WHY I DONATED MY KIDNEY
I just got back from a long weekend up north to visit my friends Peggy and Ron and their daughter Emily. I donated my kidney to Ron in June and I am so happy to say that we are both feeling great now. We didn't do a whole lot, mostly hung out, watched the World Series, decorated the house for Halloween and listened to Em giggle with her new boyfriend.
It's odd how intimate my conversations with Ron are now. We talk about everything and there is no thought of holding back even when we talk about stuff we don't necessarily agree on. One night after dinner Peg was teasing me about how when she and Ron were dating I predicted that she wouldn't end up with him because he wasn't the guy for her. Ron was sitting right there when she said it and he looked a little taken aback, but I responded that it was because he never hung out with us - he was busy being a man in his manworld (we were 23 and he was 28 and seemed very grown up). It wasn't until years later that I found out that the grown up man was a great big Deadhead.
I had no idea that Ron and I would one day share a bond that is so unique and wonderful.
We were talking about the decision to donate and I shared that it was something that I always thought I would do. Peggy first told me that Ron would probably need a kidney transplant at some remote point in the future probably 10 years ago. At the time his kidney function was impaired although it took a while to determine the cause.
No one in my family has ever had kidney problems, but when I was a kid one of my friends went into kidney failure. It started happening when we were still in single digits and by the time he was 12 he needed a transplant. I have a very clear memory of the neighborhood moms talking about it in the kitchen. The one thing that deeply impacted me as I sat there listening was that his mom was going through testing to see if she could give him one of her kidneys.
That was astonishing to me. It was 1972 and living donation was a concept not even 20 years old, not that I knew that then. At 12, the idea that someone could give one of their organs to another person and save their life was miraculous and terrifying. Oh the drama! I interpreted this "kidney disease" to mean that he could no longer pee and he was going to die a terrible death, drowning in his own urine which couldn't get out of his body. I could completely understand why his mom would undergo, what in my mind was a gruesome and horrific Frankenstein type procedure to save her kid's life. Who wouldn't?
At that time they were starting to dramatize transplant surgery (mostly hearts) on the Movie of the Week. I LOVED the Movie of the Week and Afterschool Specials which is probably why the little movie in my mind, fed by tidbits gleaned from eavesdropping on my mom and her friends - "Brett Needs a Kidney," featured his brave mother being sawed in half to save her son as he hovered at death's door swollen with pee. The fact that he hadn't been at school for like a month because he was so sick, and the one time I did see him when I went over to his house he was yellow, bore out my whole drowning in pee theory.
Turns out Brett received a cadavaric kidney because his mom wasn't a match. He came back to school with a puffy face from the anti-rejection drugs and life went on. Except that I now knew someone who was a walking miracle.
Later on, in college I took an anatomy and physiology class from a really great teacher and I learned about the magical kidney. The kidney is truly one of the foundations of our well-being. They do a lot more than just clean the blood. They regulate the composition of our blood, they keep the concentrations of various ions and other important substances constant as well as the volume of water in the body and the acid/base concentration of the blood. They remove wastes from the body (urea, ammonia, drugs, toxic substances), help regulate the blood pressure, stimulate the making of red blood cells and maintain the body's calcium levels.
I had always thought the kidneys were about urine, but they're mostly about blood. They are just as important as the heart when it comes to our overall health - although I think the heart gets bigger, better billing. The kidneys always seemed to be featured players, barely even a co-star unless, of course, they are failing.
Brett ultimately received three transplanted kidneys before he died at age 44.
When Peg told me that Ron had been placed on the transplant list 5 or 6 years ago I told her then that I would donate. There was never any doubt or second thought after I said it - I knew that I was going to be the one to give my kidney to Ron and that the transplant would be successful.
Peggy called me a week and a half ago and said, "I just wanted to tell you that my husband and I went out today and he got new suits and new eyeglasses, something I haven't been able to get him to do in six years. I think he's starting to realize that he's going to be okay. I wanted to say thank you again."
Although Ron never defined himself as a sick person, and you would never have known that he was on dialysis or needed a transplant, his illness affected him. This weekend I saw for myself that not only is he doing well - he is well.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
PARDON MY INDIGNATION...
I work in the construction business and I really liked it - when there was business. Lately, like many other industries there's not much going on. About the only projects out there are public works and federal projects. This is great until you pick up the planholders list and see that over 30 General Contractors are bidding each project.
All of our private projects are on hold. This continues to be true for most projects that are privately owned. The cost to build is prohibitively expensive so what makes the most sense financially if you own a piece of dirt is to let it sit there... or sell it because you can't afford to develop it.
