There are four of us on my insurance policy. It’s a good insurance policy, by all accounts. It’s certainly much better than not having insurance. Most of the time, anyway.
This whole H1N1 scare, though? If you’re following all of the CDC best practice guidelines if you think you’re exposed you should go immediately to a clinic and be tested and start on Tamiflu.
The Urgent Care clinic co-pay on our plan is $50.
My son suffers from diabetes. A little over a year ago he went into a state known as diabetic ketoacidosis. He almost went into a coma and if we had not gotten him to a hospital there is a good chance he could have died. When he got out of the hospital he was told to follow up with his specialist, so I called to make an appointment. The earliest I could take my son in to see his specialist was four months later.
I have been using Prevacid for years to control my acid reflux. A condition that, if let unchecked, can lead to Barret’s esophagus and, subsequently, cancer. This is the condition that killed my Father. When my insurance providers switched at the beginning of the year I was told that my medical provider would no longer cover Prevacid, the medication my doctor wanted me to be on, and that I had to switch to Aciphex.
I have also been using Metrogel for years to control my Rosacea. Recently my insurance provider decided they would no longer pay for that medication either and I had to switch to another one.
There is no generic equivalent available for the type of insulin my son has to take for his diabetes and my insurance provider considers it non-formulary. That ONE medication of his is $60 per month. This does not include his other insulin, his needles, or his test strips. There IS a generic equivalent of his second type of insulin, but it does not work as well and we will be switching back to the non-forumlary kind after his next appointment with his endocrinologist.
Alex had a problem throwing baseballs and was diagnosed with a condition called little league shoulder. My insurance company would only pay for about half of the visits that his physical therapist suggested. After we had run out of therapy his condition still persisted and he still cannot properly throw a baseball without causing himself some pain. At this point we’re holding on to hope that he will grow out of it.
Should I go on?
All of you people who think this shit only happens in countries where they have “socialized medicine” are fooling yourselves. Insurance companies get in the way of you and your doctor all the time. They deny treatments. They deny medications. They tell you what doctors you can and cannot see, even if said doctors have huge waiting lists.
Is socialized medicine better? Damned if I know. What I DO know is that all this bullshit being spouted about how there is nobody between you and your doctor right now is a bunch of lies.
Disclaimer – I am not in the health care industry. I am not an economist. I have done no number-crunching on the realistic likelihood that what I am about to propose would work or not. This is simply a thought I’ve had in regards to the “health care crisis” in the United States.
Why can’t the government act as one giant company, representing the citizens of the United States, and use their resources to negotiate health care deals with major insurance companies? Well, actually…I know they can, and that they do. Medicare? Medicaid? That’s basically what they are doing there. When someone is on one of these programs they actually have health insurance through a private insurer. Thing is, the government pays for that. What if they just gave us the ability to purchase those health care plans on our own dime, and gave our employers the option of paying those costs (or a part of them) for us instead of negotiating their own deals with the big insurance companies?
These plans should in no way be mandatory, with the following exception – If you don’t have insurance and you go to a hospital, you have the option of signing up for a plan on the spot. If you choose not to do so, whatever unpaid costs you have for your hospital stay are deducted from your taxes at the end of the year.
The way I see it – Lots of money ends up going into the private sector (insurance companies), creating jobs and strengthening our economy. A larger percentage of the population has access to health care, allowing them to get treated for illnesses instead of letting them worsen to the point that they have to be hospitalized. When people DO end up in the hospital, a larger percentage of them are covered by insurance so the Hospital actually ends up getting paid for the services they render. Hospitals end up having more money and are able to afford better levels of care, and taxpayers aren’t called upon to cover those unpaid medical costs as often. An overall healthier population increases productivity across the board as people with lower paying jobs (the folks who may be at the bottom of the class system but frequently end up doing the jobs that keep the rest of us going) don’t get sick as often and miss work. Due to the fact that the insurance companies would be potentially negotiating for millions of new customers their rates would be fiercely competitive and would fall across the board, allowing private companies to offer even better health insurance benefits or pay them completely for their employees.
I want to be clear – I’m not talking about a subsidized program here. I’m not talking about the government paying for these programs at all. They could simply act as mediators between us and the insurance companies and handle the administrative end for us. Hell, they could even roll the yearly benefits selection process into our tax returns.
Like I said – a completely uneducated thought, but a thought I had nonetheless.
