Terminal 2E at CDC in Paris - the Black Hole of airport security

My husband and I were returning home from France when it happened.  We had to board our flight from Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle.   We arrived at the airport the recommended 3 hours ahead of time, checked in with Delta, cleared passport control and found ourselves entering the French controlled security checkpoint  in the terminal where most flights to America originate (at least from what we could tell), with almost 2 hours to spare.   The lines were so long, and so disorganized, and the baggage screeners so deliberately slow, we missed our flight.

The security line a Terminal 2E was already backed up we first got into it. And it didn't move.  The lines in FRONT of us kept growing!  There was a big black guy who worked for Security who wandered around doing nothing helpful and ignoring our plight as the minutes ticked away and we were in worse shape now than when we started!  He did, however, bring whole groups of people on certain flights - which they were about to miss - and put them ahead of us in line!  

I have never seen such a unorganized, inefficient mess in my life!  First of all, they didn't have nearly enough lanes open, so the line just kept growing and growing.  Their machines kept starting and stopping - for minutes at a time we saw no movement at all.  And they had 2 of the most inept security screeners as I've ever seen!  They went thru everything in every piece of carryon.  Everything.  They made you open every bag, every cosmetic bag.  The woman insisted on seeing all electronics, not just the computers and cell phones.  I had to dig around in my bag for an ipod,  a black nano.  This held us up, as well as everyone behind us.  The reason the belt kept stopping was not because it wasn't working but because it had to wait for Dumb and Dumber to finish examining everything you owned before they put the bags thru the machine!  Lord help you if it beeped.  The security at the White House isn't as tight as this!

The French's answer to the numerous complaints from passengers?  "The Americans make us do it."

I beg to differ.  I've never seen that degree of minute scrutiny of virtually every passenger at any airport, foreign or domestic.  I think they have some America-hating union employees at the French airport who absolutely delight in messing with us, knowing there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

We got in line at 9:15 AM.  Our flight was at 11:00.  We finally cleared security at 11:05, missing our flight.  Two Americans just 2 people in front of us made the flight; while we had the delightful experience of looking at our plane still sitting at the gate and not being allowed to get on it.  Not to worry - they would put us on another flight, leaving in almost 6 hours.  But now the route and connections had changed and instead of flying Paris to Salt Lake City to Denver (odd as that sounded), we would be connecting thru Atlanta instead.  Atlanta is almost as far from Paris as Salt Lake in flying time terms, but it's another 1800 miles flight home instead of 550.  We got home at 2 in the morning, as opposed to 2 in the afternoon as originally scheduled.  The jet lag was interminable!

Not letting me on a plane that hadn't left yet cost me 12 hours of my life that I will never get back.   The jet lag was about 3 times worse than a normal return from Europe because we travelled for 26 full hours spending all of that time trapped in either an airport or a long tube being cramped and uncomfortable for hours on end.

What really peeves me the most about all of this is that causing passengers to miss their flights is a regular occurrence at Terminal 2E.  A man in line with us had this same thing happen to him on his last trip a month ago.  He thinks the French running the security line are deliberately torturing us.  I spent almost 2 hours on my feet in a line that moved about a foot every 10 minutes.  No kidding.  It was torture.  The airport knows it, the airlines know it, and God knows the unlucky passengers know it.  But nothing is done about it.

The flight we were re-booked on left out of a different terminal, 2F, and we had to go through security again!  I groaned out loud and the gate agent told me "Oh, the Americans run that terminal.  It won't take long."  Sure enough.  When we got there only one lane was open but as the line grew just a little they immediately opened up another lane.  We were through it in 10 minutes, if that.  And they did NOT go thru everything in our bags, or ask to see all our electronic gadgets like those sadists in Terminal 2E.  So when the French blame their incompetence and inefficiency on the Americans, call them on it.

Meanwhile, try and avoid coming home out of Chas de Gaulle.

While TSA confiscates my toothpaste, a REAL terrorist gets right on board.

I have had enough  being slaves to the Muslim terrorists because our society has become so wimpy it would rather let another attack happen than violate the Doctrine of Political Correctness, which states that we can't focus our security efforts on young Middle Eastern men because that offends the "non-violent" Muslims. Well I say, if being lumped in with these Islamic terrorists offends them so much, then they should make their fellow Muslims stop trying to kill us!  The only time you hear from our "moderate" Muslim voice, CAIR, is when a Muslim tries to blow us up.  They are quick to condemn Americans for "rushing to judgment" but don't condemn the attack itself with anything more than lukewarm criticism.   They want the profiling to stop?  Make the Islamic terrorism stop.

