Unintended Consequences

Yeah, that's not weird.

And that? Not alarming at all.

denelian, in the spirit of sharing, wrote a comment that made my vagina lock up so tight I may never have sex again (thanks!), including something I thought was just me:

THEN the doc told me i'd be a fascinating case study on how treating a person's pain like it didn't matter produced a person who ignored their body's warnings [pain] until their body just QUIT.

That's not just you, denelian. I do that, too. I end up in the hospital with kidney infections, or a spleen the size of Nebraska, or severely dehydrated, or with a fever so high I'm risking brain damage or an ear infection that's spreading to the bone. Each and every time, the ER doctor scolds me. How could I let it go that long? Why didn't I call my doctor earlier- like a week earlier? You almost died, don't you care what happens to yourself?

Of course I care what happens to myself, I just don't pay much attention to my body. I used to. I used to call the doctor every time something weird happened, which is pretty much every day. I've had two doctors dump me for doing just that. So I stopped paying attention to my body. Pain? That's not important. It must not be, nobody cares about it. So why would I pay any more attention to the pain in my left flank than I do to the far worse pain in my knees- until I start peeing blood, that is.

I tried to tell doctors about the tachycardia and palpitations. They did a couple of tests and politely told me to fuck off. So I stopped paying attention to my heart racing so fast I couldn't count it- until I passed out at Dunkin Donuts.

Honestly, I can never tell if I have a fever. I frequently feel like I do when I don't. I'll be miserably hot when it's 20F (-7C) outside, or shivering when it's 85F (29C) and it's no indication of what my internal temperature is. I've mentioned it to doctors and basically been told to stop being melodramatic. So, no, I didn't bother to check my temperature when I had a fever of over 104F (40C)- until I started hallucinating, that is.

Then I get to have an argument with an ER doctor because it's all my fault. I must be psychologically disturbed. The fact that my problem is a direct result of substandard care. Actually, my real problem is that this care is not considered substandard. Undertreating pain is the goal of modern medicine as far as I can tell. And me? I still have to get through my day, so I just ignore my body. I pay no attention to the most alarming things until my body starts to shut itself down.

I recently went to the doctor because my toes keep turning a dark greyish purple. It's really an alarming color on your skin. It's not related to cold or much of anything else that I can figure out, and here's what the doctor said to me: Does it hurt? No, there's no additional pain when my toes turn purple. Well, then, it's really just cosmetic, isn't it?

Yeah, I'm betting it's not just cosmetic. I'm betting I end up in the ER, again, suffering from something horrible. Again.

The above list isn't everything that's sent me to the hospital in the last 10 years. Not even close. The issue isn't infections or dehydration or fevers, the issue is that I push myself to the limit every day. Some days, with the pain, walking five steps is the limit and I have to go way past that. I don't sleep more than five hours a night because of the pain and no more than two hours are uninterrupted sleep. I frequently don't eat because of the pain. I'm not surprised when my body shuts down. And I can't really figure out why doctors act all shocked and appalled by it. Or why that's my fault.

Please Remove Your Wallet from Devvy's Vagina

This is Devvy. She is surprisingly calm for having everyone's wallet in her vagina.

"In lobbying for defeat of a congressional plan that would cut off taxpayer support for the abortion business' leading player, Richards claimed: "If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health-care access ­ not to abortion services ­ to basic family planning, you know, mammograms." But Live Action workers who called 30 Planned Parenthood business locations across the nation said "every single one admitted they could not do mammograms."

I will never have a mammogram, but having one is a personal decision and expense. The Outlaw Congress has NO authority to steal the fruits of your labor to fund abortions or mammograms.

Devvy apparently wants to find out about her breast cancer when it's difficult to impossible to treat, because that's how she rolls. The rest of us, however, are not looking forward to radical mascetomies, radiation and chemotherapy.

Here's the thing Devvy, and I'm sure it's hard to listen to facts and logic with even one wallet in your vagina, let alone 300,000,000 wallets in your vagina, it is far cheaper to pay for cancer treatment in the earliest stages than in the later stages. And here's another thing: unless you want to cut off all health care access to the poor, which you probably do, eventually that person is going to end up in the ER and then they will run up an enormous bill everyone gets to pay for.

Would you, Devvy, find it to be a better idea to change your brakes when they start squeaking, or after you cause a ten car pileup on the highway? One costs, what, $250 max, the other hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions if you end up killing someone. Now, changing the brakes when they squeak is like giving out free pap smears. The ten car pileup is not giving out free pap smears and instead treating women with end stage cervical cancer in the ER.

Ignoring, of course, that "poor women should die preventable deaths so that my taxes can be 0.8% lower" is sociopathic and appalling on every level.

Having a test for cervical cancer is a personal expense.

One I certainly can't afford, but I don't think Devvy cares. As far as she is concerned, another person's cervical cancer should impact her exactly as much as another person's hair style and she cares just as much. Probably less, actually, as she doesn't have to look at anyone else's cervix.

That's not a political position, that sociopathy. I'd mention that, again, it's not good economic policy, either, but I really think that the police should be checking her yard for human remains every so often.

"How many times have we heard female politicians bleat about "women's issues" during elections? How many times have we heard the old chant about "empowering women" from female members of Congress? The feminization of Congress and our state legislatures is destroying constitutional government, running America into oceans of unpayable debt and breeding generations of helpless women, whining for mother government to take care of them and their every need.

Cancer is not a woman's iss-

Fuck it.

There are 10,000,000 more unemployed people than there are jobs. And they want to cut off unemployment benefits and lower taxes even further on the wealthy. 1 in 7 Americans experience food insecurity and food prices continue to rise, so let's cut food stamps. More than 40,000,000 Americans have no health insurance and a person without healthcare is 50% more likely to die of cancer than a person with health insurance, but health insurance is a privilege to be enjoyed by the few. Our bridges are crumbling and occasionally collapsing, but investing in infrastructure is wasting money that could be given back to the rich in the form of more tax cuts. GE paid no taxes last year. The banks crushed our economy by securitizing mortgages, but let's deregulate the market and bail them out with taxpayer money.

