Support System

 I don't remember getting from the wheelchair to the operating table. I do remember that there was a gurney involved, because I remember being asked to move from one flat surface to another. "Mr. Savage, can you you move your butt over just a little bit more... That's good." A nurse took my pants and underwear off. I don't remember the removal of my shirt, nor being dressed in a hospital gown.

What I remember more than anything else was how bright the lights were. I entertained myself by watching the floaters in both eyes dance around against a white background -- not the usual milky orange that I would normally see when my eyes were closed. And then the clouds rolling in from the outside edges, battleship grey and swirling around my field of vision. Was this death? If the clouds completely occluded my vision, would that mean I had died? I wasn't afraid, just curious. Was this the great mystery that only the dying understood? But the cloud cover was never complete. The white always peeked through, with those damn floaters, which I get more and more of as I age, still dancing.

It seems odd to me that I thought so little about my own death when for everyone around me that was the first thing on their minds. For me, the whole ordeal was about the discomfort and inconvenience. The plan, for a while now, is that I will be taking care of my surviving parent when the time came. If I'm not there, who would do that for me? My kids? Gaby? Gaby has his citizenship interview and test on Thursday. He'd have to reschedule. And I've got Etsy orders to ship. Would anyone even think about closing my shop?

The surgery was done a couple of hours after we arrived at the hospital about 5:30 Wednesday morning. A little after 5am, I had awakened sweating and unable to catch my breath. My old plumber, Big John, had retired after a heart attack. He described feeling as if an elephant was standing on his chest. For me, it was more like I had spandex tightly wrapped around my upper torso, which prevented my rib cage from expanding the way I needed it to. Also there was a small intense pain in my solar plexus that felt like I really, really needed to burp. So I took a couple of Tums. They didn't help. All this woke Gaby up, who asked if he should take me to the ER. We got dressed (ish), and Gaby ran a few red lights on the way there. My GP works for Integris, so they already had all my medical and insurance information. The put me in a wheelchair and whisked me right in. They put three stents into the arteries around my heart, pushing them into my body through the radial artery from my right wrist. (That was actually very painful, and apparently I flinched because I was told to lie still.) Afterwards I was moved to a room in the ICU (ICU7). 

I slept most of the day, but was aware of my family arriving and being in the room. My mother, a retired RN, was very interested in looking at my vitals on the monitoring screen next to the bed, and explaining what it all meant to everyone else. This annoyed my daughter, who didn't want to think about any of that stuff. (When Sarah told me about that a day or two later, I reminded her that her grandmother was fascinated by those things because of her old profession, but also it was a coping mechanism. She said she knew that.) 

My favorite part of that day was listening to my kids' conversation, though I had to have them move their chairs closer so that I could hear better. McCauley had gone on a first date with a girl that he met via a dating ap, and he liked her right off. Sarah said she was glad for him.
My least favorite part of the day was when they turned off Survivor. Seems they assumed I wasn't watching it just because I was asleep. 
Later in the evening, our good friends Zach and Frank came by, having driven all the way from Mustang for a ten minute visit. We love these guys.  
Gaby took the opportunity to go home to check on the dogs and shower. It was the only time he left my side.

Gaby. Gaby called my family. He called my boss. He texted and Facebooked with friends. He ordered my meals,  fed me, helped me pee. He scratched my forehead and did a lot of other trivial things because the IVs in both arms prevented me from bending my arms. He got me blankets and pillows, and straightened them for me and helped me adjust the bed when I couldn't get comfortable. He slept when he could, which was not much, in the recliner in ICU7, and on the uncomfortable couch in room 517 after I had been moved. He only left the room to go eat and go to the restroom, and usually then only when other family was there for me.
When we finally got home on Friday night, He laid down next to me in our bed, buried his face in my shoulder and started to cry. Which made me cry. It was the first time I had really felt the emotion of what had happened, but not for me. For him. But I wasn't actually physically strong enough to cry, so I had to stop.

The next time was because of McCauley. It's been handy having a minion living next door after he moved in last summer. This weekend he took care of the dogs, and made deliveries, and just stayed. I had made a date with him to go to dinner and shopping for his birthday, which was on Friday, but now we we're all joking that I had to cancel because something had come up. I didn't know how he was feeling until I saw his Facebook post. Again, a big sob, not for me, for him. But I don't have the strength, so I just had to deal with the tennis ball in my throat.

