moving

please go to a life mechanical for a continuation of this blog's entries

as of 2010.03.01, i've moved over to wordpress with this blog, so please follow me over there. it made me a little nervous having all my activity consolidated and tracked and focus-advertised here in the Google-sphere. i had a slightly nagging concern, then a friend voiced the same concern, and then i jumped ship. so call me paranoid. just 'cuz you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching, right?

as a side bonus, i got the name i wanted in the first place over there!

the healthcare system is FINE.

i need to get a wisdom tooth pulled. the United States Navy did me the service of removing two of my four wisdom teeth way back when i was 18 or 19, as a matter of standard procedure for any sailor bound for the submarine service. i guess they didn't want to have to deal with emergency dental surgery while underway on nuclear power. of course, their extraction of two means that two remain. last February - almost exactly a year ago - i awoke the morning after the 2009 Atlanta Supercross with the right side of my mouth in excruciating pain. at first i thought it might be my inaugural cavity, accelerated by the amount of cotton candy i had consumed the night before, in an attempt to mitigate Lucas' intake of an astounding amount of sugar.

i went to visit my dentist soon after, where he examined me and took x-rays, et cetera, before declaring my discomfort was a result of me grinding my teeth in my sleep. i've spent the last twelve months occasionally wearing a night guard, brushing exclusively with Sensodyne, and avoiding chewing hard things. in that time, i can feel my upper right wisdom tooth beginning to break thru, and my teeth touching in different places than they ever have before. this week, i again called my dentist for another consultation, and within a few seconds on the phone he concurred that it must actually be a wisdom tooth. apparently he actually looked at the x-rays this time.

anyway, he had to refer me because he doesn't do dental surgery. it must not be profitable, or something. i called the dental surgeon he recommended, and they were more than happy to schedule the extraction of my wisdom tooth this week. during the hashing out of the details, i was trying to ask "how long will that take?" so i said to the nice lady, "so what does that look like as far as..." and she quickly answered, "yes - cost breakdown will be $70 for the consultation and $360-475 for the extraction," to which i replied, "oh - i'm not worried about that, i have Blue Cross....," and she then answered,

"we don't accept that plan, so you will have to pay for this in full on the day of the procedure."

i was silent for a few seconds, before quipping, "well, what the hell do i have insurance for, then?!?"
in what i could tell was a well-practiced script, she said, "alot of our patients ask the very same question, so i understand your concern." note that she didn't answer the question. she did say she would "file for me." i guess it's possible that i'll get a rebate, then?

something is definitely broken, if i'm paying almost $50 a month for dental insurance, which, from what i've been told, most dental providers have declined to honor. the reason i was given is because the insurance company's reimbursement of "reasonable and customary" fees are a fraction of what the doctors actually charge. and what, it seems, the general public is willing to pay out-of-pocket.

so, just what is fucked up? is it that insurance companies can dictate what medical procedures should cost? is it that doctors will charge the very limit of what the market will bear? or that they can, because like it or not, we need medical care? is it that insurance premiums are too high for the services (or lack thereof) provided? that's probably what pisses me off the most. i've been paying my insurance company $600 a year for the past 5 years (just for the dental coverage, mind) - a total of $3000 for those math-handicapped - and now i need $500 worth of credit from those assholes, that i apparently can't use.

even if the doctor did "accept the plan," i would still need to pay a deductible, and then 50% of the costs. so in essence, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC has turned my $3000 of premiums into $6000 for them (or $1500 for me, depending on how you look at it - either way i'm getting bent over). i give you $50, but when it comes time to pay it back, you only have to give me $25, and only after i give you another $75. again, how is that not broken?

i have some amount of sympathy for the doctors. i know their malpractice premiums are ridiculous, because the law allows no limits on monetary damages. it is important to note here, however, that the companies getting money from us for health insurance are also getting money from the doctors just in case they screw up, in essence getting paid twice for every medical procedure ever performed in this country. of course, the one time a huge judgement is levied against the doctor or dentist or hospital and the insurance company has to shell out a hundred million dollars, they're going to be writing a check using money they made off their investment of my premiums. you just know they'll raise premiums again in response to the current legal climate, though, and make that back fairly quickly.

i also understand that at some level, a person can never be fully compensated for a loss of health or life from a doctor's negligence, however rarely that might happen. tort reform will aways be a sticky quagmire to wade through, as no lawmaker or judge wants to be the one to set a precedent regarding limited compensation for the one isolated incident where the doctor shows up drunk and removes the wrong half of the patient's brain. doctors are, after all, human just like me. they simply make (a minimum of) ten times what i do. i'm cognizant of the fact that eight (or more) years of medical school ain't cheap.

i can walk these circles in my head for days, and still not be real clear about anything except that at some level i always end up back at the unpleasant reality that i'm the end user, and i'm getting screwed. and i hate that feeling. moreso, i hate that i'm absolutely powerless over it. my options are seriously limited. i ruptured my spleen one time, and it nearly cost me $30,000. that was for 3 days in the hospital and an angioscopic procedure. luckily, i was uninsured and below the poverty level at the time, so the hospital took a charitable write-off. so yeah, it was free.

taking that into consideration, canceling all my health insurance and taking my chances in the E.R. when i seriously jack myself up is starting to look pretty good. even if the current "healthcare reform" bill somehow does get pushed through our horribly ineffective Legislative Branch and signed into law, the proposed legal penalty for not carrying health insurance ($750, i believe) is roughly 1/6th of what i'm paying in health insurance premiums right now.

and as i understand it, i would be able to purchase insurance any time i needed it, regardless of whether my spleen is already ruptured or not.

thanks a bunch, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC - you will no longer be getting any money from me for that "dental plan."

