News to Me

    I love being a life long learner.  And the lessons are so all over the place. Here's a subject that I am finally getting around to really studying.  I don't want to take the final exam but I am curious to see how I would do with it.

   The subject is anger.  I grew up pulling anger out of my pocket every couple of weeks when the nuns would drag us over to the church on Friday afternoons for confession.  It was my "go to" sin.  I could always count on having at least three or four episodes of anger that I could point to and claim as my sins for the week.  Anger was a bad thing.  NOT okay to be angry.  And I was always angry.  Angry at my mom for making me do chores.  Angry at Mark the Park for calling me Dog.  Angry at my sister for messing with my stuff.  Angry at the other kids at school because they had nice stuff and I didn't.  Angry at the stupid priest (horrors!) for embarrassing me because the car pool made me late for the required attendance at morning Mass. Angry at having to go to Mass.  Angry at having to go to school. Angry angry angry.

    And here is the unbelievable part.  I never lost that piece that says anger is bad.  I spent much of my life yelling at myself for being angry.  Bad person.  Get rid of that anger and do it right now. You have no right to be angry.  Get rid of it, I said!  NOW!  Guess what?  I am only now learning that anger is really NOT a bad thing.  Anger is a feeling and it just is.  Sure, you might do something when angry that could be harmful or mean but anger, in and of itself, is not bad.  What a revelation. Amazing.

  So what I am learning now is that it's okay to make a place for anger in my world.  I can feel angry and notice where I feel it.  I can observe anger and maybe paint or write about it (or not).  Then I can decide what, if anything, I want to do about it.  But the big lesson here is that anger is not the bad guy. And I am not the bad person for feeling anger.  This is all new to me, folks.  I am not sure how this new knowledge is going to play out in my days but I am curious to find out.

  How about you?  Are you comfortable making a place for anger in your world?

Follow the Money

    A few posts back, I referenced my own cynicism regarding the medical industry in the United States.  I acknowledged that I was finally learning that the bottom line for health care in this country is money.  This week's issue of Time Magazine carries the proof of this assertion.  In his piece entitled
Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, author Steve Brill provides the reader with a powerful examination of America's health care costs.  Instead of asking, "Who should pay for health care related costs?", Brill turns the question into the more thoughtful one of, "Why are we paying so much for health care?".  I didn't have high blood pressure before but reading the full article was enough to give to me.

   I encourage you to click on the link above and open your eyes.  Follow the money in health care.  It's not about physicians' fees but rather about the billing practices in health care, about the influence of phamrmaceutical companies, about the ability of non profits to be profit makers, about the excessive overordering of tests and other procedures and more.  So much more.

   In the interests of getting and keeping your attention,  I am going to give you just five bullet points from this article:

1)  Have you ever heard of "the chargemaster"?  The chargemaster is every hospital's internal price list.  It is the price list and it assigns prices to  thousands of items that could be part of a bill (the tylenol pill, the tubing for the IV, the lab test ordered, every item imaginable).  As the author discovered, there appears to be  no rationale, no process, no accountability behind the structure of the chargemaster.  NO accountability.

2)  69% of bankruptcies are related to illness or medical bills.  69% of those who incurred medical related bankruptcy were insured at the time of their filing.

3)   It is routine in hospital billing to charge for items or services that should not have been charged for at all.  For example, your bill can reflect a charge of  $2,000/day for the use of the ICU because it does have specialized equipment and personnel.  Then they can and do charge you another $1,000 for some kit used in the ICU  for a transfusion or something.  Additionally, you will be charged for every bandage, every tool used.  As the author noted, that is triple billing.  And did I mention routine?

4)  In other countries, there is a cap on prescription drug prices.  Not only is there not a cap in the US, the pharmaceutical lobbyists have managed to get legislation passed that prevents a cap from being put on prescription drug prices.  This leads to such outrageous comparisons as the fact that one nexium pill in the US is the same price as that of eight in France.  One lipitor pill is the same as price as three in Argentina.  Endless examples show that prescription drug prices have been allowed to become unquestionably exorbitant.

5) "Non profit hospitals are making big bucks and hospital leaders are receiving big pay."  For example, University of Pittsburg Medical Center Presbyterian has an operating profit of $769,700,054.  Their CEO compensation is $5,975, 462.  Non profit status?