One of the things he delivered was my phone, which had been left on the drafting table in the studio. Gaby had been telling me about some of the good wishes I had been receiving, but that was my first chance to see it for myself. I have friends. I have people who love me. I called our best friend Charla via Facetime, and we chatted for a while. I wanted to do the same with other friends: Ted, Brian, Melody, but I didn't have the strength to hold up the phone.

Besides not being able to use my arms, the lack of strength was what bothered me most. I would get winded just trying to straighten my blanket. The first night I was home I slept fourteen hours. I told my mom about how exhausting it was just trying to take a shower, and she said that the first time she took a shower after a surgery she had had recently, she felt like she had climbed a mountain. But it's been getting better. I've been taking a lot of naps. The minion and the man-spouse have been doing the lifting and the driving. I'm watching a lot of TV. McCauley drove me to the post office and the grocery store. Gaby drove me back to the post office to mail a couple of Etsy orders -- one of which was sold while I was in the hospital.

Main thing now is figuring out the diet. I hardly ate anything in the hospital. Most of that was because my mouth was so dry that nothing but fruit and salads sounded good. Our friend Michael brought a care package with a lot of snacks that I couldn't eat. S'alright, Gaby needs to eat too. In fact he's taken it upon himself to eat all the salt-filled foods we have in our cabinets and fridge. Once that's done, he'll join me on my diet.
He fixed me an egg white omelet Saturday morning, with spinach and string cheese. It was really good. Sunday morning I was feeling well enough to cook my own omelet. It wasn't as pretty as his, but still good. I looked up what a heart healthy diet was supposed to be. Discussing it with Gaby, we figured out that most of the problem with the diet are just simple fixable things. We buy ingredients at the grocery store that are healthy, but we also buy chips, cookies, and ice cream. And when we are (I am) in a hurry, it's too easy to stop off at a fast food place and pick up something to eat in the car. From now on, it's more meal planning, watching the salt and fat intake.

So that's the project for the next year. Just learning how to live healthier.

Thank you, my friends, for your support.

Snagged from tumblr: Hospital Costs

Costs all vary by hospital, and they’re all massively inflated. They’re part of complex negotiations between the hospital and the insurance company, and they’re a scam.

The hospital puts all these little charges together to “justify” a giant bill. Then they “lower” those costs to what they’ve already agreed on with your insurance company. The insurance company then tells you “look how much we reduced your bill by our negotiating!” and then pays some portion of that bill and passes the rest on to you, depending on your deductibles and so on.

If you have no insurance, you don’t get the benefit of the “negotiated” price - they keep the price that high as part of a deal with insurance companies who are trying to justify why you should pay them so much in premiums every month. If out of pocket patients paid less, nobody would get insurance.

We need price transparency where hospitals have to publish these costs and make them available to everyone. We need to be able to call people out when they charge $20 for a tissue and $30 for a band-aid. We also need to be able to compare prices and choose hospitals that give us the best balance of cost and quality. 

We also need to stop acting like giving everyone health insurance is the solution to our broken healthcare system. The insurance companies are the ones who broke it. 

If you are facing a big bill after a hospital stay, whether for giving birth or for anything else, here are some ways to reduce that bill.

1. If you have insurance, call them and ask for an explanation of what they didn’t cover. The person will probably not have one for you. Say you are not willing to pay a bill if they can’t explain why you owe it. The insurance company will sometimes re-submit the claim and cover more of your cost. 

2. Call the hospital billing department and ask for an itemized bill. This alone may reduce the cost somewhat because they were overcharging you to begin with. 

3. When you get the itemized bill, go through it. Highlight any items that seem exceptionally overpriced or even that don’t apply to your visit (a medication you didn’t receive, a procedure that wasn’t done, etc.)

4. Call the hospital billing department back and go through the itemized bill, asking for clarification on all the items you flagged. They may remove items or reduce the cost.

5. Explain that you are unable to pay your bill in full and ask about a settlement or payment options. Sometimes the hospital will be willing to take a significantly lower amount if you can pay all at once, or you can get a payment plan with no interest that is feasible for you. 