Do you see the disconnect here? What we are doing is not working. It is not working. What language do I have to say that in before people understand?

The GOP is, at this point, like a person pouring gasoline on a fire to put it out and, as the fire climbs higher and higher, insisting that if they just put enough gasoline on the fire, eventually it will work. Oh, and it's the country that is on fire.

Just for fun, here's the wallet-vagina line:

Get my wallet out of your vagina because you have no constitutional right to steal the fruits of my husband's fixed retirement to pay for your abortion.

She's bitching that her husband's social security is being used to pay for abortions through Planned Parenthood. Now that is some performance art quality irony right there.

Let's Play Games In Hell

I've got a new game for you. It's called "Find the Privilege"! (Oddly, Parker Bros. is not returning my calls.) It's fun! For the whole family!

7 Foods That Should Never Cross Your Lips, no. 7

Mark Kastel, former executive for agribusiness and codirector of the Cornucopia Institute, a farm-policy research group that supports organic foods, gives us the scoop:

The problem: If fall fruits held a "most doused in pesticides contest," apples would win. Why? They are individually grafted (descended from a single tree) so that each variety maintains its distinctive flavor. As such, apples don't develop resistance to pests and are sprayed frequently. The industry maintains that these residues are not harmful. But Kastel counters that it's just common sense to minimize exposure by avoiding the most doused produce, like apples. "Farm workers have higher rates of many cancers," he says. And increasing numbers of studies are starting to link a higher body burden of pesticides (from all sources) with Parkinson's disease.

The solution: Buy organic apples.

Budget tip: If you can't afford organic, be sure to wash and peel them. But Kastel personally refuses to compromise. "I would rather see the trade-off being that I don't buy that expensive electronic gadget," he says. "Just a few of these decisions will accommodate an organic diet for a family.

Well, I suppose if I must curtail my collecting of 72" plasma TVs . . . for the children. I'm sure Dr. Kastel is innocently assuming we are all in his socioeconomic bracket. I'm sure he's simply never seen, heard of, or considered that there may be people who do not buy an "organic diet" because they have no money, no spending to cut and probably not much access to organics anyway. It's privilege and we can't fault the good doctor for implying that if you aren't feeding your children everything organic, it's because you hate them and hope they get cancer. Next week.

This same article suggests using bottled red sauce (i.e., Ragu) instead of making your own sauce out of canned tomatoes. Canned tomatoes contain alien eggs which will explode from your children's stomachs 10 minutes after eating, and possibly consume a man's testicles.

All I have to say to that is that Ragu is a crime against nature and I would sooner eat the children themselves than eat Ragu.

Is Organic Meat Worth It?

Yes, it's just a title. There's really no need for anything else, the privilege is packed into those words and needs no further exposition. I'm not even sure where one buys organic meat. They don't sell it at my walmart. The issue of affordability is secondary to the privilege of even being able to obtain such a thing.

All the Things You Need to Buy in Order for Your Children to Be Happy and Healthy

I did change the title for accuracy. (I'm also paraphrasing a bit)

Paint the walls, buy and maintain plants, buy things and donate things you don't need (what are those, anyway? i mean, things i don't need.), grow your own food, it's painted certain colors, but it reflects you perfectly, put in more windows- and skylights!- the furniture is new and comfortable!

Yes, yes, yes, it's thousands of dollars, but DON'T YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN?! WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU?! WHY CAN'T YOU POOR PEOPLE GET OFF YOUR FAT, LAZY ASSES TO BENEFIT YOUR CHILDREN?!

Privilege: it's what's not for dinner.

Do Doctors Realize How Stupid They Sound?

Me being still obsessed with my complete inability to eat anything, I'd like to share two conversations I had in the ER early Tuesday morning. Both of these happened while I was on a lot of dilaudid, mind you, so I was a bit more, um, direct than I usually am.

Conversation 1:

Dr: We need to test the function of your gallbladder.

Me: Okay.

Dr.: We can't do it right now, you'll have to schedule it later.

Me: Okay. So what does that involve?

Dr.: They'll inject a nuclear dye into your gallbladder to make it spasm-

Me: Wait, wait, wait. Isn't spasming what's going on right now? That's what's causing the pain, right?

Dr.: Well, yes, but we need to see-

Me: So you expect me to walk into a room knowing that I'm going to leave feeling like this, only without the dilaudid and the toridol?

Dr.: Well, yes, but in order to-

Me: Just how many different kinds of crazy do you think I am?

Seriously, how do you say that to someone? "Hey, I've got a great opportunity for you to deliberately feel the sort of pain that makes you beg for death! Sign up now!" Um, no, I'd rather not.

Conversation 2 (after 4 shots of dilaudid and 2 of toridol):

Dr.: If we can't get your pain under control, we'll have to admit you.

Me: And do what?

Dr.: What?

Me: What are you going to do on the 8th floor that you aren't doing here?

Dr.: Um, well, we can work on controlling the pain.

Me: You just gave me enough dilaudid to knock out an elephant, does the dilaudid work better the higher up you are?

Dr.: No.

Me: I can't sleep on dilaudid. I can't stop grinding my teeth on dilaudid. I'd like to go home, wait for the dilaudid to wear off and sleep in my comfortable bed with my pillow that smells like me. I don't see how being in some overly bright room with some roommate who wants to watch Fox News at top volume would be any better.

Dr.: I can't release you with uncontrolled pain. It's against hospital regulations and it's unethical.

Me: and I have insurance, so those things matter, I suppose. My pain's all gone now, get this IV out and send me home.

Really, pain? Don't make me laugh. Me and pain are old friends, the kind that can't stand each other anymore, but we've been together so long we don't know what else to do. Ethics? Every doctor I've ever seen undertreats my pain deliberately because they're scared of the DEA or they think I'm lying, but all of a sudden undertreating pain is unethical? Like you'd care if I didn't have insurance? Fuck off.

