Hurricanes Lounge XXIX: The "Hot and Cold" edition

[MrazeksVengeance]

DID SOMEONE SAY HEALTHCARE?

 

[Cardiac Jerks]

Tomorrow is my last day at my current job and I’m currently sitting in my hotel doing everything I can think of other than finishing my final reports.

Saturday I fly to Austria for two weeks for training with my new company

 

[Bunch of Jurcos]

Tomorrow is my last day at my current job and I’m currently sitting in my hotel doing everything I can think of other than finishing my final reports.

Saturday I fly to Austria for two weeks for training with my new company

Congrats sir/ma'am! I hope that the new job is everything you hope it will be and then some.

 

[raynman]

Tomorrow is my last day at my current job and I’m currently sitting in my hotel doing everything I can think of other than finishing my final reports.

Saturday I fly to Austria for two weeks for training with my new company

Damn I started a new job last month and my training consisted of sharing a computer/desk/cubicle with my manager for two weeks because parts for my computer were on backorder.

 

[Negan4Coach]

At work, opening my laptop and connecting it to the internet through the wifi hotspot shared from my mobile phone, and I always feel like goddamn Johnny Mnemonic.

I used to think William Gibson was God...

Now it's Neal Stephenson.

Gibson was a charlatan.

 

[HisIceness]

Currently watching severe thunderstorm develop over Rock Hill, about 20 miles south of me. Can actually see the lightning develop and stick out of the cloud reaching for the sky. Have never seen that before and it is cool. 10/10 would recommend

 

[Navin R Slavin]

I used to think William Gibson was God...

Now it's Neal Stephenson.

Gibson was a charlatan.

Gibson was the OG, son.

 

[Negan4Coach]

Gibson was the OG, son.

He was. Neuromancer was incredible, as was Burning Chrome and Count Zero. But after that he became pretentious and incoherent.

Have you read Stephenson? He is the master now.

 

[Unsustainable]

What was the surgery for, if you don’t mind me asking?

Had 18” of her small intestine removed.

Severe Crohn’s disease. Then a few months later had to put it all back together.

 

[Unsustainable]

Y’all talking about new jobs, I’ve been with the same company 18 years lol.

 

[Unsustainable]

Canada - Health Care paid for by the government but prices controlled through the Free Market/Captilism = Socialist

United States - Health Care paid for by the free market but prices/regulations heavily controlled by the Government = Captilisim.

The logic behind this has always baffled me

Small correction though, nothing is paid for by a government without taxation of the people.

 

[Lempo]

Small correction though, nothing is paid for by a government without taxation of the people.

No representation without taxation.

 

[raynman]

Y’all talking about new jobs, I’ve been with the same company 18 years lol.

This is my first big boy job after dicking around for far too long.

 

[MinJaBen]

Had 18” of her small intestine removed.

Severe Crohn’s disease. Then a few months later had to put it all back together.

I hope she is doing well now. My wife had leukemia five years ago. With the chemo, radiation and the stem cell transplant, our insurance was charged $14M the first year alone. We could have put one of our kids through college with the out of pocket expenses alone since that year.

No bueno.

 

[raynman]

Health “insurance” is such bullshit. I had some problems with my wing wang once when I didn’t have insurance. STD test, heavy duty antibiotic, and a shot later I owed $800. There wasn’t even anything wrong with it in the end

 

[vorbis]

I hope she is doing well now. My wife had leukemia five years ago. With the chemo, radiation and the stem cell transplant, our insurance was charged $14M the first year alone. We could have put one of our kids through college with the out of pocket expenses alone since that year.

No bueno.

just doing a slow blink at this. don't know what else to say, really. I hope your wife is doing better these days. what a weight that has been put on your family's shoulders thanks to an immoral and corrupt system.

 

[MinJaBen]

just doing a slow blink at this. don't know what else to say, really. I hope your wife is doing better these days. what a weight that has been put on your family's shoulders thanks to an immoral and corrupt system.

She is cancer free for now, so we are thankful for that, but the treatments resulted in so many other health issues that her quality of life is dramatically affected. Fortunately for us, we have really good insurance and both do well enough with our jobs that we've been able to absorb the out of pocket pretty much. We have come to know others over the course of her treatments who were not as fortunate financially and the extra burden that has added to them is terrible.

 

[vorbis]

She is cancer free for now, so we are thankful for that, but the treatments resulted in so many other health issues that her quality of life is dramatically affected. Fortunately for us, we have really good insurance and both do well enough with our jobs that we've been able to absorb the out of pocket pretty much. We have come to know others over the course of her treatments who were not as fortunate financially and the extra burden that has added to them is terrible.