This is based on how my husband has been fighting medical bills for the last couple of years. He has a chronic illness and has frequent appointments, procedures, tests, etc. He frequently gets large bills and then negotiates them down to much smaller ones, or in some cases has gotten bills dismissed completely. 

He says that calling the billing department and the insurance company and simply asking them to explain the charges makes a huge difference every time, because the person on the phone almost never has an explanation for why the bill is so high. 

You ARE being overcharged, and you don’t have to just deal with it. You can fight back!

Snagged from Facebook: Always Been A Liberal

A friend forwarded this on Facebook:

“I've always been a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.

Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: Not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" or "if you can't afford insurance and you get sick you have to declare bankruptcy" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize everyone’s right to live according to their own individual beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that someone is trying to force people to live by their own religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on others. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on others.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

17. Just because I am Pro-Choice doesn’t make me “Pro-Abortion”. It’s a woman’s body and it is her choice. I also believe that since abortion is so frowned upon, that birth control should be available to anyone who needs it.. it should be covered. Just as in many instances ED meds are.

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I'm a liberal, because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.

So, I'm a liberal.

Shawn Patterson

I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People

I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People
Kayla Chadwick

Like many Americans, I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue.

I haven’t run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece:

I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.

Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.

I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.

If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.

I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).

I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.

There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).

But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.

I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying.

The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from the American right wing for decades, but this gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling.

Perhaps it was always like this. I’m (relatively) young, so maybe I’m just waking up to this unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold.

I don’t know if what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves.

Futility can’t be good for my blood pressure, and the way things are going, I won’t have health insurance for long.

Rooms In My Head

    Sometimes I write in this blog just to clear my own mind about stuff going on in my life.  Lately, I've been copying and pasting a lot of stuff just because the author reflects my point of view and puts it a cleverer way than I could.  And then there are the Foxworld posts with their mini observations.  It seems rare anymore that I write just to let my readers know what's going on with me.  This is just such a post.

    I've been working at the hotel now for eight years.  Before this one, I worked at another hotel for four.  Both were on the overnight shift.  For personal reasons, I had committed to stay at my current job until the end of next summer.  By that time, I will have been nocturnal for thirteen years.  As much as I love my job and the place I work, I'm tired. I want to do something else.
    So, for the next eleven months, I'm going to be exploring my options.  There's some things I have to consider: my age and my health insurance being two of them, and what type of job.  I really like working with the public and meeting new people all the time.  I got offered two jobs just from giving the tour of the hotel.  One gentleman suggested that with my knowledge of OKC's architectural history, I should work for him as a water taxi driver in Bricktown.  Another, for the same reason, said I should become a public relations guy for the City of Tulsa.  Both offers just came along at the wrong time.  And now, with Gaby's job being more important than mine, moving to another city is not really an option.
    One of the things I'd like to do is to talk to people who are actually doing the things I'm interested in.  I have friends on Facebook that are just such people, and I'd really like to sit down with them and talk about what they do, and see if they can offer any advice.  (This would also be part of a larger plan to get to know some of my Facebook friends who are only acquaintances in real life.)

    If my world were different, I'd really like to spend my days concentrating on my art.  I used to do just that, but real life interfered, and I just don't know how to restart.  I've let things fall apart so much that I think I'd have to take a few months off just to do the prep work.
    That being said, I have started a new adventure in my artwork.  A friend of mine convinced me that the photos that I take, manipulate on the computer, and then set aside for the purpose of eventually maybe possibly in the future getting around to drawing or painting, are, in fact, works of art in themselves, and that I need to just find a good printer and mat, frame and sell what I've got.
    Framemasters, here in Edmond, has a giclée machine.

 

I'm so pleased and excited about the way these look I could just bust.  But I've got to make a big investment this year in framing and printing.  I intend to have at least a dozen of them to show at the Edmond show next spring.

As many of you know, Gaby and I went through immigration last year, and last summer he got his green card.  That gives him the ability to travel, and our intention is to go see his family in Chihuahua ASAP.  The biggest obstacle has been that he has to have a Mexican passport, and that has to be gotten through the Mexican Embassy.  There is a traveling consulate that one can go to when it comes to town, but they aren't very good at keeping their online schedule up to date.  Fortunately, the agency where Gaby works keep track of this stuff, and finally, a year after he got his green card, he's got an appointment this week to get his passport.  That means we'll be able to start making plans within a few weeks.
     Just one hitch:  Chihuahua is one of the cities noted for violence, killings, kidnappings.  And my sisters-in-law live in Ciudad Juarez, which is even worse.  I want to go, but I have to admit I'm more than a bit nervous.  I'm going to be relying on advice from my in-laws about safety on this trip.  But I really want to go.  There are photos that need to be taken.

