Insult to Injury

In case you have forgotten, I recently took the time in New Year, New Rant to blog about an unfortunate doctors visit I had the first of January. Well, the other week I got a bill for a pathology test and then last week I got a bill from the doctor's office. The grand total was $133.41. I ignored them because I figured that something had been billed to my insurance incorrectly and it would be straightened out. After all, I shouldn't have to pay more than my $25 copay for an annual well visit, right?

WRONG.

I called the lovely folks at Blue Cross/Blue Shield this morning to find out what the dealio was (because I also had to find out my copay for a little upcoming hand surgery I am having). I was told that I have to meet a $150 deductible before my doctor's visits, etc. are covered beyond my copay. So not only did I get shitty treatment at the doctor's office, but I am now paying for that privilege to the tune of $158.41 (the $133.41 I have been billed and the $25 copay I laid out at the office the day of). Nice, really nice. And what makes this all so much more galling is I don't go to the doctor except for annual visits usually. So basically I have met my deductible first thing this year and it will do me no good, because if I were to stay with this insurance, it would all start over again come 2011.

Now let me break this down for you gentle readers in plain, ole dollars and cents. Currently, the spouse and I are paying a reduced Cobra amount for our insurance of just under $400 a month. The spawn's insurance policy is $125 a month. The spouse's prescription costs are $300 a month and he is still paying for his colonoscopy in 2008 and back surgery in 2009 to the tune of $200 a month. Grand total—$1,025. Bear in mind this does not include a copay should any of us have a doctor's appointment in the month. Our mortgage is under $850 a month. That, very simply, gentle readers is FUCKED UP. If we didn't qualify for the reduced Cobra that total would be $1,725.

But we don't need insurance/healthcare reform, no, not at all . . .

New Year, New Rant

Pardon me gentle readers as I digress from our typical topic of politics, although god knows I haven't exactly been verbose on the topic of late. There has been so much back and forth, most of it mindless about the health care debate for the past several months that I have been only too willing to tune it out. Today's little ditty touches on the healthcare topic, but not quite in the vein that our beloved politicians have been tossing about since before Santa squeezed his fat ass down the chimney.

So, today's post is going to get a bit personal, I promise to not get graphic or icky, after all some of you may be delicate. I am going to talk about my yearly visit to the lady doctor. For those of you who aren't female, we of the xx chromosome persuasion are expected to visit the lady doctor on an annual basis and get our girly bits checked out. While I know you men have to go groped in the giblets, trust me, it ain't the same. But I promised not to be graphic.

When I called several weeks ago, after realizing that my normal time of year for this appointment had come and gone with no note from the lady doctor to remind me, I was told that my doctor of the past five-ish years had left the practice. So I picked someone who I saw once during the rotation during my pregnancy with the spawn. This doctor had seemed pleasant enough and I figured it was no big deal.

I arrived 15 minutes early as requested. I waited. After about half an hour, the nurse called my name and took me back to get my blood pressure, height and weight. Ms. Personality asked me no other questions and took no other information. This took maybe five minutes. She then asked me to wait in another waiting room. Almost 45 minutes go by this time and I am finally escorted to the examination room. I don my lovely little gown and sit beneath my paper sheet, eager to share my private parts with someone new. At least another fifteen minutes go by. Finally the doctor enters, shakes my hand, says nice to meet you. She asks me a brief question or two and then begins the exam. She finishes, asks if there is anything else, hands over my chart and leaves. In all, she saw me for five minutes.

Listen, I get that doctors are busy. And she apologize for keeping me waiting. But when the lady who does my bikini wax spends more time in my nether regions than my gynecologist, something is seriously wrong. I had met this lady only once, she obviously didn't remember me (which is fine and to be expected), but to not take the time to a) meet me with my FREAKIN' clothes on and b) to ask me a bit about me and my medical history is flat wrong.