No, instead of offending the Muslims of the world, we have to inconvenience every American who flies, by subjecting them to more intrusive airport scrutiny and more and more IDIOTIC rules about carry ons. I'm tired of having my stuff stolen at the airport security line because the government bureaucracy cannot apply common sense to their jobs. They are not allowed to! Rules are rules, and in the bizarro-world that is our government today, it is more important to show the world we don't discriminate against any Muslim than to allow our citizens to go about their business without being subjected to long delays and lost productivity. Flying has gone from being an inconvenience to an experience akin to a root canal with no novacain.

Rather than simply respond to terror attacks by adding more inane rules to an already burdensome TSA handbook, why doesn't the US government start being proactive in actually protecting us?  Instead of confiscating our toothpaste and unopened cans of Coke, they let a REAL terrorist get on the damn plane!
It was only due to the bomber's  own ineptness that there was not a tragic end to the story.  All the rules in place didn't keep those passengers safe - alert passengers did.

Eliminate Employer Sponsored Health Insurance. Say What?

Eliminate Employer Sponsored Health Insurance -people will have the means to buy their own private insurance via their Health  Savings Accounts.  This means a raise for everyone who had employer sponsored healthcare (as that insurance is a big  part of total compensation.)  This solves all kinds of problems - gays, lesbians and other domestic partnerships won’t have to get permission to be on their partners’ policies.  They’ll buy them together out of their joint HSA.   The money once spent on insurance premiums - in our case $4000 per year - can now be deposited to your individual HSA, either directly or as a payroll deduction.

 But what about the poor?  I proposed the federal government fund the HSAs for the poor, no strings attached, and then just get out of the way.   Just because a family is poor does not mean they have to surrender their health care decisions to the government!  Let them use their own HSAs to purchase insurance of their choice, not Obama’s.   For the illegal aliens, let them find their own doctor.  Preferably in Mexico.   

For those who don’t have a permanent address here, the government could set up a large HSA for illegals and homeless to draw against when they need medical care.  It could be funded at $10,000 per estimated illegal.   The doctors and hospitals can then bill this government plan, but the government must pay the going (fair market) rate.   No more cutting payments like they do in Medicare, to shift cost to the privately insured.  In fact, the HSA’s-for- Illegals Program should not be run by the government - it should be run by private enterprise with GAO oversight only to prevent fraud or theft.   The feds get to make NO rules.  For once federal money will not have strings attached. At $10,000 for each of the “47 Million” uninsured, it would cost the govt. $470 Billion dollars, with the out years being substantially less as we realize cost savings on medical care and our HSAs grow.   That’s a lot less than Obamacare and the government would be OUT of the healthcare business.  Which is why Washington will never do something so elegantly simple as to let the people manage their own health care.  

Fixing Healthcare -Patient Driven Reform -- "When it's your own money you're a lot more careful how you spend it."

Allow the People to have Tax Free Health Savings Accounts (HSA, also called FSAs), with Rollover provisions and no government involvement. We the People can contribute our own money to our own Health Savings accounts. We would then pay no taxes on that money. The HSA’s can only be used to pay health care costs. We can use it to purchase health insurance, pay medical bills, pay for prescriptions, etc.   Many private FSA plans already have the structure in place to administer this, so there would be no new government bureaucracy needed, and no need for the government to be involved.

We the People can then buy the health insurance that best suits our needs. For instance, young couples with no kids would probably opt for high deductibles and pay their routine care out of pocket, saving on insurance premiums. Older citizens might want a lower deductible and would pay a higher premium for it. Things they currently expect the government or the insurance company to pay for them, they will pay for themselves and get a tax cut in the bargain! And, most importantly, the HSA always rolls over and is inheritable!

My daughter in law said many younger people can't afford to put any money away in an HSA. I told her -- it's not finding extra money to save; it's money you're already spending. What you've been paying for health insurance by payroll deduction would go in your HSA instead. Your employer's share too. Estimate what you currently spend on prescriptions and doctor visits annually,and include it in your HSA deduction. It's still the same money, just coming from different pockets, one of which is tax free.

And keep the government out of it.  No manipulating who gets the benefits and who doesn't.  This is why the Obamacare law is so long and  unwieldy - It's full of political goodies for various favored groups.   Just KEEP THE GOVT. OUT!