We went to see a new doctor last week.  We really like him; he listens, and he really seems to know his stuff.  Also, he's not afraid to talk about money and how we can save some on healthcare.  We've both been given referrals to specialists, a sleep specialist for Gaby, and one that that can take movies of my innards.  I could talk more about the state of our health, but I haven't gotten my lab results back yet (because of my schedule, not because they aren't ready.) 
    Gaby was told he needs to lose 35 pounds.  (He's actually 70 pounds overweight, according to the insurance charts, but, you know, baby steps.)  I need to lose about 30 myself.  That will require a plan, and we haven't sat down to make one yet. But as I sit here typing, I'm feeling the achiness that comes with being too sedentary.

They say a man's mind is like a house with a lot of rooms.  These are the rooms in my mind where the lights are on.  I've got a three day weekend this week.  Maybe I'll get something done in one of these rooms.

Those Top 37 Things You’ll Regret When You’re Old

Those Top 37 Things You’ll Regret When You’re Old

January 13, 2014   

1. Not traveling when you had the chance.
Traveling becomes infinitely harder the older you get, especially if you have a family and need to pay the way for three-plus people instead of just yourself.
2. Not learning another language.
You’ll kick yourself when you realize you took three years of language in high school and remember none of it.
3. Staying in a bad relationship.
No one who ever gets out of a bad relationship looks back without wishing they made the move sooner.
4. Forgoing sunscreen.
Wrinkles, moles, and skin cancer can largely be avoided if you protect yourself.
5. Missing the chance to see your favorite musicians.
“Nah, dude, I’ll catch Nirvana next time they come through town.” Facepalm.
6. Being scared to do things.
Looking back you’ll think, What was I so afraid of?
7. Failing to make physical fitness a priority.
Too many of us spend the physical peak of our lives on the couch. When you hit 40, 50, 60, and beyond, you’ll dream of what you could have done.
8. Letting yourself be defined by gender roles.
Few things are as sad as an old person saying, “Well, it just wasn’t done back then.”
9. Not quitting a terrible job.
Look, you gotta pay the bills. But if you don’t make a plan to improve your situation, you might wake up one day having spent 40 years in hell.
10. Not trying harder in school.
It’s not just that your grades play a role in determining where you end up in life. Eventually you’ll realize how neat it was to get to spend all day learning, and wish you’d paid more attention.
11. Not realizing how beautiful you were.
Too many of us spend our youth unhappy with the way we look, but the reality is, that’s when we’re our most beautiful.
12. Being afraid to say “I love you.”
When you’re old, you won’t care if your love wasn’t returned — only that you made it known how you felt.
13. Not listening to your parents’ advice.
You don’t want to hear it when you’re young, but the infuriating truth is that most of what your parents say about life is true.
14. Spending your youth self-absorbed.
You’ll be embarrassed about it, frankly.
15. Caring too much about what other people think.
In 20 years you won’t give a darn about any of those people you once worried so much about.
16. Supporting others’ dreams over your own.
Supporting others is a beautiful thing, but not when it means you never get to shine.
17. Not moving on fast enough.
Old people look back at the long periods spent picking themselves off the ground as nothing but wasted time.
18. Holding grudges, especially with those you love.
What’s the point of re-living the anger over and over?
19. Not standing up for yourself.
Old people don’t take sh*t from anyone. Neither should you.
20. Not volunteering enough.
OK, so you probably won’t regret not volunteering Hunger Games style, but nearing the end of one’s life without having helped to make the world a better place is a great source of sadness for many.
21. Neglecting your teeth.
Neglecting your teeth.
Brush. Floss. Get regular checkups. It will all seem so maddeningly easy when you have dentures.
22. Missing the chance to ask your grandparents questions before they die.
Most of us realize too late what an awesome resource grandparents are. They can explain everything you’ll ever wonder about where you came from, but only if you ask them in time.
23. Working too much.
No one looks back from their deathbed and wishes they spent more time at the office, but they do wish they spent more time with family, friends, and hobbies.
24. Not learning how to cook one awesome meal.
Knowing one drool-worthy meal will make all those dinner parties and celebrations that much more special.
25. Not stopping enough to appreciate the moment.
Young people are constantly on the go, but stopping to take it all in now and again is a good thing.
26. Failing to finish what you start.
Failing to finish what you start.
“I had big dreams of becoming a nurse. I even signed up for the classes, but then…”
27. Never mastering one awesome party trick.
You will go to hundreds, if not thousands, of parties in your life. Wouldn’t it be cool to be the life of them all?
28. Letting yourself be defined by cultural expectations.
Letting yourself be defined by cultural expectations.
Don’t let them tell you, “We don’t do that.”
29. Refusing to let friendships run their course.
People grow apart. Clinging to what was, instead of acknowledging that things have changed, can be a source of ongoing agitation and sadness.
30. Not playing with your kids enough.
When you’re old, you’ll realize your kid went from wanting to play with you to wanting you out of their room in the blink of an eye.
31. Never taking a big risk (especially in love).
Knowing that you took a leap of faith at least once — even if you fell flat on your face — will be a great comfort when you’re old.
32. Not taking the time to develop contacts and network.
Networking may seem like a bunch of crap when you’re young, but later on it becomes clear that it’s how so many jobs are won.
33. Worrying too much.
As Tom Petty sang, “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”
34. Getting caught up in needless drama.
Who needs it?
35. Not spending enough time with loved ones.
Not spending enough time with loved ones.
Our time with our loved ones is finite. Make it count.
36. Never performing in front of others.
This isn’t a regret for everyone, but many elderly people wish they knew — just once — what it was like to stand in front of a crowd and show off their talents.
37. Not being grateful sooner.
It can be hard to see in the beginning, but eventually it becomes clear that every moment on this earth — from the mundane to the amazing — is a gift that we’re all so incredibly lucky to share.