In the midst of this rather stressful time in our economy the banks - the same banks that received hundreds of millions in TARP funds have started "restructuring" existing loans no matter how you've managed your money. In our case we had a $250,000 line of credit which we use for cash flow. When our loan came up for renewal the bank looked at our balance sheet and our receivables which were respectable and decided that they were going to reduce our LOC by $150,000.
Now we never actually used more than $100,000 of the LOC but I liked knowing that I could if an opportunity arose or if we got a big contract. Big contracts involve carrying material bills and payroll, often for 30 to 60 days before you get paid.
My response to the banks decision to do this was to cast around and see if we could find another LOC with another institution. I was thinking a bank that got a lot of the TARP money would be a good shot because, stupid me! I thought that "bail out" money would include businesses, but apparently not.
The banks I talked to all refused to lend us even $1 despite the fact that our balance sheet looks better than any of theirs, we actually have healthy receivables (although I'm not certain that people can pay us since no one besides the banks seem to have any money) and we carry virtually no debt. All this and we can provide security in the form of real estate that is owned free and clear with no note.
In this extremely tedious process I was passed from person to person, all of whom were very professional, but none of whom seemed to be very intelligent or inspired. One gentleman, Josh who said he was the underwriter had a voice that sounded not all the way changed - I imagined acne, braces and ears that appear still a bit too large for his head as we spoke, asked me what I attributed our drop in revenue to over the last year.
Me: Seriously?
Him: Well yes, there's been a significant drop.
Me: Gee Josh, let me think... near as I can figure I guess it would be the fact that over the last 5 years or so banks, such as your own employer practiced predatory and irresponsible lending to people who couldn't afford the mortgages you put them in, well not you Josh because 5 years ago you were in middle school, but as I was saying, since the banks made all of these incredibly bad decisions, including those derivative things, they started to fail and go out of business, and as they were sliding into that black hole they'd dug for themselves they began pulling in large corporations who had also made some questionable, greed based financial decisions, something that corporations can do in this country because in the current system no one has to actually be culpable, and the CEO's still got paid their million dollar plus salaries and bonuses, but they do employ thousands of people so the government had to get involved and they took hundreds of millions of the tax dollars that we all pay and gave it to the banks to "revitalise the economy", except that the banks are holding onto the money to try to fix their very sick balance sheets, thus there is no money out in the world to pay for the projects that would allow us to continue the growth that we had worked so hard to create a real foundation for.
So basically Josh it seems to me that the drop in our revenue is your employer's fault.
Then I asked him how much TARP money his bank had accepted and what exactly they did with it.
Because I would really like to know.
I work in the construction business and I really liked it - when there was business. Lately, like many other industries there's not much going on. About the only projects out there are public works and federal projects. This is great until you pick up the planholders list and see that over 30 General Contractors are bidding each project.
All of our private projects are on hold. This continues to be true for most projects that are privately owned. The cost to build is prohibitively expensive so what makes the most sense financially if you own a piece of dirt is to let it sit there... or sell it because you can't afford to develop it.
In the midst of this rather stressful time in our economy the banks - the same banks that received hundreds of millions in TARP funds have started "restructuring" existing loans no matter how you've managed your money. In our case we had a $250,000 line of credit which we use for cash flow. When our loan came up for renewal the bank looked at our balance sheet and our receivables which were respectable and decided that they were going to reduce our LOC by $150,000.
Now we never actually used more than $100,000 of the LOC but I liked knowing that I could if an opportunity arose or if we got a big contract. Big contracts involve carrying material bills and payroll, often for 30 to 60 days before you get paid.
My response to the banks decision to do this was to cast around and see if we could find another LOC with another institution. I was thinking a bank that got a lot of the TARP money would be a good shot because, stupid me! I thought that "bail out" money would include businesses, but apparently not.
The banks I talked to all refused to lend us even $1 despite the fact that our balance sheet looks better than any of theirs, we actually have healthy receivables (although I'm not certain that people can pay us since no one besides the banks seem to have any money) and we carry virtually no debt. All this and we can provide security in the form of real estate that is owned free and clear with no note.
In this extremely tedious process I was passed from person to person, all of whom were very professional, but none of whom seemed to be very intelligent or inspired. One gentleman, Josh who said he was the underwriter had a voice that sounded not all the way changed - I imagined acne, braces and ears that appear still a bit too large for his head as we spoke, asked me what I attributed our drop in revenue to over the last year.
Me: Seriously?
Him: Well yes, there's been a significant drop.