(this post turned into a lot, don't feel pressured to gobble it all up if you don't want)
I am so glad she is cancer free for now. that is such a blessing for you and I hope it feels that way. I want to try to keep coloring inside the lines in this discussion so it doesn't spiral out of control like so many discussions on this topic do online. but I do want to say that I feel what you're saying very deeply and have a lot to say about it. and hopefully this will make sense by the end of my post.

my perspective on healthcare in the US has evolved so much in my life. as a kid it seemed like the simplest thing, get some insurance, go to the doctor, pay the premiums, and move on with your life. that's one of many luxuries afforded children by caring and financially OK parents I think.

then as a young college student who had to arrange, for the first time in his life, his own health insurance, I ran smack into an unjust system that seemingly had no interest in my prosperity, be it health, financial, or otherwise. thought I could simply get BCBS type coverage, and thereafter applied. several *months* later I received a thunderclap in the form of a gold-colored envelope: premiums of over $1k per month with $5k deductible. for a 22 year old man who almost never went to the doctor and was healthy as a horse aside from a lifelong ambulatory disability. where the hell was I supposed to come up with that kind of money? and this decision was based on a pre-existing condition that had been given me as a child, literally through actual malpractice that was litigated in my favor before I knew how to process object permanence.

so my feelings about healthcare became very idealistic at this time. I researched single-payer healthcare and the impact it can have both in overall public health but also maintaining a stable and resilient society. I appealed this decision to the Insurance Board of NC. wouldn't you know it, a pale grey envelope from this government body arrived on a much faster schedule than the initial premium determination did. my appeal was denied with extreme prejudice and no supporting explanation whatsoever. so I got bitter. and altogether I was without insurance for 15 years, ignoring who knows what health issues along the way. my rule was no fever, no doctor. darkly and out of sheer good fortune, it has been the most positively impactful financial decision I've ever made. obviously the opposite would be true if I had so much as broken an arm in a car accident (of which I had two major ones during this period).

when I moved to Canada, it took a year before I was eligible for OHIP, Ontario's public healthcare system. during that time I had several encounters with other healthcare systems in France and the UK. had an accident where my $2500 brace (paid for out of pocket by me by the way) broke stepping off a plane in London on the first stop of a year-long world travel excursion. also had a really gnarly bout of food poisoning in Paris that necessitated a trip to the emergency room where I at long last got to practice my French. in both cases I was struck by an experience in hospitals where the only concern was the pursuit of a medical solution to my issue, and no discussion about costs and prices and networks and so on. here in Toronto I hooked up with a local orthotist who was repeatedly repairing my new, tragically misdesigned $3k brace to replace the broken one (also paid for out of pocket!) at a heavily discounted rate because she felt sorry for my insurance situation back in the states.

so many friends in NC who knew my situation and felt sorry for me. so many practitioners in other countries who saw my plight and took financial hits on their budgets by treating me for free or at discounted rates. and everyone saw precisely how the system was set up to screw over people like me and people less fortunate than me.

anyways once I got coverage here I immediately made a couple appointments with a local family doctor and began to pursue latent concerns I had had over the preceding 15 years of medical neglect. several issues were resolved relatively quickly, and a couple other long-standing ones haven't necessarily been vanished, but I know about them and have a plan for how to work with them, mitigate them, or triage them if the need arises.

suffice to say that moving to a preventative approach to my health has added probably a decade or more to my life, and I do not say that flippantly. I'm healthier than I've ever been. not having the weight of worrying about balancing my needs vs my financial means has given me energy and headspace to actively improve my health outlook, lower my weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, and institute a workout plan that has given me new muscle mass and physical capabilities that I literally never knew I could have throughout my entire life. I don't know if I can overstate how much that means to me. doctors look at me with their jaws dropped when I describe this to them.

and like you, all along my ups and downs in this, the times I was trembling in a waiting room at urgent care in Raleigh thinking about how much I'd have to pay if what I'd been ignoring for years turned out to be dreadfully serious, the times I waited out a really bad respiratory infection or had some weird thing under my fingernail as roll of the dice to avoid paying $120 to walk in the door of the doctor's office, or got whiplash when my car was flipped into a house on New Bern Avenue, I met others in those waiting rooms who were stunningly less fortunate than me. who maybe didn't have the paralyzing anxiety I had, only because they had resigned themselves to towing a millstone of debt behind them for the rest of their lives as a result of a perfectly reasonable medical inquiry. despite having a unique disability, I was no different from them aside from circumstances. and that thought just broke and continues to break my damn heart.