Maybe We Should Work on Empathy Transplants First

Sometimes it's not the story, it's the comments. Actually, a lot of the time it's not the story, it's the comments. Your fellow countrymen and human beings baring their sociopathic souls for all the world to see is just terrifying.

The story is about transplant rationing in Arizona (it's not a death panel when it's a private insurer, apparently) and the real human cost of such decisions.

Trinity Halliday
I lost my job and have no health insurance now. So why exactly should I cry tears for people who will suck up millions and millions of dollars of healthcare and may require a second costly transplant or die anyway? A former boss of mine had a heart transplant. She told us about all of the other people in her hospital unit who mostly died anyway after the transplant. Talk about throwing money down a black hole. After the transplant there are all also all of the costly anti-rejection drugs and tests to see if you're rejecting the organ. I was in favor of transplants before I heard her stories. She alone has cost the insurance company millions and millions of dollars and doesn't even have a normal life. I'm sorry, but we really need to think about what a life is worth. And how many less sick people we could treat and save for the same money. Lots and lots. I'm with Arizona on this. It's not a good use of the money. And I'm normally a bleeding heart liberal. If I get sick or injured, I'm going to die, because I can't afford medical treatment. So if you're not Steve Jobs and can't afford a transplant, maybe you will, too. I don't think a right to transplants was ever written into the Constitution.

Yes, saving lives is "throwing money down a black hole" if those lives aren't going to be "normal" afterwards. "Bleeding heart liberal" Trinity apparently feels that medicine should only be an option if it's going to make people "normal", whatever that means, so forget about treating mental illnesses, or amputees or children with Down's Syndrome. If they're going to force Trinity to behold abnormality, they should just die.

"I don't think a right to transplants was ever written into the Constitution" is just a flat out lie: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It's right there, Trin. Get a clue.

Simmons
Whatever did we do 50 years ago, when many of our life-saving procesurdes weren't available? And we didn't have a pill for everything? Even 20 years ago? Limit all public funds for healthcare that was developed 20 years ago or more.That will still give people BASIC healthcare. Everyone else can pay out of their own pockets. Some of us get Ferraris, some get 10 year old Kias. Life's unfair.

Simmons feels that medicine should have stopped innovating 50 years ago. Why 50? Who the fuck knows, but I'll be happy to deny Simmons fetal monitoring, open heart surgery, an artificial hip, treatment for heart attacks, CT scans, MRIs, PET scans, defibrillators, and the list goes on.

I mean seriously, the knowledge that [this person] is dying needlessly only inspires you to opine on Kias and spout the sort of ableist tripe Hitler was fond of? Instead of cutting off organ transplants, I say we figure out how to do empathy transplants. Apparently, that's what we really need.

Are Mini Med Policies Insurance? No.

I worked for over a year for the State of Pennsylvania as a temp. Oddly, one can be a temporary worker, at least for the state, for years. (No, I don't know how that works.) Being a temp worker sucks, not just because of the low pay and complete lack of holiday/vacation/sick pay (do you have any idea how many state holidays there are? Pennsylvania includes the first day of hunting season. tru fax.), but also because of the "health insurance" temp agencies offer.

I used sarcastiquotes because calling that plan health insurance is like calling Sarah Palin a feminist. Lots of people do it, but it still doesn't make any sense.

That "health insurance" cost $50 a paycheck, had an overall cap of $10,000*, a deductible of $1,000 and a monthly pharmacy cap of $75. So, yeah, they wanted to steal $2,600 a year from me for no really good reason. And they called it health insurance, I guess just for the added benefit of insulting my intelligence.

So, when McDonalds claims that the crap they're offering their employees is health insurance, only in the sense that Sarah Palin is a feminist. But McDonalds is more than willing to sell the idea to Congress, who is pretty darn interested in listening, though not actually in having "health insurance" themselves.

Among hearing witnesses, Team Better-Than-Nothing was headed up by Rich Floersch, executive vice-president for human resources at McDonald's Corporation. McDonald's helped win itself a crucial waiver from the health-reform law, Janet Adamy reported two months ago in the Wall Street Journal, by threatening to HHS that if forced to comply it might just have to withdraw health coverage from thousands of fast-food workers. McDonald's offers hourly workers at its 1,500 company-owned restaurants four health-insurance options, Floerschexplained. Only one of these options (annual premium: about $6,000 per year, obviously more than most hourly workers can pay) is "comprehensive" (i.e., real) insurance. The other three are mini-meds. The cheapest option (and the one nearly all its hourly workers opt for) cost $710 per year in 2008 (presumably it's more expensive now, but apparently this was the most recent data the commerce committee could get) and had an annual benefit ceiling of $2,000. The other two options cost $1,332 and $1,947 per year and had annual benefit ceilings of $5,000 and $10,000. These same four options are also available from most of McDonald's' 12,500 franchisees.

. . .

Floersch said that McDonald's surveyed its employees and found only 10 percent willing to pay $21 or more per week for health insurance, as opposed to 55 percent who would be willing to pay $5 to $20 per week. He didn't mention (but a commerce committee fact sheet did) that the sliding premiums for the three insurance options available to corporate suits and some restaurant managers but not to hourly employees actually begin at levels below those paid by hourly workers for mini-med plans even though the suits' policies contain no annual benefit limits. That's right. Some nonhourly employees at McDonald's pay less for theirreal health insurance—with no annual limits and, indeed, an employee out-of-pocket maximum of $4,000 for covered expenses—than the schmucks shoveling French fries and flipping Big Macs pay for fake health insurance with annual benefit limits of $2,000, $5,000, and $10,000, and no employee out-of-pocket maximum for covered expenses.Oh, and the absolute highest health premium the suits might pay ($1,435 for higher-earning employees in the "no deductible PPO") is less than a quarter the premium McDonald's expects the schmucks to pay for the only policy hourly workers can opt for that isn't a mini-med. [emphasis mine]

That's just evil.

*The ER charges $500 just for walking through the door, the walk in clinic next door to my work charges $85 to see a doctor, and a decent blood workup will run you upwards of $500. One mild bout of anything would bust right through that cap.