Me: Gee Josh, let me think... near as I can figure I guess it would be the fact that over the last 5 years or so banks, such as your own employer practiced predatory and irresponsible lending to people who couldn't afford the mortgages you put them in, well not you Josh because 5 years ago you were in middle school, but as I was saying, since the banks made all of these incredibly bad decisions, including those derivative things, they started to fail and go out of business, and as they were sliding into that black hole they'd dug for themselves they began pulling in large corporations who had also made some questionable, greed based financial decisions, something that corporations can do in this country because in the current system no one has to actually be culpable, and the CEO's still got paid their million dollar plus salaries and bonuses, but they do employ thousands of people so the government had to get involved and they took hundreds of millions of the tax dollars that we all pay and gave it to the banks to "revitalise the economy", except that the banks are holding onto the money to try to fix their very sick balance sheets, thus there is no money out in the world to pay for the projects that would allow us to continue the growth that we had worked so hard to create a real foundation for.
So basically Josh it seems to me that the drop in our revenue is your employer's fault.
Then I asked him how much TARP money his bank had accepted and what exactly they did with it.
Because I would really like to know.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
ON BEING A JACKASS
"Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but stand there and take it." Lyndon Johnson
So President Obama thinks that Kanye West is a jackass? Big deal. I think so too. Why the uproar? All he said is exactly what so many of us are thinking. When you become president are you no longer allowed to have honest, spontaneous opinions and express them? Ever?
He said it off the record, but it shouldn't be such a big deal that he said it. This country is messed up in more ways than the economy. The most interesting thing about the incident is that it happened via Twitter. Twitter is like the slambook of the new millenium. It gets people in trouble and everybody is doing it.
I wonder if there's some freak twittering about his weird stalking obsessions and when he finally goes and acts out we can go back and read his twitter feed.
But back to the president who said what we were all thinking. I like Obama when he openly speaks his mind. It reminds me of why I voted for him. Even when I disagree with him he's still an intelligent human being and he's real. He doesn't strike me as a guy with entitlement issues, or someone who talks out of both sides of his mouth - when he's just saying what he really thinks.
Being president has got to be no fun at all, as Lyndon Johnson so aptly describes it - standing in a hail storm and taking it will leave you cold and bruised. Good thing Obama seems to have a pretty thick skin - but I wonder where his "when" is, that moment where he'll just get fed up and tell us all off. How long can one deal with the level of sanctimonious bullshit that's flying around before one snaps?
The behavior in this country has devolved to a point where Kanye West feels like it's okay to climb up on stage, in the middle of someone else's moment and spew his opinion. We live in a world where people twitter their every thought and our news anchors are no longer reporting hard, fact based news - much of it just opinion. The opinion of Rupert Murdoch, or Sumner Redstone, or whomever else owns the company.
At this point I think even Kanye West would acknowledge that what he did to Taylor Swift makes him a jackass.
But maybe he's also the poster child for America's collective conscious.
"Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but stand there and take it." Lyndon Johnson
So President Obama thinks that Kanye West is a jackass? Big deal. I think so too. Why the uproar? All he said is exactly what so many of us are thinking. When you become president are you no longer allowed to have honest, spontaneous opinions and express them? Ever?
He said it off the record, but it shouldn't be such a big deal that he said it. This country is messed up in more ways than the economy. The most interesting thing about the incident is that it happened via Twitter. Twitter is like the slambook of the new millenium. It gets people in trouble and everybody is doing it.
I wonder if there's some freak twittering about his weird stalking obsessions and when he finally goes and acts out we can go back and read his twitter feed.
But back to the president who said what we were all thinking. I like Obama when he openly speaks his mind. It reminds me of why I voted for him. Even when I disagree with him he's still an intelligent human being and he's real. He doesn't strike me as a guy with entitlement issues, or someone who talks out of both sides of his mouth - when he's just saying what he really thinks.
Being president has got to be no fun at all, as Lyndon Johnson so aptly describes it - standing in a hail storm and taking it will leave you cold and bruised. Good thing Obama seems to have a pretty thick skin - but I wonder where his "when" is, that moment where he'll just get fed up and tell us all off. How long can one deal with the level of sanctimonious bullshit that's flying around before one snaps?
The behavior in this country has devolved to a point where Kanye West feels like it's okay to climb up on stage, in the middle of someone else's moment and spew his opinion. We live in a world where people twitter their every thought and our news anchors are no longer reporting hard, fact based news - much of it just opinion. The opinion of Rupert Murdoch, or Sumner Redstone, or whomever else owns the company.