Edit – Another thought I just had. This kind of system would allow individuals to stay on the same health care plan regardless of where they ended up working, so they had no lapse in benefits and no risk of being refused care by an insurance company due to pre-existing conditions.
So.
The GOP in the state of Florida decide to move their primaries up ahead of just about everyone else. The Republican party responds by cutting the number of delegates that will be seated in Florida in half. The Democrats tell Florida that if they have their primaries on that day NONE of their delegates will be seated, and they suggest that Democrats caucus at a later date instead. Democrats choose to go ahead with the vote knowing full well that their delegates will not be seated. Hillary wins, but gains no delegates.
Fast forward to now.
Yesterday our Governor, Charlie Christ, started making noise about Florida voters being disenfranchised and insisting that their votes be counted. Chain gang Charlie (who, in the spirit of honest discourse I must say I generally have no real issue with) supported John McCain for President. On Tuesday John McCain clinched the Republican nomination so it doesn’t matter if he gets his full complement of delegates in Florida. It COULD matter, however, on the Democrat side. Florida is an all or nothing state, and Hillary won. With as close as the Democratic primary looks like it is going to be, the Florida votes could very well swing things in her favor.
Many on the conservative right are urging their herds to support Hillary Clinton. People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have even talked about raising money for her. Why? Because they don’t think she has a chance in hell of beating McCain, but they think Obama does. Many Conservatives have said that they would not vote in the general election if McCain was the nominee UNLESS it was an anti-Hillary vote. They hate McCain, but they hate her more.
So…am I the only one who finds it a bit fishy that we’re only seeing Charlie pipe up about this issue NOW?
Don’t get me wrong – I hate the fact that Florida has become a laughingstock for the whole “Republican Voting Conspiracy” thing, but you gotta admit this one at least looks funny on the surface.
I’m well aware that there are times when I don’t sound like the liberal I claim to be. Maybe it’s because I listen to a lot of Conservative talk radio (not that I have much choice here in Tampa). Who knows? I like to think it’s because I try to evaluate every situation for what it is and not simply write everything as being “bad” if it doesn’t necessarily mesh with what I believe in.
And one would think that a college student (yay education) grilling a politician (boo!) to find out whether or not there’s really any difference between him and his supposed opponents (there isn’t) would be a person I could get behind, right?
Yeah, wrong.
Near as I can tell, Andrew Meyer is yet another in a long line of rude people who likes to make others uncomfortable who went too far and pretty much got what he deserved. Good luck getting to his web site, because despite the fact that Mr. Meyer spent the evening in jail his personal web site was constantly being updated with links to news sites and updates.
Mr. Meyer is the kind of person who, reportedly, made a video of himself wearing a home made sign that said “Harry Dies” after the release of the latest Harry Potter book. I can’t confirm this, because the article that says he did references a video I cannot find on his web site. Perhaps it was deleted because it showed him in a less than ideal light? Mr. Meyer would love that kind of conspiracy theory.
And what about that first video that made it out on the web? Amazingly enough it seemed to have a few choice edits, leaving out the part where someone asks him to get to the point and ask his question and replies with “I’ll ask my question. I even have two more. He’s spoken for 2 hours now and it’s my turn” (or something to that effect…I have not been able to find a transcript online).
So let’s review a few things here…
According to several accounts he barged to the front of the line and cut in front of another student to ask his question.
He was asked by someone (I’m assuming one of the moderators, but it might have been a cop) to get to the point and ask his question. He refuses to do so and continues on his rant.
His microphone is cut off and he begins shouting.
The police begin to escort him out and he continues yelling, wanting to know what he did wrong.
Here’s a big one, gang…
He pulls free of the cops, begins flailing his arms about, and yells “Get your hands off of me!”
Big. Big. Mistake.
Look, here’s the bottom line – You don’t resist the cops. You don’t argue with cops. You definitely don’t try to run from cops. Why? Because they have GUNS. Because they have the ability to put you in jail. Because, and this is especially important if you really do believe that we live in a police state, if you’re arrested and charged with a crime “innocent until proven guilty” is really kind of lip service.
I used to work in an Exxon station where I got to know a lot of cops. Part of getting to know them let me in on the “darker” sides of police work. I’m not talking about the fact that they risk their lives by doing their jobs. I’m talking about the fact that if they want to charge you with a crime they will find one, and there really isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. Need a reason to pull you over? A quick flick of the nightstick guarantees that there was a turn signal out.