 

[MinJaBen]

(this post turned into a lot, don't feel pressured to gobble it all up if you don't want)
I am so glad she is cancer free for now. that is such a blessing for you and I hope it feels that way. I want to try to keep coloring inside the lines in this discussion so it doesn't spiral out of control like so many discussions on this topic do online. but I do want to say that I feel what you're saying very deeply and have a lot to say about it. and hopefully this will make sense by the end of my post.

my perspective on healthcare in the US has evolved so much in my life. as a kid it seemed like the simplest thing, get some insurance, go to the doctor, pay the premiums, and move on with your life. that's one of may luxuries afforded children by caring and financially OK parents I think.

then as a young college student who had to arrange, for the first time in his life, his own health insurance, I ran smack into an unjust system that seemingly had no interest in my prosperity, be it health, financial, or otherwise. thought I could simply get BCBS type coverage, and thereafter applied. several *months* later I received a thunderclap in the form of a gold-colored envelope: premiums of over $1k per month with $5k deductible. for a 22 year old man who almost never went to the doctor and was healthy as a horse aside from a lifelong ambulatory disability. where the hell was I supposed to come up with that kind of money? and this decision was based on a pre-existing condition that had been given me as a child, literally through actual malpractice that was litigated in my favor before I knew how to process object permanence.

so my feelings about healthcare became very idealistic at this time. I researched single-payer healthcare and the impact it can have both in overall public health but also maintaining a stable and resilient society. I appealed this decision to the Insurance Board of NC. wouldn't you know it, a pale grey envelope from this government body arrived on a much faster schedule than the initial premium determination did. my appeal was denied with extreme prejudice and no supporting explanation whatsoever. so I got bitter. and altogether I was without insurance for 15 years, ignoring who knows what health issues along the way. my rule was no fever, no doctor. darkly and out of sheer good fortune, it has been the most positively impactful financial decision I've ever made. obviously the opposite would be true if I had so much as broken an arm in a car accident (of which I had two major ones during this period).

when I moved to Canada, it took a year before I was eligible for OHIP, Ontario's public healthcare system. during that time I had several encounters with other healthcare systems in France and the UK. had an accident where my $2500 brace (paid for out of pocket by me by the way) broke stepping off a plane in London on the first stop of a year-long world travel excursion. also had a really gnarly bout of food poisoning in Paris that necessitated a trip to the emergency room where I at long last got to practice my French. in both cases I was struck by an experience in hospitals where the only concern was the pursuit of a medical solution to my issue, and no discussion about costs and prices and networks and so on. here in Toronto I hooked up with a local orthotist who was repeatedly repairing my new, tragically misdesigned $3k brace to replace the broken one (also paid for out of pocket!) at a heavily discounted rate because she felt sorry for my insurance situation back in the states.

so many friends in NC who knew my situation and felt sorry for me. so many practitioners in other countries who saw my plight and took financial hits on their budgets by treating me for free or at discounted rates. and everyone saw precisely how the system was set up to screw over people like me and people less fortunate than me.

anyways once I got coverage here I immediately made a couple appointments with a local family doctor and began to pursue latent concerns I had had over the preceding 15 years of medical neglect. several issues were resolved relatively quickly, and a couple other long-standing ones haven't necessarily been vanished, but I know about them and have a plan for how to work with them, mitigate them, or triage them if the need arises.

suffice to say that moving to a preventative approach to my health has added probably a decade or more to my life, and I do not say that flippantly. I'm healthier than I've ever been. not having the weight of worrying about balancing my needs vs my financial means has given me energy and headspace to actively improve my health outlook, lower my weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, and institute a workout plan that has given me new muscle mass and physical capabilities that I literally never knew I could have throughout my entire life. I don't know if I can overstate how much that means to me. doctors look at me with their jaws dropped when I describe this to them.

and like you, all along my ups and downs in this, the times I was trembling in a waiting room at urgent care in Raleigh thinking about how much I'd have to pay if what I'd been ignoring for years turned out to be dreadfully serious, the times I waited out a really bad respiratory infection or had some weird thing under my fingernail as roll of the dice to avoid paying $120 to walk in the door of the doctor's office, or got whiplash when my car was flipped into a house on New Bern Avenue, I met others in those waiting rooms who were stunningly less fortunate than me. who maybe didn't have the paralyzing anxiety I had, only because they had resigned themselves to towing a millstone of debt behind them for the rest of their lives as a result of a perfectly reasonable medical inquiry. despite having a unique disability, I was no different from them aside from circumstances. and that thought just broke and continues to break my damn heart.

