill patterned his act after Richard Pryor: Neither of them claimed to tell jokes for a living. Instead, they said, they were just talking. They talked off the top of their heads, and much of what they had to say was cynical. But, mostly, Hicks' commentary, mixed with absurdity, was thought-provoking and on-target.

I'm no socialist, but his proposal for curing the world's ills, in the below video, makes more and more sense the more I listen to it, and the more I see failure in the eyes of society.

The new health care revolution: a coming co-pay revolt?

When I saw Brian Anan for the first time in many years, I was impressed by how he looked, but more shocked by what he had to say.

I still find it remarkable that I get this insecure feeling whenever I hear of a friend who's on meds. I feel terrible for being that way, but I can't help it. Some prejudices are just too hard to shake, even when somebody tells me how much the drug, Lexapro, has saved their life

Luckily, but not so lucky for him, Brian had other news that upstaged everything he said before, and quickly wiped my prejudices away. It was news that converted whatever insecure impulses I may harbor about medication and mental illness into justified anger.

I asked him how much this drug, an anti-anxiety medication, cost him.

"You wouldn't believe it," he said.

"Try me," I said. "I've heard stories."

"One-hundred-and-eighty-dollars."

"How much?" I asked. "Don't you have insurance?"

"Yeah," Brian said.

"THAT is your co-pay?"

"Yeah, just the co-pay," he said. "Even the people at Walgreen's were stunned...It was the first time a pharmacist's assistant ever said, 'Are you sure?' "

His company had just switched insurance plans, and this is what they left him with. An insurance plan that doesn't insure.

That made me think of health care, and how the politicians who run our country still can't get it right. They still can't get a floor vote in Congress on even the weakest of reform plans.

I've seen the tea-baggers and other conservative forces erupt in protest over the Obama administration's attempts to, in their words, lead a government coup of health care. I've seen liberals unjustifiably dismiss this movement as nothing more than, pardon the metaphor, a lunatics-running-the-asylum moment.

But I wonder if another revolution could be in the works. How many other Brian Anans are out there who will feel the same sticker shock when they go to their drug store and see how much they have to pay?

They're already paying nearly $1,000 a month for the health care plan itself, the same money that could go toward a month's rent. Now the meds that keep them alive, or maintain their sanity cost nearly as much as a car payment.

If they keep a budget, something's going to have to get cut. It may be easier to cut the pills than the car.

You gotta wonder how much longer a country can go when it's paying for medical insurance that has little-to-no competition. You gotta wonder how much longer people can last when they can't find the room on their credit card to pay for a co-pay.

Just a few years ago, Brian was paying $10 for the same medication. You gotta wonder why the pro-reform forces can't see this, and how their own campaigns for change repeatedly miss the point.

They consistently point to the 40 million people who don't have insurance. But what about the tens of millions who have it now but, they're learning quickly, can't afford it?

Many of those people are in the great middle-class, the same ones who are supposedly up-in-arms about any talk of a government takeover of health care. They're also the people who vote, and when they vote, they often vote with their wallet. Will they vote for their co-pay?

Brian's not so sure. For now, he'll pay the bill. After a life of living with eating disorders, he finally looks like he's found some security. His keeps in shape, but doesn't overeat. He's got a family and a decent job.

But if his co-pay can go up 1000 percent in just a couple years, what's next? What will he have to sacrifice if no change takes place?

"I'll remember this in November," Brian said. "If I don't see any legitimate options out there, I'm going to blame somebody."

Having bipolar disorder is no means to an end

Stephen Puibello was diagnosed as being HIV positive and having bipolar disorder at the same time, in 1997.

But life doesn't end, even after getting a double-whammy.

So last year, Stephen came up with www.BiPolarbear.us, a website that serves as a clearinghouse for people who experience the illness - including contact information and medical referrals.

It also provides personal stories - like this website - that resonate with people who suffer from bipolar disorder and educate those who have no connection to it at all.

But it also should inspire, because having bipolar disorder and HIV has not brought the Cliffside Park, N.J. resident down. In fact, the dual diagnosis has picked him up, and inspired him to act.

He said he was inspired to create the website after participating in an AIDS awareness ride last year.

"On the ride, HIV riders were offered a RED Flag if they chose to promote awareness," he said. "Being bipolar, I wanted to promote that as well, and when you arrive at the site you will see a polar bear (him in costume) riding a bike wearing a red AIDS ribbon."

Next year year, Stephen is planning on promoting HIV and Bipolar Illness in California's 5 day AIDS Ride.

"In three years I have raised an impressive $11,338.00, with close to another $4,000 this year anticipated," he said.