The spouse asked, "Did you expect her to take you out to dinner, like a date?" Well, no, but back in the day when I was dating, a dude had to do a bit more than just make me wait almost two hours and ask me how my birth control of choice was working for me. Admittedly my standards weren't super high back then, but I had some self-respect.

So I think I will be shopping for a new doctors office. I mean, if you are going to stick your head in my crotch, I at least expect you to make a bit of small talk first. I don't think that is asking too much.

Joe Lieberman Can Kiss My Ass and Other Musings on Insane Elected Officials

How in the world have we arrived at a point where that sniveling little Droopy Dog Joe Lieberman thinks he can lord over the fate of every American's health care? I get that many experts thing it doesn't matter and presumably they are right (dear lord I hope so), but it still chaps my backside that Lieberman can pull this stunt for the attention and to give him a false feeling of power. It makes me long for the Democrats missed opportunity to bitch slap him when he switched parties and became an independent because he knew he would lose the Democratic nomination to Ned Lamont. I hope the people of Connecticut give him a good swift kick in the tuckus next election.

Meanwhile, my own state's Virgina Foxx (a personal fave as my regular readers most likely know) opened her trap again and said something that almost surpasses her earlier outrageous statements about heathcare.

I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

She later added: “It is a bad bill and the American people should be frightened of it.”

Well thank you for that little nugget of wisdom Virginia. It almost makes me wish that the Democrats really were going to institute death panels, because I know of someone I would like to volunteer to go before them first for some "end of life" counseling . . .

On Death and Dying

"Why would any member of Congress, especially those of us who are grandmothers, want to pull the plug on Grandma?" So sayeth Rep. Maxine Waters (D).

Valid point, one I would think many in Congress could agree on, these aren't exactly young whipper snappers, guiding our fair nation.

Meanwhile, the lion of the Senate is gone, healthcare is no further along than it was two months ago (although perhaps their is a faint light ahead, dare I dream?), and as one older, African American woman at a recent town hall, who had lost her job and had no insurance, queried the gathering only to be booed, "Aren't I an American too?"

Yes ma'am you are, and we are all deserving of care, unless you buy what the CEO of Whole Foods recently shared in an OpEd.

But I digress, a 35-year-old woman is dead of breast cancer, and more like her will die today and tomorrow. If we fix our healthcare, maybe we can save one or two of these people who are loved by so many. Maybe we can't, but isn't it better to try?

Points No. 1, 2 & 3

Why is it that someone who is most assuredly not a night person is so often struck by inspiration in the final dark hours of the day? Well that is a question to ponder some other day I suppose, but for now, more on healthcare.

I know, I know. I am sick of the topic too, but sometimes you have to worry over something until you are thoroughly sick of it before you see the light and can make things right. I have three points to make in that vein, so bare with me.

Point No. 1
The spouse asked me the other day if I knew what the public option was. I do not. Nor could I properly explain how that might differ from a single payer system. Admittedly, I am sure that I could dig around, do my research and come up with an answer. Hell, I could just try to muster up some common sense and make a best case scenario guess, but off the top of my head? Nope, stuck. And that seems, to me, to be a BIG problem. The spouse and I watch/read a fair bit of the news, probably I would estimate more than your average American. If we can't give a reasonable response to that question, then I would venture to say that neither could that average American. Which means (not that we didn't already suspect this) the people hollering at these town hall meetings have no clue what they are yelling about.

Point No. 2
I have a dear friend of going on 18 years who is in the process of saying goodbye to a beloved friend of hers. This woman is dying of breast cancer and most likely has but weeks to live, if that. She is not even 35. I have met her, dined at her house, and although we are in no sense of the word close, I can't shake the feeling of just how wrong this is. She is younger than me, she never had the chance to have children. She leaves a husband who never imagined he would have to say goodbye to his wife so early and so young. It does something to shake my inner bouncy ball core, which seems so resilient despite my better efforts to kill it. I don't know what the financial condition of this young woman and her husband is. I don't know what their insurance situation is either, but I do not doubt that even if they have "good" insurance there has been a significant accumulation of expense during her sickness. So not only his her husband left alone, bereft, he is left with God knows what kind of debt to handle as he is grieving. That simply seems too much for one soul to take on.