How Many Times Do We Need to Learn This Lesson?

This is, or was, Alisa Wilson. She could have been saved. She wasn't.

Here's the thing about health insurance companies: they're in the business of making money. Full stop. Finis. Done. That's it.

Health insurance companies are not in the business of keeping people healthy or saving lives or anything else other than making money. They take your money in the form of premiums and in order to keep that money, they have to pay as few claims as possible. By "claims", I mean "procedures or medicines that keep people healthy or alive."

That is the goal of a health insurance company, to pay for as few medicines or procedures that keep people healthy and/or alive as possible. From the perspective of profit, an organ transplant is a cost, a waste of money, less profits. Therefore, an organ transplant is, like all other "claims", something to be avoided at all costs. Including human life.

That's why tragedies like this happen:

It was this practice of frivolous denials that ended up costing Jacksonville, Florida woman Alisa Wilson her life. For months, Wilson, her family, and the surrounding community had been pleading with her HMO to approve coverage for a liver transplant. Although Wilson was enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program, she was not guaranteed care because she was “forced to join a private plan as part of a Gov. Jeb Bush-era experimental overhaul of the program,” meaning she had to deal with a private, for-profit insurance company to get her care, not a government agency accountable to the public.

Alisa Wilson died because allowing her to die maximized profits. She died for money. Morally, I really can't see the difference between what happened to Alisa Wilson and a person who kills their spouse for the insurance money. Either way, a person died so somebody else could have more money.

Death panels, indeed.

pic link

Explain to Me Why Socialism Is So Very Bad Again

Colour me unsurprised* that American health care is killing Americans.

Americans die sooner than citizens of a dozen other developed nations and the usual suspects -- obesity, traffic accidents and a high murder rate -- are not to blame, researchers reported Thursday.

Instead, poor health care may be to blame, the team at Columbia University in New York reported.

They found that 15-year survival rates for men and women aged 45 to 65 have fallen in the United States relative to the other 12 countries over the past 30 years.

. . .

"But what really surprised us was that all of the usual suspects -- smoking, obesity, traffic accidents, and homicides -- are not the culprits," Meunnig said in a statement.

"The U.S. doesn't stand out as doing any worse in these areas than any of the other countries we studied, leading us to believe that failings in the U.S. health care system, such as costly specialized and fragmented care, are likely playing a large role in this relatively poor performance on improvements in life expectancy."

In June, the Commonwealth Fund, which advocates on and does research focusing on health care reform, reported that Americans spend twice as much on health care as residents of other developed countries -- $7,290 per person -- but get lower quality and less efficiency.

Muennig and Sherry Glied compared the United States to Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

Yeah, that socialism. It's awful. It allows people to live longer and better. How terrible! Seriously, tell me again why we're so opposed to socialism? Yeah, yeah, yeah higher taxes- and better health. Isn't that worth higher taxes?

Between 1975 and 2005, medical costs went up in all the countries, as did life expectancy.

But costs went up far more in the United States and life expectancy increased to a far lower degree.

Glied and Meunnig do not believe obesity accounts for the differences. While more Americans are obese, overall the populations in all the nations have been getting fatter, they said.

"For obesity to explain the decline in U.S. life expectancy or the increase in health spending relative to the 12 comparison countries, Americans would have to be becoming obese at a faster rate than people in the comparison nations over time," they wrote. But this has not been happening.

Americans are less likely to smoke, and while Americans are more likely to die in car crashes or be murdered, again these rates do not explain the lower life expectancy, the Columbia team said.

Wait, we can't blame the fatties? Well, now that is unAmerican.

So, how bad is the problem?

"In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands," they wrote. At last count, the United States was 46th in female life expectancy; 49th for both sexes.

Wow, from 5 to 46. I'd ask how that capitalism is working out for everyone, but clearly, it's not.

*It's a shade of puce, in case you were wondering.

I Can Think of More to Say

[trigger warning: weight]

h/t to Cynical Nymph

Ugh. Just ugh. I keep Feministe and Feministing on my blogroll because they introduced me to sex positivity, to cisgender privilege and the fact that women are raped because they are in the presence of a rapist, not because their routines are a little too predictable. That's not to say I agree with everything that's ever said on either site. Especially not this from Feministe:

Can you judge health with a naked eye? It’s true, you can’t. But let’s be honest, there’s not an epidemic of fat runners out there.

and:

In all, this demonization of the BMI is odd. I’m outside my normal BMI range, but I’ve never had a doctor say, “Boy, are you overweight!” I have had doctors ask me what’s happening when I come in for my yearly check-up and my weight’s gone up or down. They’re never concerned when I’ve put on ten pounds; they’re concerned when I tell them it’s because I’ve stopped exercising. Likewise, no doctor talks about my weight when she does routine blood tests, listens to me breathe or feels my glands.

"Epidemic" of "fat"? Nice word choice there, asshat. As to never having a doctor bring up yourweight? Lucky fucking you.

This attitude hurts people in so many ways, but I'd like to address two ways it hurts people that most people don't think of.

1. Overweight people are assumed to be sick because they are overweight.

It's like a "Get out of diagnostics free" card for doctors. Are you 100 lbs overweight? Every illness, including eye problems, will be blamed on that weight. Don't believe me? That's exactly what happened to The Hubby. When his MS first appeared, the first symptom was pain and loss of colour vision in one eye. This is a huge red flag for MS, but three doctors went looking for diabetes, didn't find it and stopped looking. His eye returned to normal with no treatment, again typical of MS, and then the gastrointestinal distress started. When I say "gastrointestinal distress", I mean losing 40 lbs in 6 weeks. That's almost 1 lb per day. That's insane. That's unhealthy. That, combined with the eye problem is a 100' tall neon sign blinking MSMSMSMSMS. And every single doctor shrugged and said, "Well, good for you! 60 lbs to go!"

The Hubby now has permanent nerve damage from Vitamin B deficiencies. Good for him.