At this point I think even Kanye West would acknowledge that what he did to Taylor Swift makes him a jackass.
But maybe he's also the poster child for America's collective conscious.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
TO LOVE DEEPLY AND COMPLETELY
Last night when I heard that Patrick Swayze had died I was overcome with so much sadness. Although his pancreatic cancer diagnosis is one of the scariest, and seems to be death sentence, I kind of thought that he could and would beat it. Today my thoughts are with his wife Lisa, his best friend and companion for over 30 years.
One thing about being a celebrity is that your entire life is on display for consumption by the public. So once Patrick's star took off we all new everything about his life - that he grew up dancing in his mom's dance studio, that he loved his family, that his wife Lisa was his best friend and his favorite person.
Many celebrities give us this picture. It's like their personal lives are movies that they are starring in and everyone is going for the hollywood ending. It rarely happens though. I think for Patrick and his wife it was the real deal though.
The one time I met them no one was acting.
In 1992 I started working out at Winsor Fitness, Mari Winsor's first pilates studio. There were six reformers, a tread mill and an apparatus called the Cadillac in a not so large room on the second floor of a Calfornia Ranch style building surrounded by eucalyptus trees that we could see through the large windows on both sides of the room.
It was pretty free flowing in that you could call and reserve a reformer show up and an instructor would move between the six clients that were working out. Mari allowed me to bring in my own music and we all chatted and joked while we worked out on the torturers, I mean reformers. There were lots of celebrities that came in, but I rarely recognized them because it wasn't a see and be seen scene. No one except for Donna Dixon was wearing make up or had their hair done. It was a tough work out that made you sweat and grunt (and sometimes I'd cry), but it really works.
One of the things that I loved best about it is that I could go at 8pm and there wouldn't really be anyone there so I could get personalized attention. It was on an evening like this that I got to sweat and grunt with Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa. We all arrived about the same time - they were there for a private session with Mari - so for the next hour and a half I was treated to his sense of humor and his awesome body going through all the moves. Lisa's not too bad herself and since they are both dancers they made the pilates routine look elegant and effortless albeit with a little grunting and panting because Mari really works you out.
He was wearing a spandex dance suit which sounds very gay, but on him it was distracting and it was hard not to ogle him in front of his wife. I just wanted to sit and watch. He was much shorter than I thought he would be, but then that just seems to be the story when you meet famous men - most of them seem to be 5'10" or even shorter.
In any case it was just us working out that night and although I tried to be cool and not to talk to them - they were having a private session after all and those aren't cheap, he was so funny and personable it was hard not to laugh. He flirted non-stop with his wife and although at that point they'd been married for a while it was like they were still dating. Even more than that you could tell that they were great friends. They had the kind of connection that is palpable to anyone who saw them. That's a rare thing - two people who are like twinned souls that find each other.
Sharing pain with people can create moments of connection and bonding and the routine we did on the Pilates reformer just kind of creates an instant intimacy as you gaze at the person across from you through legs split wide, and while they could have been weird and stand offish they were not. They were fun people to be around and you could tell that they were deeply and completely in love.
The thing about loving like that - something I think we all want - is that when one of you dies, and it is inevitable that this will happen, it feels like part of you dies too and yet you have to go on. If your someone is young then this mean you have many years to miss and remember them and the intensity of your love equates the intensity of your pain and loss.
Today my thoughts and prayers are with Lisa and Patrick's family who have to go on without him and I hope that that deep and complete love will sustain her in the years to come.
Last night when I heard that Patrick Swayze had died I was overcome with so much sadness. Although his pancreatic cancer diagnosis is one of the scariest, and seems to be death sentence, I kind of thought that he could and would beat it. Today my thoughts are with his wife Lisa, his best friend and companion for over 30 years.
One thing about being a celebrity is that your entire life is on display for consumption by the public. So once Patrick's star took off we all new everything about his life - that he grew up dancing in his mom's dance studio, that he loved his family, that his wife Lisa was his best friend and his favorite person.
Many celebrities give us this picture. It's like their personal lives are movies that they are starring in and everyone is going for the hollywood ending. It rarely happens though. I think for Patrick and his wife it was the real deal though.
The one time I met them no one was acting.
In 1992 I started working out at Winsor Fitness, Mari Winsor's first pilates studio. There were six reformers, a tread mill and an apparatus called the Cadillac in a not so large room on the second floor of a Calfornia Ranch style building surrounded by eucalyptus trees that we could see through the large windows on both sides of the room.
