Some Blog Site

Since my last post on this topic was so popular, I thought I would throw another two cents into the discussion.

There.

But since you couldn’t see the pennies that just went flying, I will type something here instead.

Here are three problems and suggested solutions for lowering the cost of health insurance:

1. Costs are high in part because people don’t have to pay the cost. Think about this: how much would your car insurance cost if you had no deductible and the insurance paid for oil changes, wiper blades, new tires, etc.? That’s the state of medical insurance today. The consumer / patient pays the insurance company one fee and the insurance company takes care of everything. There’s no real incentive for consumer choice.

   I could take the analogy further for HMOs. In that case, you could go to the repair shop that you normally used (your Primary Service Center or PSC) only. If they couldn’t handle your repair, they could send you to another shop, but it would have to be a shop that had an agreement with them. You couldn’t go to just any shop.Would anyone with a car think that’s a good idea? How did medical care get into this situation?

   Make health insurance more like other insurance. I have an HSA in coordination with a high-deductible insurance plan. This, not a government-run plan, needs to be pushed and expanded. I write a check to pay for whatever medical bills I get. Once I spend above a certain amount, then “traditional insurance” kicks in. The country needs more “traditional insurance” and less bureaucracy. There are no approvals or referrals needed for the checks I write, saving both me and the doctor’s office time and effort and money. But this is tied closely to point #2, which is…

2. Costs are high in part because people don’t know the cost. Back to the car analogy… When you take your car in for service, they have to provide you with a written estimate. So you know, before you agree to something, what it will cost. And if something will cost more than the estimate, the shop has to get your consent.

   A good example of knowing the cost is LASIK. LASIK was very popular, so much so that eye places were advertising to attract patients. What’s an important part of advertising? Telling the customer the price! Eye surgeries became commonplace and price dropped dramatically, in part because of the proliferation of the technology and in part because of the price wars among shops.

   Right now, I can choose my doctor’s office based on location or how happy I am with them. It would be great if I could also take price into account. How much does an ultrasound cost? How much does an annual physical cost? Why not require doctors’ offices and hospitals to publicly post their prices? Kind of like a menu at a restaurant… That would help people choose. Don’t Americans like choice?

   We have started using the walk-in clinic in town because they are much faster than the normal doctor’s office. If it weren’t for my high-deductible insurance, I would not be able to compare the prices, because I would never see the prices. And as it is now, I can compare the prices only after receiving service, when I get the bill. In case you’re wondering, the walk-in clinic isn’t any more expensive. And it’s faster.

   It might not be top-quality care, but it is good enough. And isn’t that what is needed: adequate health care for people? You’re not going to be able to provide world-class care for everyone. That would bankrupt the whole country. But you can provide decent medical care. And that means that there will be different levels of care based on price. So let the people know the prices.

3. Politicians are on the outside. Make sure that the politicians who wrote, pushed for, and voted for the bill have to use the same services that the rest of us lowly civilians do. Make them taste their own medicine (pun intended). It would be easy for the Senators and Representatives to prescribe health-care reform and mess up the private insurance industry if they can keep their Congressional health care separate and untouched. Maybe they would think more about the bill (and actually read it, one would hope) and produce a better bill if it applied directly to them.

Maybe these things would not bring health care to everyone, but they would help make it cheaper and therefore make health insurance affordable for more people.

We have the best medical system in the world. Don’t make big sweeping changes and risk ruining it. Make incremental improvements, like these.

or “Have They Not Seen Mr. Holland’s Opus?”

My family went to the local Independence Day parade. The children, ages 5, 3, and 4 months, enjoyed the parade except for one part – the fire engines. The only time the baby cried during the parade was whenever a fire engine sounded its siren or horn. Why do the drivers of the fire engines insist on running their sirens during parades? The police cars don’t do it. Some classic cars honk their horns, but in those cases it is a song and the horns are much quieter than a fire truck’s siren or horn.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you this:

An Open Letter to the Fire Departments of America

In looking at a few other articles, I found what is now my favorite analogy on the subject: excess or gratuitous noise is the audible equivalent to second-hand smoke. It doesn’t bother the one producing it, but innocent bystanders suffer the consequences.

No one would be bothered if the fire engines don’t blast their horns or sirens at full volume during a parade. If anyone noticed it, I bet he would be pleasantly surprised (something like “Hey, that was nice that they went by without jolting us out of our seats.”). But most people would probably like to just observe the fire engines like any other parade entry.

A siren is about 120 decibels at 10 feet. That 10 feet is about the distance from the fire engine to the parade spectators. That means that permanent hearing damage will occur in about 10 seconds.