2. Thin people are not tested for heart disease and other conditions because we have become convinced these diseases are solely the result of being overweight. Thin people are only slightly less likely to experience heart disease than overweight people. However, doctors won't even think heart disease- even if you display classic symptoms of heart disease- because that's for fat people.

Arthritis? Fallen arches? That's what happens to fat people- unless you're me and I had to fight to get x-rays to prove that my arches have collapsed. Mind you, the doctor was looking at my newly archless foot and denying that anyone my weight could have collapsed arches. If you've never seen flat feet up close, that's like looking at a stab wound and saying, "I don't see how a knife could be involved here."

The takeaway lesson here? Fat pride may seem like a movement that would only improve the lives of the overweight, but it would improve all our lives substantially if we could just get doctors to join in.

The GOP Hates Homeless Veterans

And the GOP doesn't give a fuck about even one of them.

In an effort to punish Democrats for passing health care reform, GOP Senators are refusing to work- and keeping everyone else in the Senate from working, too. That includes Senators that are trying to help homeless veterans.

Without unanimous consent, committees are allowed to meet for two hours
following the opening of the Senate session -- which on Wednesday was 9:00 a.m.
The committees need consent to continue and consent again to continue after 2:00
p.m. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee,
had his hearing shut down abruptly at 11:00 Wednesday morning, in the middle of
a discussion on the effort to end veteran homelessness in the next five years.
It is estimated that more than 100,000 veterans are homeless in the United
States on any given night.

That's right, to Republicans, a hissy fit is more important than helping homeless vets. These people people aren't the Party of No, they're the party of Fuck You, That's Why.





Shameful.





For more information on how you can help homeless veterans, visit the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

Universal Healthcare = Universal Divorce

"Obama gave me healthcare and now I'm leaving your ass!"

I really have to wonder about the state of other people's marriages. I also really have to wonder if some people just don't realize how much of themselves they reveal when they predict/complain about certain things.





Take, for example, The Playful Walrus' latest screed on same sex marriage and healthcare reform:

Advocates for neutering state marriage licensing have argued that it is
necessary so someone can be added to their same-sex partner's health insurance
and for hospital visitation.

However, it is now being established by federal
legislation that 1. the federal government can dictate the smalled details of
health care, and 2. everyone will have health insurance.

So now a neutered
marriage license is not necessary to obtain those things health insurance or
hospital visitation.

Of course, there will now be less incentive for people
in general to marry or work out conflicts and stay married, or care about
keeping their jobs, for that matter.

The government continues to become a
parent/spouse/pastor, to the detriment of the family.

Now I have to wonder, is The Playful Walrus fully aware that his wife is only sticking around for the health care and is now free to run!, run like the wind!, or is this just a vague suspicion in the back of his mind?

Asplosions for You and Me

I thought I'd share the collection wingnut asplosion that is my reader this morning with you. Well, the highlights, anyway, I don't have time to link to several hundred individual asplosions.

Democracy: 1776-2010

There was no democracy before the founding of the United States and there is no democracy after health care reform.

The Big Losers of Health Care

Catholic social justice. Which includes homophobia and pedophilia. Yeah, I'm okay with them losing.

RIP USA

Extra points for unintentional hilarity with this: Another great president once asked whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure? The irony strong with this one, yes.

On Freedom

Good night. Tomorrow will be a better day. Darn right!

Sadness, Terrible Sadness

My America, in which 45,000 people die a year due to lack of health insurance, is gone. I miss the unecessary death and suffering already.

Lies. I tell them.

Oh and every five years during your retirement, you will be asked to commit suicide. Read the whole thing. It's just one big ole mess o' crazy.

Ass Raping America

Health care reform is just like forced sodomy. And he would know, apparently.

We Lost Because We Didn't Galt It Up

If I had just quit my job as a Walmart greeter, I could have stopped health care reform!

Lincoln Hated Health Care Reform

Out of context quotes from Lincoln from a history professor. That's either a major fail, or an irony win.

This means WAR!

I suggest that someone might want to review the definition of "treason", preferably before the Secret Service shows up at his house.

and finally, I'm Not Really a Racist, I Swear It, even as I imply that electing a black man to the presidency inevitably leads to "gangsta" politics from Beetle Blogger. Welcome back from your hiatus, you racist bitch.

HCR Passed: I'll Be a Bit Busy

While my blogroll is mostly liberal/atheist sites, my reader is chock full of wingnuttery. Most Mondays I have around 175-200 posts to review, this Monday, I have over 500 posts to review, and a quick look at the titles tells me all I need to know: Obamacare passed and we are all DOOOOOOOOMED!!!1!!eleventy!!!!

I don't even care what's in the bill, the wingnut asplosion is totally worth it!

The (stupidestthingever) Pain Scale

If you go to the doctor complaining of pain, you will be asked three questions:

Where is the pain?

What is the pain like: stabby, dull, fiery, electric?

On a scale of 1-10, how bad is the pain?

For a chronic pain patient, the first two questions are frustrating enough*, but that pain scale is ridiculous for anyone. On the left we have "0- no pain", on the far right we have "10- worst possible pain". What the fuck does that mean? The worst pain I have ever personally experienced, the worst pain I can imagine, or the worst pain anyone anywhere has experienced? What exactly is a 10, the pleurisy pain that had my blood pressure jumping up to over 180 or Joan of Arc's final moments?

Holy meaningless, Batman.

One problem with the pain scale is that its ambiguity encourages patients to make up their own definitions. Denelian treats the pain scale like the Richter Scale, i.e., 2 is twice as bad as 1, 3 is twice as bad as 2, etc. I treat the pain scale entirely differently. 5 is normal pain for me. At a 5, the pain is bothering me, but I can work and do housework and enjoy activities like eating and playing video games. At an 8, I can't do dishes or laundry, and I lose interest in eating**. At a 9, I'm restricting water to avoid having to get up to pee and I don't want to play with my dog. By 10, I can't even enjoy video games and I mostly just twist and fidget in pain while tears roll down my cheeks and I yell at my dog if he gets too close to me.