It was pretty free flowing in that you could call and reserve a reformer show up and an instructor would move between the six clients that were working out. Mari allowed me to bring in my own music and we all chatted and joked while we worked out on the torturers, I mean reformers. There were lots of celebrities that came in, but I rarely recognized them because it wasn't a see and be seen scene. No one except for Donna Dixon was wearing make up or had their hair done. It was a tough work out that made you sweat and grunt (and sometimes I'd cry), but it really works.
One of the things that I loved best about it is that I could go at 8pm and there wouldn't really be anyone there so I could get personalized attention. It was on an evening like this that I got to sweat and grunt with Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa. We all arrived about the same time - they were there for a private session with Mari - so for the next hour and a half I was treated to his sense of humor and his awesome body going through all the moves. Lisa's not too bad herself and since they are both dancers they made the pilates routine look elegant and effortless albeit with a little grunting and panting because Mari really works you out.
He was wearing a spandex dance suit which sounds very gay, but on him it was distracting and it was hard not to ogle him in front of his wife. I just wanted to sit and watch. He was much shorter than I thought he would be, but then that just seems to be the story when you meet famous men - most of them seem to be 5'10" or even shorter.
In any case it was just us working out that night and although I tried to be cool and not to talk to them - they were having a private session after all and those aren't cheap, he was so funny and personable it was hard not to laugh. He flirted non-stop with his wife and although at that point they'd been married for a while it was like they were still dating. Even more than that you could tell that they were great friends. They had the kind of connection that is palpable to anyone who saw them. That's a rare thing - two people who are like twinned souls that find each other.
Sharing pain with people can create moments of connection and bonding and the routine we did on the Pilates reformer just kind of creates an instant intimacy as you gaze at the person across from you through legs split wide, and while they could have been weird and stand offish they were not. They were fun people to be around and you could tell that they were deeply and completely in love.
The thing about loving like that - something I think we all want - is that when one of you dies, and it is inevitable that this will happen, it feels like part of you dies too and yet you have to go on. If your someone is young then this mean you have many years to miss and remember them and the intensity of your love equates the intensity of your pain and loss.
Today my thoughts and prayers are with Lisa and Patrick's family who have to go on without him and I hope that that deep and complete love will sustain her in the years to come.
Friday, September 11, 2009
TGIF (thank God it's football)
Every year I go into a sort of depression when football season ends, which is okay because every year I also get extremely excited and happy when football season starts!!!!
Last night was the first game of the regular 2009/10 season and the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans did not disappoint. It was a big defense game = low score, but they stayed tied through much of the game, 0-0, 7-7 and 10-10 and then Hines Ward couldn't suppress his inner super hero and got stripped of the ball at the 10 yard line as he tried to run for a touchdown with 1:54 in the 4th quarter and then we get OT! Very good for the first game.
I still don't love sudden death in OT, I would like to see them play the whole 15 minutes, but unlike baseball games which seem to go on and on forever, I can never get enough football.
Every year I go into a sort of depression when football season ends, which is okay because every year I also get extremely excited and happy when football season starts!!!!
Last night was the first game of the regular 2009/10 season and the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans did not disappoint. It was a big defense game = low score, but they stayed tied through much of the game, 0-0, 7-7 and 10-10 and then Hines Ward couldn't suppress his inner super hero and got stripped of the ball at the 10 yard line as he tried to run for a touchdown with 1:54 in the 4th quarter and then we get OT! Very good for the first game.
I still don't love sudden death in OT, I would like to see them play the whole 15 minutes, but unlike baseball games which seem to go on and on forever, I can never get enough football.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
STAY HEALTHY - THAT'S REALLY YOUR ONLY OPTION
I didn't watch the speech last night. I've kind of checked out on the whole health care issue. It feels like a lot of talking, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. There's been a lot of uproar about a "public option" and how bad that would be. There's a lot of fear about a single payer system because that will cost the tax payers too much money. My friends with money really don't like that idea and I don't blame them - if I had a lot of money I probably wouldn't want to spend it on a government run program that most likely would kill people just as surely as the current system does.
What we need is change, but I don't think we're headed for a good one.
I've not heard any discussion about how the current system is broken. How can you fix something if you don't explore how it's broken?
We definitely need to get better health care options for people in this country, but I haven't really heard any clear ideas about what that would be. Just to say that everyone needs to have it doesn't reassure me. No one has ever raised a conversation about regulating the current system. Private insurers are gouging employers and individuals and their policies have raised the cost of medical care to a point that it's no longer really affordable even if you do have insurance.