My Cousin Got Trapped In The Gap

I was sick recently.  It started with losing my dinner rght before work one Friday night, and over the next two nights, I had body aches and fatigue, and a headache that wouldn't go away.  Finally, on Monday morning, I felt so bad that I had Gaby take me to the emergency room.  A couple of days ago, I got the bill:  $8,040.25, of which my insurance covers all but $991 of, and that will probably be covered in its entirety by my HSA.  I am so glad that we both have health insurance.  Without it, I figure I'd be paying this bill off for the next forty months.
      Monday afternoon, I had a chance to visit briefly with a cousin of mine, Steve, and the stream of the conversation led to him talking about his own health care situation.   He works for a large company and makes a decent living, but he works contracted labor, so his employer doesn't provide health insurance.   He's looked into buying it himself, but since he's a diabetic, the cheapest policies he can find would cost over $20,000 per year.   He makes too little money to qualify for the subsdies from the ACA, and since our Governor has decided to put politics above the well being of the people of the state, he makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid.  So, he, a diabetic, has to do without, and hope that nothing serious happens to him in the five years till he can qualify for Medicare.
    Thing is, the Affordable Care Act was written in such a way that Steve should never have had to worry about this.  The plan was that people who make 133% to 400% of the federal poverty level would be provided help in paying for their health insurance, while those making under 133% would be covered under Medicaid, which is a state sponsored program.  The states would not be out any money for the expanded service because the Federal Government would provide 100% of the funding for the first three years, and then scaled down to 90% by 2022.
    But in 2012, the Supreme Court decided that states did not have to expand their Medicaid program if they didn't want to.  As of October 2014, 23 states, including Oklahoma,  have not done so.  This has created a coverage gap that is not provided for in the ACA,  and in most of those states, the maximum income to be eligible for Medicaid is set so low that anyone with any kind of job could not qualify.  Furthermore, childless adults in all but one of those states are not eligible for Medicaid at all.  In Oklahoma, that leaves 104,000 people without any kind of health coverage, 88% of which are childless adults.  Steve is one of them.
    I had started to write on this subject almost a year ago when a friend of mine posted a meme on Facebook about the Georgia legislature making a rather dubious vote to go against Federal law.  Not the first time for that state, of course, but it interested me because my brother had just moved to Georgia, and he, at one time, was telling the family that he would be dependent on the ACA to enable him to buy insurance.
    Then, shortly thereafter, the story came out that rural hospitals in Georgia were closing because, by not expanding Medicaid coverage, the state had also rejected 14.5 billion in Federal funds,  while denying health care coverage to 646,557 people.  This is not a problem unique to Georgia, but the solution to the problem proposed by the Governor was appalling.
    Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which said that Emergency Rooms could no longer reject patients based on their ability to pay for services.  Governor Nathan Deal decided that the way to fix the problems of closing rural hospitals in his state is to repeal the 1986 law.  His critics, naturally, describe his position as If we kill off all the poor people, we won't have to pay for taking care of them.
    (Sidenote here:  Back during the 2012 Presidential Election campaigns, Mitt Romney said the ACA was unnecessary because the uninsured could just go to emergency rooms.  Seems Governor Romney and Governor Deal were at cross purposes.)
    Not that people wouldn't be dying in his state anyway as a result of his failure to expand Medicaid.  The peer-reviewed medical journal Health Affairs estimated that between 501 and 1176 people per year in Georgia alone could die a "needless death" simply because of what is essentially partisan politics.