So a doctor dealing with both me and Denelian is getting two different answers when he hears a 5, although he may be entirely unaware of that fact.

Doctors and nurses have their own interpretations. During the incident in which pain was driving my blood pressure to dangerous heights, I told the nurse that the pain in my chest was a 10 when it was hitting. She wrote down "4". I saw this and said, "I told you 10." She replied, "It's not like you're howling in pain or anything. I'm being generous with a 4." So, if I had had any weak spots in blood vessels in my brain I could have had a stroke right in front of her, but I wasn't causing a scene, so no big deal.

I know why doctors use the pain scale. It's easy. It's a single number. A real discussion of pain would involve asking a lot of questions and really listening to the answers. It would involve empathizing with a subjective experience and suspending disbelief. It would involve taking me at my word and trusting that I know my body, my pain and my needs. It would involve understanding that no matter how many years of school you attended, you're not living in my body, and you're not going to have to cope, as well as you can, with less pain relief than you need. Listening. Properly treating pain would involve listening.

In fact, studies have shown that [m]ost doctors, within the first 18 seconds of seeing a patient, will interrupt him telling his story and also generate an idea in his mind [of] what's wrong.

That explains everything right there. Doctors are never going to ditch the pain scale if they can't bother to listen for more than 18 seconds. It would take me the better part of five minutes to list every single symptom I experience, so you're not even getting the highlights in 18 seconds. Don't even get me started on the concept of treating people (or not) with potentially dangerous drugs on the basis of 18 seconds of listening and one number, especially if you've decided that you can tell from a single glance what that number is.


Anyway, I could go on all day about everything that is wrong with health care in America, but the pain scale really freakin' bothers me.








*It would be easier for me to list where the pain isn't. Right now, neither my nose nor my ears hurt. As for the descriptives, I usually just answer "yes". Here is dull, over here is stabby, over there is electric.

**I love food. If I'm not eating, there's a problem.

All You Need Is Love*

I'm not sure who Stuart Schwartz from American Thinker is, exactly, but I fear that he may be a visitor from some other universe somewhat like ours, but different in many important ways, Fringe-style. If that's true, we're going to be at war with the residents of a dying alternate universe Earth really soon, and I'm not sure we're prepared for that.

Obama's Government Without Love Dude, the title is snarkable! I mean, as opposed to Bush's Government Loveapalooza? I'm sure the noble citizens of Iraq might take issue with that particular description of 2000-2008.

God made it official through Paul, the first century rabbi who dabbled in community organizing, that "love is more important than anything else." The Doobie Brothers (neither rabbis nor community organizers) rephrased it for the modern age: "Without love, where would you be now, without love?"

The . . . the . . . Doobie Brothers?

This question was answered by Barack Obama and Democratic Party leadership as they sat around the Blair House banquet table at the health care summit this past Thursday, determined to push and pull a protesting citizenry into a loveless future.

A loveless future filled with affordable health care, the fiends! It's like they want us all to live healthy, productive lives- Why, Mr. Obama, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?????????

Welcome to the United States of Obama. Without love, this is where we are now. Why do I not get these memos? I am a card-carrying pinkoSocialistDemocRATheist, so why am I not on the mailing list?

Gone is the love of the founders for individuals "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." It has been replaced by the derision of a political and media elite -- David Brooks of the New York Times proudly calls this the "intellectual class" -- determined to control every part of the lives of those they judge "too dumb" (Time magazine) to be allowed choice.

Yes, those of us suffering and dying from treatable illnesses simply because we can't pay for treatment are thanking our lucky stars for the choice to do so. Sure. We're thrilled.

And so choice is no longer to be an option in health and medical services. As the Blair House summit showed, Obama and congressional leaders relentlessly continue to push government control over individuals, all the while adding to their personal power and wealth through confiscatory taxes and regulation. i'm not sure how regulation can be confiscatory (See also: rules, grammar), but how is that different from the last 8 years of Republican rule? the Repugs did it with a song in their heart? what?

Without love, the average citizen is biodegradable fuel It's made of people! for the lifestyles of the elite and powerful. wow, that's um . . . interesting. this alternate earth you live on is horrifying. i can see why you'd prefer to be here, where the preceding statement is NOT true. And it is why an 86-year-old New Jersey senator gets life-saving cancer surgery to be denied under the proposed Obamacare rules for the rest of us. And once Obamacare is established, he would still get the surgery -- while a senior not in Congress will not. really? prove that. i dare you. just what do you think is going on right now, anyway? people without health care don't get life saving cancer surgery, and insurance companies do everything they can to save money (death panels, anyone?), so even people with insurance aren't getting treatments they need. right now. this minute. under the system you love so very much.

No love for the sheep. Our elite shepherds have developed a taste for rack of lamb and use our taxes to buy the mint jelly. The Democratic contribution to the Ritual Decalogue of Judeo-Christian tradition: Thou shalt cook a goat in the mother's milk. what does that even mean? i'm serious, i have no fucking idea what this means. it's . . . i dunno.

The Obamacare summit showcased rationing for those officially proclaimed less desirable, increased taxes, and vast new federal bureaucracies. Obamacare will create 400,000 new jobs "almost immediately," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crowed. rationing is going on right now. if you like the system we have in place, you like rationing. so, rather than asking you to prove the rationing proposed in health care reform, i'm just going to say STFU. oh, and 400,000 new jobs in the midst of 10%+ unemployment is a GOOD thing.

And so the nine-year-old son of the golfing partner of President Obama is cut while surfing in Hawaii and is immediately rushed to the hospital at taxpayer expense. But in Chicago, low-income children are turned away from the University of Chicago hospitals. They are forced to take public transportation to other hospitals as the result of a scheme by hospital executives to "cherry-pick wealthy patients over poor," as the the American College of Emergency Physicians put it.

This is what health care reform is supposed to fix. by opposing any kind of reform, you are saying that you want to keep this in place. jackass.

The rest is equally insane.