Point No. 3
To finalize, and somewhat combine the previous two points, I was just reading Jonathan Alter's Newsweek essay "Health Care as a Civil Right." In it, Alter not only makes the point that Obama & Team need to reframe the argument for healthcare reform to center it around the belief that healthcare is a RIGHT and not some ridiculous luxury afforded only to those who are not sick and who have money, but that this public option hullabaloo has overshadowed this idea and is, in fact, not central to the issue. Did you know that half of U.S. bankruptcies are a result of medical expenses? Isn't that shameful? And when Alter says, "Passage [of healthcare reform] would end the shameful era in our nation's history when we discriminated against people for no other reason that that they were sick."

Even if you are sick of the subject that is something to think about, don't you think?

Political Terrorists and Death Panels

Once again I am compelled to say that the Democrats need to get off their asses and grow a set. Gentle reader, the nonsense that the GOP is saying in regards to the healthcare plan put out there by President Obama is crazy, and the biggest loon of them all—Sarah Palin—decided to add her measly two cents the other day on Facebook. Come on people, I thought Facebook was for sharing your thoughts on the latest box office offerings and letting your 200 closest "friends" know what you ate for lunch, not implying that the President want's to off your developmentally disabled spawn. But I have been wrong before.

So Palin says that the healthcare plan will create death panels that will determine whether the infirmed or disabled will be allowed to live or die. Hogwash. The stuff that Palin and her buddies in the Republican party are coming up with are so off base as to be laughable, but the problem is the Democrats aren't busting their chops on this. Maybe they are waiting for the lunacy to die down, but meanwhile, the lunatics are growing in number.

Take for instant these town hall meetings where middle aged, lower to middle class white people are asking for their country back. Well I have to agree with Mr. Maher on this one, what they mean is they want their country back from the black guy. Nice, huh?

But speaking of growing a set, the Dems could take a page from Hillary Clinton who when questioned recently about John Bolton's response to her husband's efforts to return the two American journalist being held in N. Korea, laughed uproariously, and then said basically that what had been done was far from out of the ordinary. See for yourself below:



Now that is what I call balls, ladies and gentleman. More democrats need to pay attention to her easy, breezy way of just blowing off the GOP as ridiculous fossils that are out of touch with reality.

But getting to the political terrorists part of things. Steven Pearlstein wrote recently in The Washington Post, about the Republican's efforts to derail heathcare efforts:

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

The Congress may be taking a break, but this ain't over yet. Far from it.

Axing the Boys

Maybe I just need to stop reading Newsweek?

The April 20th issue ran a piece by Zachary Karabell that said the current unemployment woes were not affecting the sexes or the classes equally. That in fact, more minority men were getting the ax then anyone else.

Now admittedly my friendships with minority males is lacking in numbers, and I work in a professional/white collar world, but I see mostly women getting laid off around me. (And yes, this may have more to do with the fact that I have more female friends than male.) So what gives?

And in other less than cheery news, my home state got a nod from the Washington Post recently as having the highest percent of uninsured residents as a result of recent job losses. Yahoo! We are Number One! Even in this article, the person interviewed is a woman. (Although I suppose you could go on that old chestnut that women are more likely to seek regular healthcare than men.)

Are the laid off men just less vocal? What is going on here?

Don't Ask, Don't Know

In one of yesterday's posts, an old friend commented that it is "the questions that we do not know to ask that are the most important." This struck me as particularly true especially in regards to an article I read on Salon yesterday about healthcare in America.

The article by Joe Conason was entitled "The questions our healthcare debate ignores" with a deck that asked the following questions:
Why does every developed nation except the U.S. have universal healthcare? Why do they pay half as much in medical costs? Why are their infant mortality and longevity statistics superior?