I have individual insurance which I got for an initial premium of $120 a month. Within four months that was jacked up to $204 a month - no explanation, no reason. Just because they can. so now I pay $2400 a year and when I go to the doctor I pay out of pocket up to $3500 before I gain any benefit from having insurance. If I don't use my insurance and I negotiate a cash rate with a doctor it ends up costing me less than the negotiated rate the insurance company has with the doctor, but then nothing goes toward my deductible.
There are lots of nightmare stories in the news about people in the same boat who become ill, catastrophically ill, and then the insurance company rescinds their coverage. This is a common policy and it has nothing to do with real issues of fraud. A woman diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer was dropped because she didn't report seeing her dermatologist for acne. http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=27994
Insurance companies are in business to make money. That's it. They don't care about consumers and because there's really no competitive market they don't need to provide excellent service. They have incredibly strong lobbies so they are part of policymaking when it comes to regulation and laws with regard to insurance. They are huge corporations and no one individual is responsibile or culpable for the immorality that they perpetrate on their customers every single day. There is no regulation and today when I read that the response from insurance companies to the president's speech was "he didn't address high medical expenses" I had to laugh, derisively of course, but I still laughed.
Medical expenses are high because doctors and hospitals are playing the game by the rules the insurance companies set up. A doctor will bill at about 200% of his cost because he knows the insurance companies will only pay maybe 50% of the bill. If he was billing his cost he would lose money and go out of business. I worked for several doctors and that's what I saw - it seems crazy to me, but that's how they do it.
Have you ever been hospitalized? Have you ever looked at your bills? Every single item is listed and the pricing is crazy. I remember being amazed that the PAPER pillow cover was billed at $5. What? But that's how the hospital makes it's profit.
We live in a country where sick people = bottom line profit and everyone thinks that's a good thing and the way it should be. I feel that it creates some real moral issues, but that's just me.
Joe Wilson's outburst over Obama's statement that no illegal aliens would receive benefit from the new health care plan - whatever that is - made me sick (not sick enough to even get close to meeting my deductible). Not only because he acted like a punk ass bitch in front of everyone, but because of the hatefulness that motivated the outburst in the first place. Why is it okay for Americans to receive health care in Canada because they can't afford to get it here? Why is it okay for at least 2 people I know to go live in Europe because they can afford to get transplants there and they can't afford it here?
We are illegal aliens heading into other countries for their health care benefits - we don't even want to clean their houses and mow their yards, or bus their tables - we just want to use their single payer system and come back over the border without having to pay the taxes to the get the benefit.
We do need to do something because some of the uninsured are committing suicide when they get sick or as a result of depression http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-11-28-healthcare-suicide_N.htm - but then that's kind of what our private insurance companies are doing by rescinding insurance when their customers become ill - we can call that "assisted suicide".
I can't really participate in the debate because no one is talking about what's broken and it all sounds to me like they're looking for another way to stimulate the economy, not to make sure that there's a good option for all people. I don't know about a public option - isn't Medicare a public option? And speaking of that option, it pretty much sucks because you have to be really poor, too poor to have any real quality of life in order to access it. What I think we really need is an assessment of the private option and why it's failing so grandly and then we need to fix it. One more crappy product in the arena of medical care isn't really going to change things. And why we're at it how about making people who rescind medical policies that people have been paying good money for a criminal matter? Say the person who makes that decision to drop a customer because she didn't report that she saw a doctor for a pimple and then got breast cancer, and the person who approves that decision could be tried in a criminal court for negligent homicide?
I guess I should be glad I've got good genes and do everything I can to stay healthy because it terrifies me to think about what will happen if I ever get really sick....and I've got insurance...for now.... as long as I stay healthy.
I didn't watch the speech last night. I've kind of checked out on the whole health care issue. It feels like a lot of talking, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. There's been a lot of uproar about a "public option" and how bad that would be. There's a lot of fear about a single payer system because that will cost the tax payers too much money. My friends with money really don't like that idea and I don't blame them - if I had a lot of money I probably wouldn't want to spend it on a government run program that most likely would kill people just as surely as the current system does.
What we need is change, but I don't think we're headed for a good one.
I've not heard any discussion about how the current system is broken. How can you fix something if you don't explore how it's broken?
We definitely need to get better health care options for people in this country, but I haven't really heard any clear ideas about what that would be. Just to say that everyone needs to have it doesn't reassure me. No one has ever raised a conversation about regulating the current system. Private insurers are gouging employers and individuals and their policies have raised the cost of medical care to a point that it's no longer really affordable even if you do have insurance.