Is it pretty? No. But it’s true. I learned things about men, good men, who were genuinely committed to doing the right thing that gave me a whole new level of fear (and respect) for the law. If these men would bend the rules, what would a BAD cop do?
In any case, I really see this Meyer guy as a product of the Jackass generation. The loud, in your face, say things to make you squirm gang. I believe he went in there fully intending on making Senator Kerry look bad, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if his level of resistance was part of that.
The ONLY thing I can say about this encounter that I think was over the line was the tazering itself. I’m not sure that with six cops and one skinny college kid there was really a need to go to that length, but hey…I wasn’t there. I wasn’t the cop who was worried that maybe this guy was going to hurt someone, or himself. Hell, they might have thought he was going to try to hurt Senator Kerry. Don’t know. Can’t put myself in those shoes.
So yeah, here’s me not being a “liberal” and agreeing that this is a sign that Free Speech is under assault in our country. Andrew Meyer was way, way out of line. Did he get what he deserved? I don’t know if I can say for sure on that, but I do believe that this wasn’t an “innocent student” who was being silenced for having controversial views. This was a guy acting like a jackass who continued to do so when the situation Got Serious, and what happened after that was a direct result. The truly sad thing is that as a journalism major he’s likely to turn this into a profit of some kind.
I guarantee you his 15 minutes aren’t done just yet.
Edited to add some additional information
Meyer’s microphone was, indeed, cut off by the moderators of the forum and NOT the police. “Members of Accent, Student Government’s speakers bureau, cut off the microphone because Meyer used profanity, said Steven Blank, Accent chairman. Accent sponsored the forum, which was held at the University Auditorium.”
http://www.alligator.org/articles/2007/09/18/news/campus/arrest.txt
In this same article it states that students were going to protest to have all tazers removed from campus. Because, you know, it’s much better to have your campus police use guns or batons to subdue non-violent resisters.
Mr. Limbaugh,
Despite the fact that you and I have had a very loose association for many years now, it’s fairly likely that you have no idea who I am. While I do have a rather large ego, I’m ok with that fact. You’re a busy man, and while there certainly can’t be a large number of people who call themselves liberal that have actually taken the time to listen to your show or read your books I have no reason to believe you’d have any actual interest in seeking out my company or advice.
This isn’t the first time I’ve considered addressing you directly. I almost did so once before about six months ago. As is frequently the case on your daily show, you were discussing the “drive by” media and the Hollywood Left, and you had a caller who phoned you to rally against all the Hollywood types who were upset over the Fox show “24” and how the anti-terrorist hero Jack Bauer was free propaganda for the Bush Administration. During this call, you correctly pointed out to the caller that there had been no such outcry from Hollywood about “24.” Instead of taking the opportunity to continue your rant you actually spoke the truth, and I was impressed. One of the things I’ve noticed about you in the past is that while you make outrageous claims about the left, you can almost always back them up in fact. It offends me that you will point to a small group of individuals and paint everyone associated with them using the same brush, but you always seem to base at least some small part of your rhetoric in reality.
Because of this fact I have always had a small amount of admiration for what you do.
That was up until recently.
Yes, Mr. Limbaugh, I am referring to the comments you made about Michael J. Fox and the subsequent comments you have made in the days since then.
I’m not going to make emotional statements to the similarities your own struggles with hearing and drug addiction, nor will I lower myself to making insults at your expense in response. As much as I appreciate Keith Olberman, his recent interview with Steven Seder devolved into this at times, even while he was discussing the virtues of grace. No, Mr. Limbaugh, I will not do what you and others have done in this and lower myself to ad hominem attacks. I will simply state a simple fact.
I am disappointed in you, sir. Some how, some way, I thought you were better than this. Perhaps that is a failing on my part, but there it is. Your refusal to budge even one inch on this matter makes you look even worse. You continue to repeat the false claims that Mr. Fox was off his medication when the commercial was filmed, despite numerous medical experts coming out to say that his movements in it were a direct result of taking his medication. You continue to paint him as a tool for the left, even though it’s clear that Mr. Fox is supporting a candidate who he feels will help him find a cure for the disease that is slowly destroying his life – Much like he did when he filmed a commercial to support Arlen Specter in 2004 (a Republican, in case you had forgotten).