One of the articles strongest points, in my opinion, was this:

Last month, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued the latest in a long series of reports on our wasteful and cruel practices that ought to awaken a sense of national embarrassment. This highly topical study carried a deceptively bland title: "Healthcare Reform in the United States." Naturally, the mainstream media and punditry ignored its findings (although OECD reports promoting free trade often receive wide coverage).

Documenting the gross "discrepancy" between the enormous amounts that Americans spend on healthcare and the value received for that expenditure, the study found that the United States ranks poorly among OECD countries on measures of life expectancy, infant mortality and reductions in "amenable mortality," meaning deaths "from certain causes that should not occur in the presence of timely and effective healthcare."

(emphasis mine)

He goes on to add that of the 30 members of the OECD group that conducted the study only three do not offer their residents universal health coverage—the United States, Mexico and Turkey. Conason continues:

So we pay a lot more in taxes devoted to medical care—not including insurance premiums, co-payments, fees, and other health costs—than taxpayers in those 27 countries that have universal coverage.

How much less? Nations with comparable standards of living like France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Japan spend roughly between half and two-thirds per capita what we spend annually. They cover everyone and their results are measurably better. And the supposed downsides of universal coverage, such as lack of access to sophisticated medical technologies, are belied in many of these countries. For instance Japan has lower per capita health expenditures than the United States (and universal coverage,) but its citizens have greater access to MRI machines, CT scanners and kidney dialysis equipment than Americans do.

This all hits home even more since the Broad household just received a bill for the spouse's first colonoscopy this weekend. And what a bill it was! When I called the insurance company to inquire as to why it was so high—he went to an in-network doc, he's over the age of 50–I was told that because a polyp was found and removed, he had TWO procedures that day, each costing over $1,000. Basically the insurance only covers one procedure. Kind of leaves you in a bit of a pickle doesn't it?

So it is nice to see that Obama is asking some questions about healthcare, but it strikes me that we still have a long way to go in terms of asking the hard stuff when it comes to how we take care of our residents.

Gone With the Wind

Thankfully I was able to make it home in time to hear President Obama's first address to Congress. Regretfully, it ran past my bedtime and I found myself falling asleep around the 10pm mark.

One of my preferred strategies for dealing with things is the so-called "Scarlett O'Hara defense." This is where you pledge to not worry about something unpleasant until tomorrow, "because after all tomorrow is another day." Believe it or not this can be quite effective. But early in Obama's speech he did a good job of kicking 'ole Scarlett to the curb—"And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."

Ahem. Basically Obama took all of us, politicians and regular Americans to task last night. And what should have felt like a trip out to the old woodshed of yore, didn't turn out to be as painful as one might imagine due to Obama's masterful oratorical skills. Dude can blend a tongue lashing with optimism in a way I never quite imagined—"Well, I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders, and I know you don't, either. It is time for America to lead again."

When he started in on healthcare, to be perfectly frank, my jaw dropped. An American goes bankrupt every 30 seconds from healthcare costs? That boggles my mind and yet it all makes so much sense. When the majority of people with healthcare have it through their employers, and when you have employers who are offering what can only be described as catastrophic plans with ridiculously high deductibles then you have a recipe for disaster on an epic scale. Lose your job, lose your healthcare coverage. And god forbid you are someone with a healthcare problem and try to buy a plan on your own, you will probably spend more than your mortgage, if you can even find someone willing to cover you. I would LOVE to hear a realistic plan from the GOP to solve this little quagmire. And savings accounts aren't going to cut it.

"We are not quitters." Maybe it is time to let Scarlett rest in peace and just remember that phrase when things get you down. After all it came from a brave, southern girl too, someone real and the time has come for Americans to deal in reality. 

And the Good Times Just Keep a Comin'

Per Salon today:

If anyone needs any more evidence that the American healthcare system is broken, consider the birth of Kathryn Darling, the new daughter of one Starla D. Darling, 27, of Ashland, OH.