Thank you for sharing that with me. Your experience with the denial of coverage you experienced scares the shit out of me, to be honest. Right now, we are covered due to our jobs and the law at this point, but given the uncertainty of the politics in this country, I don't take that for granted. And even if they continue to make the pre-existing conditions a requirement after the ACA is likely found unconstitutional because of the removal of the individual mandate, I also worry about the lifetime maximums cap being revoked as well. If they do that, I know the next day we will get a letter from BCBS kicking my wife off of her insurance given what they have already had to pay for her treatments. Our family, and my wife specifically, has a pretty unique perspective on the healthcare industry as a whole. She is obviously an individual with a chronic disease with high medical needs. But she is also a physician that has worked in her own practice and in a truly socialized medical system: the Veterans Administration Health System. She has seen the good and the bad of both and strongly believes that the latter is the way to go.

 

[MrazeksVengeance]

Damn I started a new job last month and my training consisted of sharing a computer/desk/cubicle with my manager for two weeks because parts for my computer were on backorder.

I AM PLEASED TO READ YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED.

 

[MrazeksVengeance]

Thank you for sharing that with me. Your experience with the denial of coverage you experienced scares the **** out of me, to be honest. Right now, we are covered due to our jobs and the law at this point, but given the uncertainty of the politics in this country, I don't take that for granted. And even if they continue to make the pre-existing conditions a requirement after the ACA is likely found unconstitutional because of the removal of the individual mandate, I also worry about the lifetime maximums cap being revoked as well. If they do that, I know the next day we will get a letter from BCBS kicking my wife off of her insurance given what they have already had to pay for her treatments. Our family, and my wife specifically, has a pretty unique perspective on the healthcare industry as a whole. She is obviously an individual with a chronic disease with high medical needs. But she is also a physician that has worked in her own practice and in a truly socialized medical system: the Veterans Administration Health System. She has seen the good and the bad of both and strongly believes that the latter is the way to go.

Thank you for sharing that with me. Your experience with the denial of coverage you experienced scares the **** out of me, to be honest. Right now, we are covered due to our jobs and the law at this point, but given the uncertainty of the politics in this country, I don't take that for granted. And even if they continue to make the pre-existing conditions a requirement after the ACA is likely found unconstitutional because of the removal of the individual mandate, I also worry about the lifetime maximums cap being revoked as well. If they do that, I know the next day we will get a letter from BCBS kicking my wife off of her insurance given what they have already had to pay for her treatments. Our family, and my wife specifically, has a pretty unique perspective on the healthcare industry as a whole. She is obviously an individual with a chronic disease with high medical needs. But she is also a physician that has worked in her own practice and in a truly socialized medical system: the Veterans Administration Health System. She has seen the good and the bad of both and strongly believes that the latter is the way to go.

AS A MEDICAL STUDENT I HAVE AN URGENT NEED TO CHIME IN.

So far, I have only experienced the Czech system based on the good old OG Iron Man Bismarck, but from what we’ve learnt about others.... in terms of equality I’d say the Bismarck model might be far from perfect, yet it is still the best.

In general I describe myself as a right-wing liberal, but I still prefer the goverment actually taking care of some of the specific stuff like healthcare and education.

 

[LostInaLostWorld]

I have used an insurance agent for my business and personal use since 1987. He is a very conservative bleeding heart republican but truly cared for his clients. In the early 2000s he started grumbling about the insurance companies and how they had evolved. One of his biggest gripes was non renewal for long-time costumers once they had developed health issues. Killed him to see the pay scales of the Cs, mid management and shareholder interests ramping up while his long time customers (small & medium sized businesses and personal policies) were paying more and more for less and less. He felt he was failing these long time clients more and more even though no fault of his own. By 2009 he admitted to me that he believed single payer was the only sustainable method for health insurance in this country. He finally retired last year glad to be done with them.

 

[Unsustainable]

I’m very libertarian, but the healthcare issue is something that has got really out of control. There’s so many reasons the health care system got out of control. Why doesn’t anyone question their hospital bills? We got a random bill for 30k, and it wasn’t for much more then basic things during her stay.

The more they try to fix the system, the more it costs, and the more employers dump back on the employees, it is a huge expense.

You’d think that big business would back a single payer system and get out of trying to provide any type of insurance.

 

[VAcaniac]

I had a nightmare about the Powerplay last night. Faulk was on the ice and Eric Staal fanned on the one timer.

That is all.