Three days after you made your comments, I tuned in to your show yet again to hear you referring to a comment that George Clooney made in 2003. Mr. Clooney made jokes about Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s disease, and when pressed for an apology afterward commented that because Mr. Heston was the head of the NRA he deserved what he had gotten. You held this up as evidence that your actions were no worse than those on the left, and as such they were justified. No, Mr. Limbaugh, there is no justification for what you have done. As the saying goes, two wrongs do not make a right. What you did was wrong. You have made baseless claims about the sincerity of Mr. Fox’s condition, and accused him of exaggerating his disease to win votes for the Democratic Party. Until and unless you can prove that what you have said is true you have moral right to continue these statements.
Unfortunately, it seems, actually showing some class and admitting that you are wrong is the farthest thing from your mind.
In the grand scheme of things, my opinion of what you have done matters very little. For what little it ends up being worth, though, I just wanted you to know that this insignificant man in St. Petersburg, Florida has a very simple message for you –
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Sincerely Yours,
Michael C. McGreevy
Fox : I Wasn’t Acting Or Off Medication
Olberman Gives Us The Link To Limbaugh’s Attack on Michael J. Fox
We have a Republican man in Congress who sent e-mails to teenage boys asking them what they were wearing, and an entire party, the Democrats, whose primary constituency, besides the teachers’ unions, is homosexual men and lesbian women. I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys.
– Ben Stein, writing in The American Spectator
For the longest time, Mr. Stein was one of the few Republicans I actually felt I could admire.
Yeah. Not so much.
The rest of the article is full of similiar hate. Mark Foley is, apparently, “poor and misguided.” Bill Clinton, however, is still much worse.
Fuck it. I can’t even begin to comprehend these people anymore.
(link grabbed from muskrat_john)
Here in the Tampa Bay area, there is a serious lack of decent radio to listen to. I don’t happen to have the benefit of owning a sattelite radio receiver, so I’m stuck with whatever comes across the standard FM or AM dials. There are two Community stations that I enjoy, but unfortunately both of them have a great deal of programming that I just don’t care for. WUSF 89.7 touts itself as being an NPR station, but the bulk of their programming is actually classical music. WMNF 88.5 also has some NPR programming, as well as a large variety of local shows, but most of the stuff that I want to listen to comes on late at night. During the day it’s generally seems to be…well…granola eating hippie shit.
No offense to any granola eating hippies that might be on my friends list, but I don’t have a large threshold for the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary or The Grateful Dead.
I’m also a big fan of talk radio, largely because it’s not the same canned music being played over and over. Corporate Radio really is just a big ball of suck, especially here, with a few programming exceptions that are never on when I’m in my car (Sunday School on 97x, for example). When I’m in the car, I either want to hear good music that isn’t the same ten songs played over and over, or I want to listen to something that is going to keep me engaged. Talk radio fills the latter category nicely.
Unfortunately, the only talk radio here in the Tampa Bay area is a conservative quagmire that includes (but is not limited to) Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Todd Schnitt, Mark Levin, and (soon) Sean Hannity. This is just the lineup on ONE of the AM talk radio stations. There is another one here that includes the likes of Neal Boortz, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity (for now), and another local blowhard named Mark Larsen. I suppose the “saving grace” of that station, to my ears, would be Alan Colmes – but they put him on from midnight to 3AM. Again, not so much in line with my driving schedule at the moment (and when I’m on my way home from The Castle I’m not in a mood to listen to political talk).
The upshot of all this is that I subject myself to a whole bunch of absolutely ludicrous bullshit. I’ve always believed that you should “know your enemy,” especially in the political sense, so educating myself in what the other side of the philosophical coin is thinking has always been a priority for me. I cannot fathom, however, how these hosts – and the people who believe the way that they do – have gotten so utterly and completely disconnected from reality.
Let’s take, for example, the War on Terror.
Our President has no combat military experience. His Vice President has no military experience. The Secretary of Defense served in the United States Navy from 1954 to 1957 as a pilot and flight instructor. The Secretary of State has no military experience. And yet these people, somehow, are held to be authorities on how to fight a war – ignoring the advice of people actually IN the military, a former four star general and a man who actully WAS a prisoners of war (among others). What’s worse, when these dissenters actually voice their opinions it is said that they have a secret agenda. An agenda that actually includes HELPING the enemy.
Yes, if you criticize the administration you actually WANT the terrorists to win.
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t have the first clue how to fight a war, unless it’s a war for ratings. Glenn Beck? Todd Schnitt? Sean Hannity? Entertainers. People who have basically been involved in broadcasting in one way or other their entire adult lives. And yet, they tout themselves as experts on this subject because they have “done the research.” Bah. They aren’t experts any more than I am. The only difference between them and me is that I don’t have a microphone or advertisers, so I’ve got no motivation to keep my “listeners” happy.