*And toilet paper. I'm not doing without toilet paper. And running water. Definitely need that. And shoes. Who doesn't need shoes? Food goes without saying, and I definitely find a need for air on a regular basis . . . Pragmatism: ruining popular music since, well, ever.

Not Making Things Better

mackey, whole, foods, discrimination, health care,
Okay, it's well established I'm not a fan of Bob Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods.

His latest idea to "fix" health care (from AmericaBlog) is spectacular:

Keep in mind that the guy who runs Whole Foods is a right-wing Republican nutjob. His latest brilliant idea is to give employees greater in-store discounts if they have lower blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass index, and don't smoke. The idea is interesting, but also a bit unnerving. I have low blood pressure (good low blood pressure), but it's not because of anything I've ever done. It simply is. I've also been relatively skinny most of my life, again simply because I am. Why should I get more employee benefits for things I had zero control over? And an even bigger question, what does the Americans with Disabilities Act have to say about employers who decrease employee benefits based on their physical maladies (high blood pressure and high cholesterol)?

This is insane. I have no control over having porphyria. None. It's a genetic quirk, nothing more. So, because my blood pressure randomly skews from dangerously low to ER-doc-says-holy-shit! high, I will get a lower in store discount. I have done nothing to maintain my low weight (BMI) and low cholesterol. In fact, considering the crap that I tend to eat, I should have high both.

Things like blood pressure, BMI and cholesterol are far less controllable than you might think. My mother has had high cholesterol forever, and has been eating an extremely low fat diet forever. Her body pumps out way too much cholesterol. She can't control it. One of the lawyers here at work has a fantastic BMI, and dangerously high cholesterol. He eats right, exercises daily, and has had several stents put in. Another lawyer has a terrible BMI and fantastic cholesterol and blood pressure. He drinks scotch, smokes cigars, eats fatty foods, and according to his doctor, has the vascular system of a man half his age.

I think Bob Mackey should just go for it. I mean, high blood pressure and obesity are more common in African Americans, so let's give them a lower discount than whites. Latinos are more subject to diabetes, so they'll get a lower discount, too. Women are the only ones who get ovarian and cervical cancer, so they should get a lower discount as well.

I mean, if you're going to be discriminatory, own it. Go all the fucking way.

It's So Hard for a White Man to Get Ahead

health care, racism, obama, bigotry, poverty,

George Picard (-25,000,000 points for making me associate you with Sir Patrick Stewart) at American Thinker wrote a much needed article about how hard it is for the white man to get ahead in this new America, with its racist President.

The administration and Congress have passed policies clearly based on favoritism. They have further appointed, approved, and empowered key officials who have displayed a strong desire to benefit African-Americans over the interests of all Americans.

He never really addresses why Obama might do this, other than the implication that Obama is BLACK, so he hates whitey. You know, like his mother. And the grandparents who raised him. Also.

There are two ways this agenda has been promoted: steps that have a disparate impact in favor of African-Americans, and those that are designed to specifically favor African-Americans (disparate treatment).

Disparate impacts are outcomes that benefit African-Americans because they are compose a higher proportion of a particular group. These include:

efforts to gut the workfare requirement that was the signature achievement of Bill Clinton in the area of welfare reform;

giving a blank check to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Authority to expand home "ownership" among lower-income people and income redistribution on a massive scale (via tax hikes and stimulus bills -- and by the way, stimulus views vary by race, with African-Americans far more in favor of it than whites, Hispanics, or Native Americans); and
health care "reform" (including expanding the ranks of those who qualify for Medicaid) despite all the polls showing that most Americans are happy with their own medical care and do not want the intrusion of government, the massive deficits, and the tax increases that will come with such "reform."

Because African-Americans make up a high proportion of the disadvantaged, they will disproportionally benefit. This is an agenda at work.

Don't believe me? Listen to Barack Obama when he spoke to a friendly crowd of minority journalists in 2008 about why he favored universal care:

If we have a program, for example, of universal health care, that will disproportionately affect people of color, because they're disproportionately uninsured.

That sound you hear? That's me, beating my head against my desk. According to Mr. Picard, it is racism to help the poor, because such a high percentage of the poor are minorities.

I don't even know what to say about that. Helping people get health care is racist, because the people without health care are overwhelmingly minorities? Whom else should we help? The people that don't need it? That doesn't even make sense.

Stress, stress, stress

For my one millionth "why we need universal health care and we need it right now", I give you my stressful Monday.

We though Teh Hubby was in another MS relapse. Due to damage from previous relapses, he is permanently dizzy and lightheaded and has peripheral neuropathy in his feet. A few months ago, he started feeling dizzier, more lightheaded and getting pounding headaches daily. He doesn't have health insurance and we don't have money, so he just dealt with it. I also noticed that I seemed to be having trouble hearing. He kept asking me if backup vocals, etc. were in tune and they sounded fine to me (I literally twitch when I hear something out of tune.), but he seemed to think they weren't right. Since he has perfect pitch and I don't, I assumed the problem was on my end.

Last week, he started getting wheezy and once I got my Christmas bonus, I made an appointment with the doctor for today. Turns out, Teh Hubby has massive double ear infections, inner, middle and outer. (I wasn't having trouble hearing, he was.) Apparently, he is like me in that he doesn't get pain from an ear infection, so he never suspected it. All of his symptoms are the ear infections, which could have easily been cleared up with a round of antibiotics when it started.

But we couldn't get him to a doctor when it started, so now he has $140 drops on top of an antibiotic, and we have to hope they work before his eardrums burst, which is a serious risk at this point.

This is the problem with health care as it is in the US. If you have health insurance, an ear infection is no big deal. If you don't have health insurance, an ear infection could cost you your hearing or your life. We're supposed to be the greatest country in the world and people are dying from treatable illnesses, stupid things even. It's a tragedy that this happens at all. That people support this as the best possible option is just plain evil.

Tell the Teabaggers Exactly What You Think

health care, hough,wojtowicz, teabagging, stupid,
(h/t to Hell's Senior Canadian Correspondent, Joe-ay)

Teabaggers mocked a grieving mother at a November 14 town hall meeting in Oak Lawn.