I have individual insurance which I got for an initial premium of $120 a month. Within four months that was jacked up to $204 a month - no explanation, no reason. Just because they can. so now I pay $2400 a year and when I go to the doctor I pay out of pocket up to $3500 before I gain any benefit from having insurance. If I don't use my insurance and I negotiate a cash rate with a doctor it ends up costing me less than the negotiated rate the insurance company has with the doctor, but then nothing goes toward my deductible.
There are lots of nightmare stories in the news about people in the same boat who become ill, catastrophically ill, and then the insurance company rescinds their coverage. This is a common policy and it has nothing to do with real issues of fraud. A woman diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer was dropped because she didn't report seeing her dermatologist for acne. http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=27994
Insurance companies are in business to make money. That's it. They don't care about consumers and because there's really no competitive market they don't need to provide excellent service. They have incredibly strong lobbies so they are part of policymaking when it comes to regulation and laws with regard to insurance. They are huge corporations and no one individual is responsibile or culpable for the immorality that they perpetrate on their customers every single day. There is no regulation and today when I read that the response from insurance companies to the president's speech was "he didn't address high medical expenses" I had to laugh, derisively of course, but I still laughed.
Medical expenses are high because doctors and hospitals are playing the game by the rules the insurance companies set up. A doctor will bill at about 200% of his cost because he knows the insurance companies will only pay maybe 50% of the bill. If he was billing his cost he would lose money and go out of business. I worked for several doctors and that's what I saw - it seems crazy to me, but that's how they do it.
Have you ever been hospitalized? Have you ever looked at your bills? Every single item is listed and the pricing is crazy. I remember being amazed that the PAPER pillow cover was billed at $5. What? But that's how the hospital makes it's profit.
We live in a country where sick people = bottom line profit and everyone thinks that's a good thing and the way it should be. I feel that it creates some real moral issues, but that's just me.
Joe Wilson's outburst over Obama's statement that no illegal aliens would receive benefit from the new health care plan - whatever that is - made me sick (not sick enough to even get close to meeting my deductible). Not only because he acted like a punk ass bitch in front of everyone, but because of the hatefulness that motivated the outburst in the first place. Why is it okay for Americans to receive health care in Canada because they can't afford to get it here? Why is it okay for at least 2 people I know to go live in Europe because they can afford to get transplants there and they can't afford it here?
We are illegal aliens heading into other countries for their health care benefits - we don't even want to clean their houses and mow their yards, or bus their tables - we just want to use their single payer system and come back over the border without having to pay the taxes to the get the benefit.
We do need to do something because some of the uninsured are committing suicide when they get sick or as a result of depression http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-11-28-healthcare-suicide_N.htm - but then that's kind of what our private insurance companies are doing by rescinding insurance when their customers become ill - we can call that "assisted suicide".
I can't really participate in the debate because no one is talking about what's broken and it all sounds to me like they're looking for another way to stimulate the economy, not to make sure that there's a good option for all people. I don't know about a public option - isn't Medicare a public option? And speaking of that option, it pretty much sucks because you have to be really poor, too poor to have any real quality of life in order to access it. What I think we really need is an assessment of the private option and why it's failing so grandly and then we need to fix it. One more crappy product in the arena of medical care isn't really going to change things. And why we're at it how about making people who rescind medical policies that people have been paying good money for a criminal matter? Say the person who makes that decision to drop a customer because she didn't report that she saw a doctor for a pimple and then got breast cancer, and the person who approves that decision could be tried in a criminal court for negligent homicide?
I guess I should be glad I've got good genes and do everything I can to stay healthy because it terrifies me to think about what will happen if I ever get really sick....and I've got insurance...for now.... as long as I stay healthy.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
KEEPING THE FAITH
These last couple of weeks my energy level has gotten better and I'm starting to feel more like myself. Still I get worn out quickly and I've found that the best thing to do is stick close to home. So I've been watching a lot of TV (food network and baaaad reality Housewives TV) and I've also been watching movies - on cable and from the video store. Lots of movies. Many I'm watching again for the umpteenth time.
A few days ago I watched the movie Bobby again. I didn't really think much of it the first time, but this is like the 4th time I've seen it and for some reason this time it affected me differently. This could be because it's the first time I've watched it since the election in November so I'm looking at it through that filter. Could be that I watched it shortly after watching Frost/Nixon so that adds to the experience. Could be that I'm having an emotional reaction post surgery - everyone keeps saying that I should be expecting a big emotional reaction, but so far nada.