It is interesting to note that many fire departments now have the sirens at the trucks’ bumpers, rather than on top of the cab as was the custom for so many years. The reason was to reduce the noise level in the cab. So now the sirens are aimed right at the parade spectators – about the same height as a 3- or 5-year-old child. Even more reason not to sound off during the parade.

Keep the sirens for emergencies only, please, and horns only to catch the attention of people inside cars, with glass and metal to shield them from the noise.

“He who has ears, let him hear.”
– Matthew 13:9

That headline means “toys that are annoying”, not “how to annoy toys”. I don’t know that inanimate objects can be annoyed, which makes it even more frustrating because they don’t even know or care how bothersome they can be.

Our basement is used mainly for storage. As a set of toys phases out of daily or weekly use by the kids, we will put the toys in the basement. Sometimes we will pull them out again, and the kids will be pleasantly surprised by the “new” toys, or they might remember them and be glad to play with them again.

Other times, usually as a threat an enticement to clean up a room, we will say something like “Whatever is still on the floor when I come back is going down to the basement.” The kids don’t go down in the basement by themselves (too many spiderwebs), so sending toys down there is equivalent to banishing them from the house. “Them” being the toys, not the children.

I just reinstated one toy that had been put down in the basement. It had been put down there because it wasn’t being used much, and it took a lot of floor space. But for fun, I brought it up. My wife and I quickly remembered the other reason it had quietly disappeared into the basement one night: the songs.

There are four buttons on this toy, and they play a random assortment of songs. Loud songs. Loud songs that last way too long. The buttons are touchy, so that the toy is easily set off. Not as touchy as the radio controls in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (waving a finger near them would change stations), but pretty sensitive nonetheless.

And then a thought occurred to me: we have never replaced the batteries on that thing.

So I am proposing some sort of a law, like Murphy’s Law or Muphry’s Law or something: The battery life of a toy is directly proportional to how annoying it is.

The more annoying the toy, the longer the batteries will last. The more you want something to wear out so it will stop bothering you, the more it will just keep working. Conversely, the more you like something, the more quickly its batteries will die.

“He who blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning,It will be reckoned a curse to him.”
– Proverbs 27:14

Lotions and I used to have an agreement that neither one of us would bother the other. And we stayed away from each other quite happily.

Then I got married.

And my skin started showing its age more.

So for various reasons, I have been using sunblock regularly for several years.

Chapter 1: Me and My Sunscreen

Sunblock or sunscreen or whatever used to be just a lotion that you spread on your arms, neck, back, whatever was going to be exposed to the sun. I didn’t like the lotion part because I don’t like having greasy hands. But it beat the pain and inconvenience of a sunburn. That’s why I prefer not to go to the beach, if given the option. There’s just so much work involved in getting ready.

Back on topic… I am used to sunscreen lotion now. And then this year, everyone is selling and promoting the spray-on sunscreen. It is hard to find just plain old lotion anymore. Now if there is anything worse than lotion, it is breaking a habit or tradition or changing the way things are supposed to be. Sunscreen is supposed to be a lotion. You can’t just change it into an aerosol form.  That changes the whole summer ritual.

Chapter 2: An Invasive Species

I wanted to mow the lawn, but I needed to put sunscreen on first so that my arms wouldn’t burn. I wanted the lotion. There were about 3 spray cans sitting there (what am I, a graffiti wall?) but no lotion. I used the sprayscreen, but I didn’t like it because it wasn’t what I wanted. It was new and I didn’t trust it.

Plus :

• It seems wasteful. How much of it just blows away in the breeze? The lotion has very little waste.
• The spray stuff can’t be used on faces, especially on children, so you need the lotion anyway (eyes should use sunglasses, not sunscreen).
• And you have to be careful which way you are facing, otherwise you’ll end up breathing the vapors. I don’t know what effect spray sunscreen has on lungs, but at the very best it is useless. I have yet to hear of anyone getting a sunburn in their lungs. Lotion has no such problems of being inadvertently inhaled.

But that’s what we had, so I used it.

Chapter 3: It Started Innocently Enough

Then another day we went to the water park. My wife is glad to have the sprayscreen stuff, because that makes her day easier.

“Okay everybody, line up. Arms out. Chins up. Eyes closed.”
spray-spray-spray
“Okay, you’re all set.”

It is a lot quicker and easier. And it works fine for the kids, because they inherited some of her melanin and so they don’t need as complete coverage as do I.

My wife is taller than our kids are, so when she sprays them with sunscreen, she is spraying from about the same position from which the sun shines down on them. So the areas they get sunscreen are the areas that need it.