     Here in Oklahoma, of course, we've got exactly the same thing.  Governor Mary Fallin decided not to expand Medicaid coverage, turning away billions in Federal funding, saying it was "unaffordable."  Personally, I don't understand her math, or why she thinks the state would be better off with more people in the state having no access to health care or dying needless deaths.  Seems to me, she's taken the more expensive route.
    When you stand against something, you should also be aware of what you're standing for. 
    Last Thursday, the front page of the Daily Oklahoman had the headline "Shortfall's Dire Consequences,"  in which educational and health care officials explained to state Government officials how budget cuts would affect the state.  Republicans have a super majority in our State Legislature, and Republicans in general are committed to the idea that tax cuts generate growth, and that cuts in spending will cover deficits.  These ideas have never worked before, and they have no potential for working in the future, and furthermore, we have to look no further than our next door neighbor, Kansas, to see just how badly these ideas work when put into practice unfettered.  Yet that will continue to be the policy here for the foreseeable future.  Maybe all the poor people here will die off, too, and then we won't have to worry about it anymore.

The Thaddus Factor

"So, ask the following question: how is it that many Americans with preexisting conditions have health insurance now? The immediate answer is, they get it from their employers. But why do employers do that? Well, employment-based health insurance is tax-advantaged: it’s a benefit employers can provide that isn’t counted as taxable income, which makes it better, in some cases, than offering higher wages instead.
But for company health plans to receive this tax-advantaged status, they have to obey ERISA rules, which essentially require that the same benefits be made available to all full-time employees — no discrimination based on health history, and you can’t provide benefits only to your highest-paid workers. So employer-based insurance is, when you come down to it, a lot like Obamacare, with enforced non-discrimination and a fair bit of subsidization of less-well-paid workers.
Now comes Karl Rove, and his big idea is to make the tax break on health coverage available to everyone, not just beneficiaries of employer plans. Great! Now employers can say “Here, we’ll eliminate your coverage, but we’ll pay you more, and you can use the money to buy tax-deductible insurance on your own!” Except that employees with preexisting conditions won’t find insurers willing to offer them affordable coverage — oh, and lower-paid workers won’t be able to afford coverage even if they’re healthy." -PK

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It's true that under the preferred Republican system -- the U.S. system before the Affordable Care Act became law -- if you were uninsured and get sick, you could probably find public hospitals that would provide treatment.
It is, however, extremely expensive to treat patients this way. It's far cheaper -- and more medically effective -- to pay for preventative care so that people don't have to wait for a medical emergency to seek treatment.
For that matter, when sick people with no insurance go to the E.R. for care, they often can't afford to pay their bills. Those costs are ultimately spread around to everyone else -- effectively creating the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised.
Indeed, since hospitals can't treat sick patients for free, the bills can bankrupt those who get sick, and the costs are still passed on to everyone else.
But wait, there's more.  For those with chronic ailments, DeMint's position is laughable -- is anyone going to stop by the emergency room for chemotherapy or diabetes treatments?
The reality is plain for anyone who cares: Americans die because they lack basic coverage. The Republican plan to deal with this national scourge doesn't exist -- the plan is to destroy what took generations to approve, and then hope for the best.
Obamacare's critics are offering a cruel joke, and little else. -Steve Benin

The Real Question

"If Obamacare were really as horrible as right-wing activists and lawmakers claim, shouldn't it be easier to attack the law without making stuff up? Wouldn't conservatives be eager to simply give people the truth, rather than resort to ugly demagoguery?"  - Steve Benin

The Cost of Ideology.