Which is all it is.
That’s the sad part. These people are filling a whole bunch of people’s heads spin and they are only doing it to make a paycheck. If they believe the bile they spew it’s only because they’ve said it so many times they have convninced themselves. See, I used to know a guy by the name of Jay Marvin. At the time we met, he was a talk show host on 970WFLA back before they totally jumped over to the conservative side. I was in the studio with him once while he was on the air, and he was spouting off some crap that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he did not believe.
When he went off the air I called him on it. He looked at me with a kind of condescending, “oh you naive kid” glance, and said “Critus, there is schtick and there is reality. Schtick is what pays my bills.”
It’s all schtick. It’s all designed to sell advertising and make money. Sure, it’s hurting the country and helping to fuel the fires of partisanship but who cares? It’s all about the bottom line, right?
It just makes me kind of sick to my stomach, you know? Not the hosts themselves – I know they are full of shit. But the people who call them. The folks who actually believe this shit. Who throw out terms like “raghead” or have an absolute conniption over the fact that, god forbid, a Muslim might be elected to Congress in November (never mind the fact that there are well over 1 million Americans who identify themselves as Muslims)
I dunno. I had more I wanted to say about this, but just writing about it makes me sad, so I’m gonna go do something important like work.
I’m sure some of you have noticed your electric bills have gone up significantly this year. Unlike a lot of people I actually keep all of my old electric bills so I actually decided to look back at this time last year and see what I was paying and why.
In 2005, my electric bill was $318.65, but I didn’t have to pay anything. Why? Because I’d had a brand new energy-efficient Air Conditioner installed a few months earlier and Progress Energy has a rebate program. That month, my daily average use was 92khw per day.
A year later, my average daily use is 90kwh per day. That’s right, my friends, we’ve managed to find a way to use LESS electricity.
My electric bill is $391.49. That’s a 23% increase in my bill, when I had a 2% DECREASE in my energy consumption.
Last year at this time Premium Unleaded gasoline average price in Florida (which I basically have to use in my car or it runs like total ass) was $2.35 a gallon. Today, the average price of that same gallon of gas is $3.14 (zFacts.com). That’s a 34% increase in the cost of fuel.
I haven’t got the data handy to compare my grocery bills, but I’d bet good money that they’ve gone up as well. It’s getting harder to stretch the same amount of money we averaged last year to feed our family of four.
I still don’t know if my Homeowner’s Insurance is going to go up. Right now, it’s sitting at $1700 for a year. Every time I get a notice in the mail from them my heart skips a beat, but so far they haven’t dropped me or upped my rates.
Oh, and on top of all that my house, which was refinanced last year, might be 36% overvalued.
I got a pretty nice raise recently, bigger than a lot of people get on their annual reviews. It was somewhere in the area of 5-6%.
In other words, my income is not scaling with the cost of living. Despite the fact that I’m making more money, I’m in a worse financial situation this year than I was last year.
BUT THE ECONOMY IS DOING GREAT, RIGHT??
Last night, one of the actors in the cast of We Won’t Pay! (two performances left!) made the comment that middle-aged homeowners with steady jobs and investments tended to be Conservatives. Not this one, baby. I was able to purchase my house at the tail end of the Clinton administration, admittedly with the help of a very small inheritance I got from my Father. Since then, despite the fact that I have significantly increased my income and savings potential my financial situation has largely stagnated or in some ways gotten worse. Every year I watch the same bills get higher and higher, and every year those increases surpass whatever new earning potential I have. I don’t give a flying rat’s ass what the politicians say – I’m not doing better, and I’ve made an honest assessment of my finances to see if that was “my” fault and the answer is no. The proof is in the numbers, and the numbers say I’m getting fucked.
Bah…and here I wanted today to be a relaxing one. Now I’ve all gone and gotten myself worked up. This post calls for a “Vote Fuckers” icon.
Remember when Newt Gingrich was the anti-christ?
Ahh, those were the good old days, weren’t they?
It’s really kind of frightening to me when the guy who was once held up as the symbol of what a Conservative Republican was is now coming out against his own party on a fairly regular basis. He had an op-ed on NPR this morning that actually made me wish he was back in some kind of power.
Now that’s scary.
You can listen to it yourself here.