Tag: health insurance

The flu shot: new venue

I’m sure that the acquisitions of the offices of my PCP and similar locations involve the hospital wanting to have the right mix of facilities under the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare.

I thought, before I had it 7 or 8 years ago, that the flu was like a very bad cold. I was very wrong. The flu made me feel miserable. I mean missing a full week from work miserable.

Since then, I’ve been religiously getting my flu shot every year, usually when I get my annual physical in early autumn. In the past year, though, the practice of my primary care physician (PCP) has been taken over by one of the large hospitals in the area. As a result, my PCP doesn’t know when the flu vaccine would reach the office. I was encouraged to get my shot at Wal-Mart or ShopRite or wherever I could.

For some reason, I found this oddly unsettling. I’m sure that the acquisitions of the offices of my PCP and similar locations involve the hospital wanting to have the right mix of facilities under the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare. Presumably, the economies of scale are supposed to make things more efficient, but that wasn’t the case in this situation.

At my local CVS, there were signs encouraging people top get flu shots there, so I inquired. My shot would be covered fully by my insurance, so I for the shot from the pharmacist behind this partition. My wife can go there too, but my daughter cannot because she is under 18.

Getting the shot at the pharmacy rather than the doctor’s office is different, but no less convenient. The new way of doing things, in this case, was not so bad after all.
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H is for Health insurance and History (mine)

The doctor gave a very brief look at my foot and immediately sent me to bed at the infirmary.

When I moved from Schenectady to Albany in 1979, it was, in large part, to go to graduate school at the University at Albany (which may have been called SUNY Albany at the time – I forget) in the School of Public Administration.

A few days before the semester began, I went to a very nice party outdoors at a friend’s house, where I was walking in the grass with bare feet. A few days later, one of my toes on my left foot started to hurt, at first just a bit, but eventually, so badly, I thought I ought to go to a doctor. BUT I didn’t have insurance, and I WOULD in two days when I registered for classes. (Also, at that point, I didn’t even have a primary care physician, so it would have been a function of picking randomly from the phone book Yellow Pages.)

I sucked it up and somehow got through college registration, in tremendous pain. If someone had offered a wheelchair, instead of the single crutch I was using from a previous injury, I surely would have used it. That and/or whiskey. While the pain when sitting was great, the pain when standing/hobbling on one leg was almost unbearable.

Finally, I somehow made it to the college infirmary; it seemed so very far away. The doctor gave a very brief look at my foot and immediately sent me to bed at the infirmary. Seems that I got an infection beneath my toenail, it was going up my foot, and if it made it to my heart, it would have, literally, killed me. I spent the next six days in the infirmary.

This meant I was a week behind in classes, both academically and socially, from the get-go. I never caught up.

This meant two fundamental things in my life:
1) I dropped out of grad school and ended up working at a comic book store for eight and a half years.
2) I became an ardent supporter of universal health care coverage.

It’s interesting how an initially tiny pain in the foot can have life-changing consequences.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Joe Kubert, and the Olympics (again!)

Fortunately, America, some of the Olympics items you missed can be seen here.

Joe Kubert, a comic legend best known for his DC war comics, died Sunday morning at the age of 85. Read this piece by Christopher Allen with links to other articles. Here’s a piece by Mark Evanier, plus ADD’s controversial take.

Steve Bissette, who was a student at the Kubert School, writes To Joe, With Love: A Sad Farewell to the Man Who Opened All the Doors. He also wrote on Facebook:
“If you want to do something to express your feelings or help, donations can be made to the Multiple Myeloma Foundation in Joe Kubert’s name; sympathy cards or notices can be sent to the Kubert family c/o the Kubert School, 37 Myrtle Avenue, Dover, NJ 07801. In all ways, be kind.”

This story depressed me thoroughly: Father performs “Let it Be” to raise funds for his 11-month-old’s cancer bills.
“No parent should have to bare their grief to the world, no matter how beautifully, to beg for money to cover the life-saving medical treatment their baby needs. As you see the beauty, be mindful of the injustice in our health care system this represents.”

Fact-checking the Romney-Ryan “60 Minutes” interview. On the other hand, someone (I forget who, fortunately) noted that they have really nice hair, best hair since the Johns Kerry and Edwards in 2004.