In any case after watching Bobby this time I have been thinking a lot about how lucky I was to grow up in that era. How blessed I am to be able to remember the hope that was represented in these two men: Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. They wer progressive at time when they could really create change. Martin Luther King was radical in the most intelligent way possible - and because he was grounded in the absolute truth of his convictions he was incredibly powerful. Bobby Kennedy was pragmatic in a way that was necessary for someone who was looking at leading this nation at that time. The Vietnam war was escalating. There were race riots in New York, DC and Chicago, and a real sense of divisiveness throughout the entire country.
Basically it was a lot like it is today.
Had Martin Luther King not been killed he could have galvanized people to create a peaceful and prosperous future for themselves and their children. Had Bobby Kennedy not been killed he probably would've won the presidency and I cannot stop thinking about where this country would be today if that had happened.
I can't stop thinking about where we would be today had those men lived to lead us.
Would we be in a better place? I'd like to think so, but I really have no idea. I can't stop thinking about how Barak Obama finds himself in much the same position that Bobby Kennedy would have been in had he lived and won in 1968 (although the mess seems much MUCH bigger today). Truly I don't see anyone in our current landscape who can fill MLK's shoes. Peace through non-violence seems to be an idealized utopitan fantasy whose time came and went - whose messenger was shot and killed by hate and racism (or, for the paranoid, by a US government that wasn't havin' it).
Still my faith in this country, in the people who live here and in this man who inspires so many to have hope, much like Bobby did, like Martin did, remains strong. I've been alive long enough to know that even though you're sitting in a long line that wraps around the block on the day when your even number license plate gets to buy gas, it will get better. Even when you have no job and you don't know where you're going to sleep next week - you will be okay. We've been thruough a lot of rough times in this country and we have always risen above, survived and thrived and we will continue to do so.
As long as we keep the faith and do not succumb to cynicism - which is tough to do when you watch too much realityTV, or the nightly news.
But that's what the "off" button is for.
These last couple of weeks my energy level has gotten better and I'm starting to feel more like myself. Still I get worn out quickly and I've found that the best thing to do is stick close to home. So I've been watching a lot of TV (food network and baaaad reality Housewives TV) and I've also been watching movies - on cable and from the video store. Lots of movies. Many I'm watching again for the umpteenth time.
A few days ago I watched the movie Bobby again. I didn't really think much of it the first time, but this is like the 4th time I've seen it and for some reason this time it affected me differently. This could be because it's the first time I've watched it since the election in November so I'm looking at it through that filter. Could be that I watched it shortly after watching Frost/Nixon so that adds to the experience. Could be that I'm having an emotional reaction post surgery - everyone keeps saying that I should be expecting a big emotional reaction, but so far nada.
In any case after watching Bobby this time I have been thinking a lot about how lucky I was to grow up in that era. How blessed I am to be able to remember the hope that was represented in these two men: Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. They wer progressive at time when they could really create change. Martin Luther King was radical in the most intelligent way possible - and because he was grounded in the absolute truth of his convictions he was incredibly powerful. Bobby Kennedy was pragmatic in a way that was necessary for someone who was looking at leading this nation at that time. The Vietnam war was escalating. There were race riots in New York, DC and Chicago, and a real sense of divisiveness throughout the entire country.
Basically it was a lot like it is today.
Had Martin Luther King not been killed he could have galvanized people to create a peaceful and prosperous future for themselves and their children. Had Bobby Kennedy not been killed he probably would've won the presidency and I cannot stop thinking about where this country would be today if that had happened.
I can't stop thinking about where we would be today had those men lived to lead us.
Would we be in a better place? I'd like to think so, but I really have no idea. I can't stop thinking about how Barak Obama finds himself in much the same position that Bobby Kennedy would have been in had he lived and won in 1968 (although the mess seems much MUCH bigger today). Truly I don't see anyone in our current landscape who can fill MLK's shoes. Peace through non-violence seems to be an idealized utopitan fantasy whose time came and went - whose messenger was shot and killed by hate and racism (or, for the paranoid, by a US government that wasn't havin' it).
Still my faith in this country, in the people who live here and in this man who inspires so many to have hope, much like Bobby did, like Martin did, remains strong. I've been alive long enough to know that even though you're sitting in a long line that wraps around the block on the day when your even number license plate gets to buy gas, it will get better. Even when you have no job and you don't know where you're going to sleep next week - you will be okay. We've been thruough a lot of rough times in this country and we have always risen above, survived and thrived and we will continue to do so.
As long as we keep the faith and do not succumb to cynicism - which is tough to do when you watch too much realityTV, or the nightly news.
But that's what the "off" button is for.
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