"autos"

how come 30 motorcycles (or race cars, for that matter) can leave the starting line at one time, but six dumbasses can't manage to pilot their Buicks thru an intersection before the light turns red again? i'm beginning to think fully automated vehicles may be an idea whose time has come. of course, America would never go for it, for a number of reasons. the very fresh, over-reported, incredibly hyped Toyota recall debacle has the government convinced that America's drivers aren't actually the problem. oh no...it's the cars, of course. they're driving themselves!


i personally think they'd do a better job. one of the most ridiculous scenes to come from the stupid Toyota congressional hearings (yeah - that does mean our taxes're paying for that, as well) was the woman whose Lexus purportedly accelerated out of control somewhere in Tennessee. in overly-theatrical tears, she tells the story of how no matter what she did, the car simply would not slow down. she had the wherewithal to call her husband on the cell phone while piloting her rogue vehicle through traffic at 100mph, but she couldn't hit the fucking brakes?!?! here's the thing - the weakest brakes on a modern vehicle are more powerful than the strongest engine. put your foot on the brakes, the car stops. period. my truck is probably pumping out 500 or 600 ft-lb of turbo-diesel torque, and if i simultaneously stomp on the brake and the go-pedal, the truck will just sit there, smoking, making funny noises, until the transmission blows up. swear. if that got old after a little while, i would probably just turn the key off. i understand the panic makes people do unreasonable things, but if you've got the presence of mind to make a phone call, there are several much more effective options at your disposal for a "runaway" vehicle.


in the latest issue of one of my motorcycle magazine subscriptions, a man wrote a letter to the editor. he began, "speaking as a police officer with 17 years experience, i am disgusted by current driving behavior...the people who use the far left lane as their personal domain are the source of 90 percent of the problems on the highways of the United States....(it) causes frustration and contributes to dangerous passes and lane changing. (but) what can be done to remedy this situation?" he goes on to rail a little bit on Harley riders who have no courtesy (duh) and to claim that Americans take no pride in their driving skill (again - duh) as the Europeans do. this is not news to me. what is news is that apparently the police have no right to stop any driver who is not overtly breaking the law, even if they are driving comfortably swaddled in spatial ignorance or just plain lack of courtesy. just what we need - powerless officers of law.

in my utopian society, automobiles are fully automated. probably twenty years ago, many of the automobile magazines were predicting we'd have some form of computerized traffic control by y2k, but like so many other good ideas, the populace is resistant to change the status quo. i imagine some form of "gap control," at least in metro areas, where we would all turn the control of our vehicles over to Big Brother during the commute, and when the light turned green, every car would begin moving simultaneously, accelerating at a constant speed to maintain a comfortable gap between vehicles. our destinations would be programmed into our integrated GPS systems, and once shuttled off the main arteries, drivers would be given ample warning before control of the vehicle is relinquished back to them. you know, so we could end that phone call or browsing session. surface streets would still be primarily "standard" control, leaving plenty of opportunity for bicycle and foot-commuting, as well as fender-benders in light-controlled intersections to keep the insurance companies from going broke.


merging would be taken care of, stopping and starting, and fast-lane/slow-lane choice. drivers would no longer have any control over what speed they choose to travel on the main arteries, or perhaps there could be a single, walled-off section of two-lane for people who were in a hurry and wanted to take their chances. the speed would be the most efficient average - probably 60 or 65, except for the far left "express" lane for longer-distance commuters, who may be traveling 70. default mode would return control to the operator after a loud, positive warning, except in the event of a mechanical emergency, wherein the vehicle would be shunted to the breakdown lane and stopped as quickly as possible.


it would obviously take considerable investment in infrastructure and could be the newest high-tech industry in America. it would set the standard for the rest of the world and revive the economy with actual ideas, manufacturing, and jobs, instead of printing money and giving it indiscriminately to broke people/corporations as we currently are.

i also understand this is mostly a pipe dream. America is not going to relinquish its God-given right to drive whatever car we want in whatever manner we choose, especially not to no socialist computer system! not even if it works better and ultimately allows us to be even lazier.


in the meantime, maybe we could start with baby steps - like programming the GPS systems, which an alarming number of people seem to be depending on, to tell drivers traveling at or below the posted speed limit to "travel in the right lane until the next turn," in that soothing automated chick's voice. i bet it'd work.

(thanks for the link, Don!)