Obameter #76: Fund Health Care Training

Obama promised to expand the financial support government provides for the training of health care personnel. In the big stimulus bill, he did so to the tune of $500 million. Promise kept.

I am completely unfamiliar with any political issue surrounding this promise or it's fulfillment. Were health care personnel previously under-trained? Did they need that money? Was it enough? Was it too much? Is there any mechanism in place to make sure it's going to the right people and making a difference? It seems to come completely out of the blue.

It's one of the approximately 140 independent items passed as one huge, joint program above and beyond the usual government spending budget in the huge omnibus American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, unofficially called the Stimulus Bill. One criticism of the big stimulus bill is that you could hide entire programs in the bill and no one would even find and address them before they became law. No oversight. No debate.

I'd say this is a perfect example. It sounds good, sure. Who wants untrained medical personnel? I suppose it's part of a greater emphasis on health in America, but I wasn't aware of any major lack of training problem in the medical field or that this spending has or will actually improve American health. Wikipedia has 6 words on the topic. Google News has seemingly no related search results. Have you heard anything about it? Has there been any debate, consideration, or discussion of this point at all?

I guess it was slipped in completely under the radar. I wonder what else passed that no one noticed.

True Stories

A man tells the world a story. People who hear the story live kinder, better lives. Thus, the story is good. Does it matter whether the story is true?

I've heard far more arguments from agnostics and atheists disputing the historical truth of religion than the moral implications of religion. That seems to be the reverse of their relevance. Even if there never was a Good Samaritan, if there never was a Job or a Goliath, if there was no serpent in a garden called Eden, aren't they morally valuable stories anyway?

There are good morals in Aesop's Fables, too. Does anyone believe those stories really happened?

So why are Aesop's Fables acceptable public school curriculum and Bible stories not? Surely a story of disputed truth is not inherently morally inferior to a story of indisputable fiction.

---

This is a little more controversial than my usual Sunday post, but frankly it's the only idea that got past my writer's block. Even so, it was still a day late. Sorry.