Laid off from her job at a cookie factory, where she'd worked for eight years, the expectant mother took medicine to induce labor two days before her health insurance would expire in hopes she would not be stuck with the bill for the delivery. She ended up having an emergency C-section and still getting the bill.

As Darling told the New York Times: "When I heard that I was losing my insurance, I was scared. I remember that the bill for my son’s delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself."

So she asked her midwife to induce: "I was determined that we were getting this baby out, and it was going to be paid for," said Darling. The insurance company denied her claim leaving the unemployed new mother with more than $17,000 in medical bills, since a C-section is more expensive than a vaginal delivery.

As the recession deepens and more American workers lose their health insurance along with their jobs, we expect to hear more mind-boggling stories like this one.

'Nuff said, I think.

Can I Call You Joe?

And that is how it all began gentle readers.

Listen, I have never claimed to be unbiased. I am a democrat, plain and simple. So yes, I wanted Palin to go down in flames last night. I admit it. Sadly, she did not. But then again she has been cramming for this one test for more than a month now, even a monkey could have pulled that off without looking like an idiot after that period of time. (Jon Stewart made this point excellently last night prior to even seeing the debate, god bless him, and he managed to mention Balki from Perfect Strangers in doing so, now that's a win-win in my book.)

Which made me wonder last night—who was that woman standing up there? I mean which is the real Sarah Palin? The idiot that couldn't name a magazine she regularly reads when asked by Katie Couric or the relatively smooth tap dancer that we saw last night?

I only made it half way through the debate fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you view these things. (Why the freak can't they schedule these things from 8 to 10 pm? I might stand a fighting chance of staying awake, but 11 pm? Never going to happen folks. But I digress.) The first hour was enough to give me a flavor of things I think. LOVED Palin's giant flag pin—just in case you missed the fact that the Republicans are the patriotic party, she wanted to remind you with old glory waving across her entire chest.

Biden came out swinging, saying that the last eight years have been the worst for the American economy. Way to go for the jugular Joe! Palin countered soon there after with a wink. Sweet Jesus people, she winked! This isn't the Miss Cowpoke Pageant, this is the vice presidential debate!

Another thing that annoyed me is the folksy way she was dropping her g's. I have a way of talking and a vocabulary I use among friends and even in this blog, which would not be what I would consider appropriate if I were giving a speech. Apparently, Mrs. Palin does not have those same rules. I know she thinks it makes her cute and approachable. But it just makes my ovaries twitch. I can see all the progress women have made slip away with every 'darn' and 'back to ya' she says.

Back to Biden. I liked how he explained the energy/oil drilling question. I have read in other places those same figures, we have like 3% of the world's oil and we use 25% of the world's energy. So even if we do drill and get stuff (in the next 10 years mind you) we obviously won't be able to fully supply our needs through that. We have to do other means, whether it is nuclear, coal, wind or solar. And yet, as Biden pointed out, McCain keeps voting against some of those other options. Can anyone explain that one to me?

I know this is getting long winded, so let me wrap it up. During the hour I watched I saw Palin evade at least two questions (actually three if you count the time Gwen Ifill re-asked her a question). So while she didn't have any deer in the headlights moments, she didn't really SAY anything either. She ignored the question about McCain's stance on deregulation (one of the big reasons we are in this banking mess today). And all her spouting of the healthcare tax credit is hooey. Five thousand dollars wouldn't even begin to pay for a health insurance policy for me and my family. Ten thousand might come close. Think about it folks, what are you shelling out each month for your employer-provided plan if you are lucky enough to have one? Two hundred or more a pay period for family coverage? So that's four hundred a month, minimum, times 12. Now math ain't my thing but that comes to an easy $4,800 right there and that is with you not having to disclose any medical conditions. Blue Cross isn't going to be so kind should you be purchasing a plan of your own.

In short, yes she is cute and personable, but she isn't bright enough to be second in command of our country. We have already spent eight years being "lead" by someone who isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Have we learned nothing?

p.s. What the freak is the Talibani? She said it last night . . .