       I am livid.  This examination of health care costs both scares me and infuriates me.  Money is at the root of so much bad stuff.  Why is it that people think they are entitled to have so much money?  Why can people do this to each other?  So much happens under the guise of big business.  It is a culture gone seriously wrong.  This feels massive and there is no way you or I can fix it.  I am a speck in front of the tank, if you know what I mean.  You can counsel your kids to choose jobs that have health insurance but all that can change  and maybe they can't even get a job.  Our daughter turns 26 on April 8th and, on that day, she runs out of health insurance.  After that she can no longer be covered on our policy.  She has nothing.  She is a nanny and is applying to grad school.  No health insurance in her future. She could pay for a major medical policy but I have learned that major medical is deceptive.  The insurance industry can and does cap it.  Maybe you are covered up to $50,000/year .  That can easily be blown in less than a day, as demonstrated by the article.

    Clearly you must stay healthy or prepare to lose your financial resources.  It won't matter how hard you have worked or what kind of an exemplary citizen you have been.  The health care industry will take away your money without batting an eye and leave you with no recourse.  Disgusting.

 

If Jesus Walked on Water......

 
  My blogger friend Tangled Lou over at Periphery posted a cool piece the other day that touched on the connection between memory and truth vs memory and fiction.  Her opening hook gave three incidents that occurred with she was four years old.  She recalled them as she remembered them, which admittedly, may or may not be the way they actually occurred.  As I read those three memories, I was flooded with a memory of my own.

      Once upon a time when I was five years old, I was playing out along side the garage (right over there by the clothes lines).  My dad had recently deconstructed an old house and had been able to salvage the windows.  He had stacked them on the ground along side of the garage but out of the general play way.  Remember, now,  that I was brought up in a devout Catholic home.  I had heard the religious stories over and over again and one that always intrigued me was that one where Jesus walked on water.  How did he do that?  There must have been pictures in the prayer books of this mysterious event because it was so real in my imagination.

     Maybe you've guessed where this story is going.  That (maybe) one foot high stack of windows looked like water to me.  I remember clearly thinking that  Jesus walked on water.  Maybe I would be able to as well.  Okay, so maybe I wasn't the brightest five year old but I was curious, adventurous and I was a risk taker.  Step on up.  Walk across that window.

     Oops.  Though I was a fairly slight 5 year old, I was not slight enough to be held by the glass.  My foot (which actually had a shoe on it that day) went right though the glass - all several layers of glass.  Oddly enough, I can't remember an injury (though there must have been at least some scraping).  What I do remember is being overwhelmed with fear and anger.  I was so mad at myself for having done that.  Papa was going to be SO MAD.  He was going to yell at me.  I distinctly recall laying down on the ground right there by the stack of windows and sobbing and hitting my hands against the dirt - ENRAGED  at myself.  After a bit, I went into the house looking for Mama.  Papa was at work but I needed to tell someone what had happened.  I don't recall much other than that she insisted that I would need to be the one to tell Papa when he got home.  Let me tell you.  I was one scared little girl.

      That evening, Papa came home from work.  It must have been a Saturday as the parents were getting ready to go out somewhere.  Papa had taken a bath and shaved and was dressed in his very nice jacket and tie.  I could smell his after shave lotion and that usually made me happy. Not that night.   For some reason, I went into to talk to him while he was finishing getting dressed.  Likely he had saved the bath water for me and I was supposed to be getting into the tub.  I remember approaching him with great fear and telling him I needed to talk to him.  He sat himself down on the toilet (all dressed in his fancy clothes) and gave me his full attention.  I remember crying while I told him about wanting to walk on water like Jesus had done and that when I tried to do that, I broke the windows.   My memory says he was holding my hands and he asked me if I learned anything (that man was all about learning things).  Very clearly I remember telling him, "Yes, I learned that I couldn't walk on glass."  My memory says he told me that he was glad that I had learned something and it was going to be okay.  I was so relieved.  He didn't yell.  That was my biggest fear.  He never hit me and I wasn't worried about that.  I was worried that he wouldn't want me anymore.

    All parts of this story are lodged in my memory.  It's odd to me that I think of him as holding my hands because I don't have many memories of that sort of affection. But it really does fit.   I suspect that Mama had prepared him for my words and, the fact that he had likely had a cocktail or two while getting ready to go out, might have helped my case.  That's the thing with Robert.  You never knew what to expect. You didn't  know if  he was going to yell or be patient.  You didn't know if he was going to want you along when he went to the hardware store or if he was going to rage off .  You didn't know if he was going to be a storyteller while you peeled those potatoes for dinner or if he was going to shoot pots and pans across the kitchen because he had detected some residual from last nights' dinner that the dishwasher of the night had not removed.

     In retelling the story, I am reminded that, even as a 5 year old, I did not cut myself any slack.  I am also reminded of how difficult it must have been to be a little kid in a world where love hinged on doing the right thing and where you really had to watch carefully to note the signs around you.  I think I was born an observer and my childhood honed my observer / people skills.  I learned how to read the 'rents and I also learned how to negotiate with the siblings.  All good skills for life, heh?