Helen Gurley Brown, longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of Sex and the Single Girl died at the age of 90. She had as much to do with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, however you think about that, as anyone aside from the makers of The Pill.

I’m not a Boston Red Sox fan, but I always liked Johnny Pesky, who was a great team ambassador for the baseball team for a lot of years.
***
I thought I was through mentioning the Olympics, I really did, though you might want to read the pieces by Shooting Parrots, the last of which is HERE. Now, Jay Smooth did provide a sarcastic tribute to NBC’s coverage, and that was BEFORE the Closing Ceremonies, which NBC royally screwed up:
“In addition to editing out selected portions and allowing the insipid Ryan Seacrest to host, they broke away before the big finale and the Who to show the pilot of a new sitcom where the big joke was a monkey in a lab coat. There’s a reason NBC is the last network. Even in those rare (once every four years) instances when they get viewers, they manage to royally piss them off. Don’t they realize that interrupting the Closing Ceremonies with a sitcom is the same as flashing a half-hour pop-up ad?”
Fortunately, in America, some of the Olympics items you missed can be seen HERE.

A non-NBC piece about a recent piece criticizing American Olympic silver medalist Leo Manzano for waving his native Mexican flag alongside the U.S. flag following his performance in the men’s 1500-meter finals.
***
PSY – GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) for your own aerobic exercise.

November Untranslatable Rambling

gobsmacked AND flabbergasted

I lead with some heavy stuff; it gets lighter after the pic.

Read the sad tale of Bill Mantlo, former comic book writer and attorney, until a hit-and-run accident wrecked his life. Mark Evanier, linking to the article, writes: “Those who still fear government ‘death panels’ should take note of the portions of Mantlo’s story where his private insurer keeps trying to cut off all payments to him because, after all, their primary duty is to their stockholders.” Here’s the direct link to the article, and here’s Evanier’s correction to the article about the comic book process, which does not negate the insane way Mantlo has been warehoused.

But for sheer devastation, few things I’ve read actually made me weep like Jaquandor’s recollection of a particular day.

Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky’s Next Coaching Gig

The Beatles album artwork worth £70,000: Top 10 most valuable record sleeves revealed

How music changes our brains

The Beach Boys An Introduction to “SMiLE Sessions”, released this month. It’s great seeing Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and Brian Wilson on the same page.

Michelle Shocked – Quality of Mercy (version)

Evanier also found The Lambeth Walk as performed by Adolf Hitler and a batch of Nazi soldiers, which reportedly had Joseph Goebbels running, screaming from the room in anger. In fact, there are about a dozen versions of this song on his blog this month.

A song about Roman Emperor Constantine…sung to the tune of “Come On Eileen”. Of COURSE, it is.

SamuraiFrog linked to Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me) by Reunion. What caught my eye, though, were the initial visuals, which I recognized INSTANTLY from a commercial for Country Corn Flakes; I knew that ad by heart, I’m afraid.

American expat linguist Lynneguist, now in the UK, lists the untranslatables, those British and American English terms that don’t travel well across the pond. I made a comment, and a word I used as a jumping-off point for even more discussion.

Saucy Shakespearean Slings

Sid Melton, R.I.P. – if you watched a lot of TV in in the 1950s and later, you might say, “Oh, THAT guy.”

Maine Man’s Car Logs One Million Miles, Equivalent to Driving Around Earth 40 Times. Imagine how far he would have gotten if he’d only taken care of the vehicle.

Dustbury’s Today’s brain-cloud generator. Say What?

Mike Sterling was gobsmacked AND flabbergasted. Which is how I felt when I saw the middle item, about a new font, on Jaquandor’s page.

The Harvey Pekar Library Statue at the Comics as Art & Literature Desk — A Comics project in Cleveland Heights, OH. And Steve Bissette’s support for the same. Plus, in support of this memorial, Joyce Brabner has “coaxed Alan Moore out of the darkness wherein he dwells to video record a special message to comics folk in which he’s offering several hours– by invitation only– video conference from his home in the UK. Viewers may ask impertinent questions. Alan tells great stories.”

Bill Cosby – The Playground

Hawkeye Pierce as a serial killer

GOOGLE ALERT

Pols’ promise to themselves by Roger Green, Scottsbluff

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