This was a comment on a blog post about a statistical analysis of the state of the world's health care:

by jonathan on July 11th, 2013 at 15:47

To focus on the list of killers, I think you touch gently on some of the underlying social and personal issues that motivate response. For example, people are afraid of breast or prostate cancer because they see it as affecting them simply because they’re female or male. But lung cancer? They see that as more a behavioral issue because people know smoking causes lung cancer. And heart disease, particularly coronary artery disease? Isn’t that to people a series of personal choices one makes to eat this, not that and to drive, not walk, etc.
In other words, some of the results seem to reflect an underlying issue of American ideology and thus may reflect the cost of that ideology. People want to believe the market generates the best results. You and I may believe “best” implies lower mortality, better health outcomes, etc. and use this data to argue the market is obviously not very good at identifying and correcting these problems. But believers in markets as an ideology see a benefit – call it “liberty” – to which they attribute value. The amount of value attributed to the ideology seems to be whatever is necessary to overcome the costs associated with the ideology … so you can’t win arguing with them. We can, however, use this data to quantify in certain ways the costs of ideology. (But of course we already do that by, for example, counting the number of gun deaths, the number of children killed by guns left lying around, etc.)
An associated problem is that ideology has a need to proclaim its virtues. America has the best health system, bar none. Repeat. The issue isn’t that this is wrong but that there is a need to say it. We can attribute that to ignorance but certainly experience looking at the internet, TV, etc. shows that you can stuff people with facts and they’ll ignore them, deny them, distort them, etc. I have learned over time to consider this fact denial as a form of argument, one which rather inchoately includes other values and considerations that trump facts. See above: if you argue we have the best system, you argue for a form of “liberty” that to you has more value than quantifiable contrary evidence. Don’t want to be told to get health care, then you must argue that lots of people dying, lots of pain and lots of wasted money is not worth as much as your perceived “liberty” interests.
This raises the long-term question: do these people believe over time their ideology will in fact generate better quantifiable results that don’t need to include “liberty” to be the best? I don’t know. I think they do. I think they tend to believe God or something else smiles on them and on us if and only if we achieve a certain standard of “liberty”. This enables them to make these arguments from the safety of knowing we’ll never achieve this standard and thus they can commit to perpetual struggle for their ideology without ever having to judge its failure.

Not Part of the Plan

I woke up at 9:15pm. I had slept for 12 hours, and I had a slight headache. Gaby wasn't home, but had left a message on the machine that he was still at Gus'. An aspirin, shower, a frozen pizza, a couple of cups of coffee, and I was off to work.
I still felt very tired, but I thought that once the food and caffiene kicked in that I would feel ok. Not to be.
No parking places out front, so I pulled to the curb and handed my keys to Ian. He offerd to switch places with me and handed the keys back. I turned back to my car and immediatly got very dizzy. Later, while getting dressed in the locker room, I felt dizzy again. I had been having some dizzy spells for a couple of weeks, so I was a bit concerned. In the locker room, I talked with Mike, one of our cooks, about his heart problems. Not many similarities.
Gaby came by, and I told him how I was feeling, and Jess and the two of us speculated about why I felt the way I did. After he left, I went upstairs to get a six-pack of water, and then almost passed out in the office. I called Gaby and had him come back and get me. My car is still there. I had to leave my job in the care of other people. I hate that. And I'm losing several hours.
On the way home, I told him I wanted to go to the emergency room. We got there a little before 1:00am and left a little before 5:00, way past my suppertime, way past Gaby's bedtime. After blood tests, EKG, x-rays, and a lot of catnapping, the very, very cute doctor couldn't find anything wrong, except perhaps a slight irregularity with my heartbeat. Without any other symptoms, he could only suggest that I was just feeling a bit rundown. My co-pay was $150. I could have just gone home and slept it off. Thank God for insurance.