Chapter 4: An Ugly Turn of Events

I got sprayed with sunscreen after the kids did. My wife already had the spray can out, so she just went ahead and sprayed me too. But she didn’t have the same angle, so I didn’t get covered in all the right spots.

She and the sun have different perspectives.  Plus, I was probably complaining about the spray stuff, so she went quickly in order to minimize the ordeal. But I think she went a little too quickly. Or maybe it was too windy and the sunscreen never actually made it to my back.

If before that day I was annoyed at the sprayscreens, then after that day I was angry at them. I mean, look how useless they were. I know, I just know, that if we had lotions instead of sprays, I would not have been sunburned that day.

My wife didn’t see my sunburns until I was getting ready for bed that night. I was trying to talk to her about something else, but she just kept laughing at my sunburn. I believe she said the words “Wow, that’s bad!” but it was between giggles.

Then she stopped laughing, but she still wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying…because she was too busy trying to find the different shapes in my sunburn. Like clouds: “look, that one’s a bunny”. Except it was with my seriously red skin.

Chapter 5: The Conclusion

I’m better now.

And the sprayscreen stuff is okay, if I rub it in after spraying it on. The sense of touch helps me to know that all areas are covered. That’s what’s missing with the sprayscreen. Rubbing in the spray-on sunscreen helps ensure even, complete coverage. And reassures me that I won’t get burned.

But if you have to rub it on anyway, why bother with the spray can?!?!

Harumph.

Yes, I now have a couple of tubes of sunscreen lotion for myself.

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday (via Four Now’s Not Me Monday), I am posting a Not Mine Monday.

• My child did not try to persuade his brother that the new bottle of bubble bath that we bought earlier that evening was his new toothpaste. And when I said that it was bubble bath, the first child did not then tell his brother that I was trying to trick him.
• My children did not make a new game in the minivan, and this new game did not involve throwing footwear from the back of the minivan to the front of the minivan in an attempt to get them in the trash can that’s between the two front seats. If they had played that game, I’m sure they would have been accurate and would not have kept hitting the back of my seat by repeatedly missing the trash can. Oh, and this definitely would not have been on a trip that was only 10 minutes long.

And to make things official, here’s a Not Me entry:

• I did not catch the 4-month-old with my foot when he fell (more like slid) off the footstool on which he had been lying somewhat squirmily. My foot had not been placed next to him in case he moved, because my child would be placed in an approved baby station only, with appropriate guard rails and safety features. Oh, and if I had caught the baby with my foot, it would have been about halfway between the top of the footstool and the floor, which was only about 15 inches anyway.

“and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, ‘ Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.’ ”
– Luke 5:10

I have seen some bloggers participating in a day-of-the-week ritual called “Finding Joy Friday“. It involves looking for good things during the day, to help avoid the common human problem of focusing on the negative.

In order to help out all those bloggers, I have posted some links to help them on Finding Joy Friday :

• Yahoo
• White Pages

I haven’t contacted any of the Joys listed there, because I don’t know why I want to find her. Maybe someone else can figure out which one is the right one. Then it wouldn’t be Finding Joy Friday, but Found Joy Friday, or maybe Joy Friday Found (picture it as a headline).

Or… what if it’s like the Incredibles, where the guy doesn’t want to be rescued? Maybe Joy Friday doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she’s in hiding.

“For You, O LORD, have made me glad by what You have done,I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands.”
– Psalm 92:4

While we were waiting for the real movie to start, we saw the preview for “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”. Note to self: don’t forget that the posted times for the movies are before the previews, so fight the urge to arrive early because the posted movie time is early for the movie.

As a fan of the book, I was surprised to see what they did with the movie. Of course, there is not much of a plot to the book, so they had to add something to make the movie long enough. The added element to the movie is the story of how the weather got to be the way it is – all foody and stuff.

Since most of the original movie storylines have been taken, they had to choose from one of the existing situations. The movie producers chose to have the food weather created by … the misunderstood genius, working alone. This option was also chosen for “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”, “Flubber” (the original one, not the remake), “Back to the Future”, etc.

In case you’re wondering, here are the other options that were considered for “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” :

• secret government agency experiment gone wrong
• alien visitors looking to wreak havoc on the planet they are about to invade
• a radioactive spider
• an evil wizard who wants revenge on the boy wizard whose parents he killed years ago
• a grandpa telling a bed-time story to the grandkids

I know that last one is kind of crazy, but maybe they could give it a shot…

“But He replied to them, " When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ " ”
– Matthew 16:2