Fixing What Ails Us - Health Care Reform for REAL

Restructure the Health Insurance business to more closely resemble the property, theft and casualty insurance business. Health insurance should be for the big stuff, not our runny noses and annual physicals. It should be like car insurance. Each policy would be customized for the individual or family purchasing it. We get to choose how big our deductible will be, how much co-insurance there will be, how much we're willing spend out of pocket, etc. Our premiums will reflect the choices we have made.

We do not expect our auto insurance company to pay for our gas, or our repair bills. We expect them to cover us if we’re in an accident. And only then, if the damage is great. It’s usually cheaper to pay for the lesser damages yourself, without involving the insurance company, because reporting it drives our rates up. Why then do we expect health insurance companies to pay for our ordinary, routine medical expenses? And why are we surprised when our premiums keep going up?

Up until the 80s, when HMOs sprang up and seduced us with the $5 co-pay, we paid for our own regular doctor's visits. Health insurance was for catastrophic medical issues - NOT your annual GYN checkup. . I'd been paying around $35 for an office call. For a single working mother of 1, this was affordable, but barely. A $5 co-pay with an HMO was too good to pass up. I didn't see a downside My primary care doc was even in the network! This sounded good and I signed up, like millions of others over the next few years. Traditional health insurance had to change or die, so they had to go with their own networks and ridiculously low co-pays. Once they did that, they separated the product (health care) from the consumer (us). When the consumer is no longer constrained (by price, OTBE), he will consume as much as he can. Increased consumption (demand) = higher prices.

How to Fix Health Care without bankrupting the country

WE DO NOT HAVE A HEALTH CARE CRISIS. WE HAVE A HEALTH INSURANCE CRISIS.

I have a plan and its brilliance is in its simplicity. It is a 5 pronged approach, with each prong dependent on the other 4.

1. Tort Reform - malpractice premiums are killing us. Frivolous lawsuits and ridiculous jury "punitive" awards have driven malpractice insurance costs through the roof. Yet Obama talks about greedy doctors.
2. Restructure of the Health Insurance business to return to insuring against catastrophic losses, not every toothache and sore throat.
3. Health Savings Accounts for all Americans. (See discourse on that )
4. Eliminate Employer sponsored health insurance. Everyone buys their own insurance, using employer contributions (that used to go to the insurance company) to their HSAs, plus their own insurance deductions that used to come out of their paycheck. Then they buy the insurance that best suits their needs. The Customer is in control.
5. Put the purchasing power and decisions back in the hands of the American people instead of the federal government. Contrary to popular belief, we do not need the federal government taking care of us. Government just makes a mess of everything for everyone.

How they will all work together is discussed below

Tort Reform - no plan to reduce health care costs can be considered to be serious without addressing tort reform and putting a cap on the punitive damages, which is where the trial lawyers get rich. Obama would do better to squeeze the lawyers than the doctors. But since the Trial Lawyers are the Democrats biggest campaign contributors (along with the NEA and UAW), Obama isn’t interested in tort reform. Hypocrisy - thy name is Obama.

He claims to be looking out for those who are injured and protecting their awards. . . oh, go get out the violin. Most malpractice suits are less about real injury than about a big pay day. However, if a case does have actual merit, the “victim” is well taken care of with the compensatory damages, which would not need to be capped because they have to be justified by actual evidence. Punitive damages are completely arbitrary, have little if anything to do with the facts of the case, and emotion based and are frequently awarded by juries with the collective IQ of a toad.

What Obama fails to acknowledge is that if malpractice awards go down, so do the malpractice insurance premiums which have been so ruinous to the health care system in America. Doctors’ rates will come down dramatically, as will the costs for the drugs, as Big Pharma won’t have to prepare for losing Billions of dollars if a drug turns out to have side effects that couldn’t have been known before mass distribution. I’ll bet this alone would lower medical costs by 1/3, since doctors could also quit practicing "defensive medicine".

The punitive damage award is what needs to be limited. People today act like they want something to go wrong so they can sue. It’s like hitting the lottery! Smarmy personal injury lawyers convince gullible, sympathetic jurors to stick it to fill in the blank - - the doctor, the hospital, the drug company. Especially the drug companies, who have been so successfully demonized by the Democrats that they have become almost as hated as lawyers! Punish that evil pharmaceutical company by sending them a message!” And the jury awards a gazillion dollars to the “victim” - or more accurately, his lawyer.

And prescription drugs go up another $100 because the drug company has to recover that gazillion dollars from somewhere. You and I pay the costs of punitive damage awards, not the drug companies. And collectively, these excessive jury awards have just about bankrupted our health care industry!

WE MUST HAVE TORT REFORM NOW!