Mocked. A. Grieving. Mother.

The family, Dan and Midge Hough, of Chicago, spoke in favor of health care reform and in support of U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) at a Nov. 14 town hall meeting in Oak Lawn.

Their daughter-in-law, Jenny, and an unborn grandchild died recently due in part, they believe, to a lack of health insurance. They said Jenny was not receiving regular prenatal care and ended up in an emergency room with double pneumonia that developed into septic shock. Her baby died in the womb, and Jenny died a few weeks later, leaving behind a husband and a 2-year-old daughter.

Catherina Wojtowicz, of Chicago's Mount Greenwood community, an organizer for a Tea Party splinter group, Chicago Tea Party Patriots, falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story. In an e-mail, she called them operatives of President Barack Obama who "go from event to event and (cry) the same story."

When the Houghs spoke at the Lipinski event, some Tea Partiers ridiculed them. They moaned and rolled their eyes and interrupted. Midge Hough began to cry.

I think we should all tell Catherina exactly what we think of her behavior, though I would prefer we all keep it polite. As much as I would like to tell her what a stupid fucking . . . fucking . . . teabagger* she is, I think we should stick with something more polite. And, if Catherina has the nerve to tell you that she thought the Houghs were "operatives", I think you should introduce her to the word "research", though not "fucking bitch". You should probably keep that one to yourself.

Catherina Wojtowicz
Chicago Tea Party Patriots
(312) 662 8666
8666chicagoteapatriots@gmail.com
Chicago Tea Patriots


*I will now accept "teabagger" as a worse obscenity than the "c word".

Let's Hear It for Begging!

libertarian, health care, charity, fail

There's no zealot like a new zealot, and renaissanceguy is indeed a zealot. A Libertarian zealot. Honestly, I'll take the freaks over at Rapture Ready over Libertarians. A belief that Jesus is going to descend from the sky on a white horse shortly after Kirk Cameron converts in a public restroom is way saner than the Libertarian answer to poverty and need, which can be summed up thusly:

Beg, beg and beg some more.
Beg until you can beg no more!

Recently a commenter named Personal Failure asked:

What happens when private help isn’t available or isn’t enough? What then? My husband has MS. He needs medication, tests, doctors and treatments, but he was rescissed by his insurance because he failed to disclose a blow to the head as a child. (Does not cause MS.) He can get his MS meds free from the company, but those meds are known to cause liver damage, and he can’t get liver function tests for free, so he can’t take the meds. So there he is on the couch, too dizzy to walk the dog, let along work. Libertarianism works great- until you can’t work.

I have thought long and hard about an answer. Here is part of the answer below. More is coming, but I try to keep each post around 500 words.

I do not want to minimalize the situation that you find yourself in. It stinks, plain and simple. My heart goes out to you and your husband. I hope that he has the remitting kind of MS and that he enters remission soon. I would first like to ask a series of questions and then conclude with a comment about your last sentence.

Note 1: MS comes in 6 varieties, the most common being Relapsing/Remitting. R/R however, does not mean that you go from symptoms to total lack of symptoms. The disease may go into an inactive state, but the damage from the active state may very well remain. The dizzy? It's not going away. That's permanent now.

Have you sought a legal remedy against the insurance company? It sounds like they have violated their contract. Libertarians are against anyone’s doing that.

ZOMQF! That's hi-fuckin-larious. People are recissed every day in this country, and people die because of it. Recission is immoral and unethical, but it's not illegal.

Have you asked your friends and family for help? Perhaps each of your close friends and family members would be willing to pay for one liver test per year.

Basic social understanding fail. On two levels, actually. (1) I'm poor. Generally, if you're poor, all your friends are poor. I have no idea where rich people hang out, but it's not where I do. (2) If you want to find out exactly how many friends you have, get sick and stay sick. You probably have 1 or 2 friends. Oh, and begging? As if MS weren't bad enough, now we've got to beg?

Have you asked a church or other religious body for help? In my hometown there is a network of churches known as the Community Ministries that provides all sorts of resources to people in need. Maybe there is something like it where you live.

I'm an atheist, but even so, my local churches are totally overwhelmed with the need for food and shelter. There is no church medical charity in my area. For those counting, this is beg #2.

Have you held fundraisers or, better yet, asked a close friend or family member to hold fundraisers on your husband’s behalf? That is often done for people with chronic illnesses.
Is your husband a member of a support group? Perhaps they know of a foundation or private charity that could help him out.

And beg #3. Oooh, I have an idea. Let's take my desperately ill husband and parade him around for strangers to point at and feel sorry for. Not that every gas station in town isn't already filled with little donation jars for this person's house fire or that person's leukemia.

Has your husband thought about ways that he might still be able to make money from home, perhaps part-time? If that is not possible, please forgive my even asking the question. Last year I was struck with a debilitating condition that I thought would make it impossible for me to work anymore at my job. I told my wife that I might have to stay home from school and try to write a book or offer private music lessons or private tutoring to struggling students. Fortunately, my condition is under control–at least at the moment.

Oh, you know just how I feel. You almost had to maybe have a conversation about working from home. Hey, asshat, you never even tried to work from home, so you have no idea if that's possible or not, and, Teh Hubby did work from home. Before he got too sick to work.

In the meantime, I have no problem with you and your husband availing yourself of any government programs for which you qualify. You helped pay for them, after all. Although I would like to see most public welfare programs reduced or abolished, you might as well benefit from the ones that are operating now.

Oh, it's so nice of you to let us try to get disability/medicaid in another 3 months. You know, before you try to get rid of it. That's so sweet.

It is not fair to discuss whether or not Libertarianism would work in light of or current situation. The United States of America is not currently operating under anything like a Libertarian-type government. I believe that both you and your husband would be better able to withstand the current crisis if Libertarian principles were enacted.

Orly? You haven't given me one example of a Libertarian principle that would help in this situation, probably because their aren't any, you whingey spleenweasel.