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25584. Ms. No - 8/23/2009 10:51:51 PM Insurance is extortion. You pay because you're afraid that if you don't, you'll end up needing that protection and have no way to obtain it.
You pay in case you have a catastrophe. The problem is that if you don't have a catastrophe you've paid tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your life for care you didn't need.
25585. wabbit - 8/23/2009 11:48:45 PM Insurance is legalized gambling and the only people who win are the heads of the insurance companies and lobbyists.
R&D is tax deductible for drug companies. Then they go whining about how they need to charge an arm and a leg for their drug to make up for the R&D costs that have already been picked up by the taxpayers. Then they open manufacturing plants in Puerto Rico where they get favorable tax status and pay nothing on their profits. Then they sell the drug at cost everywhere but the US, which helps drive up our insurance rates. Then they come up with a new use for their expensive drug, which gets them a patent extension. And one of those drugs is Enbrel, which was originally developed for RA, then used for psoriasis, then Juvenile RA, then ankylosing spondylitis...and eventually it will be granted a patent extension for every auto-immune condition known to man.
But god forbid we have "SOCIALIZED" medicine, like they have in Congress.
Maybe this can be continued in the Health thread. 25586. Dubai Vol - 8/24/2009 2:11:51 AM My uncle, a recently retired doctor (anesthesiology,) told me tonight that his office billed ~40% of its work to the government already, between Medicare and other programs.
So we are already almost halfway to socialised medicine now. 25587. arkymalarky - 8/24/2009 2:53:43 AM I don't see any good argument for keeping insurance companies. Means test everything and force all parts of the med profession to compete directly rather than thru insurance companies.
Reposting this in Health 25588. judithathome - 8/24/2009 4:45:01 PM Just went to the doc friday and got some pills for just that; after 30 years of doing without, it's a big step for me.
Depending on the meds you get, you will see a vast improvement after starting it.
I resisted sleeping pills for months after my son passed away and finally, the effects of sleep deprivation got so glaring, I decided to take the doc's advice and started taking Ambien. It's been like a miracle for me.
25589. Dubai Vol - 8/24/2009 5:21:21 PM A lot of it was giving up on the idea that I was some kind of pussy because I felt better with meds. Nobody thinks you're a pussy for taking insulin if you're diabetic.
Thanks for that. I've seen the diabetes analogy before, and that's a good point. My real resistance has always been a fear of losing my "self" to the meds-having them change my personality. A chemical lobotomy if you will. I've gone now to the dose the doc recommended, and still feel normal, so that's a huge relief.
My objection to the anti-depressants is two-fold: if I start on two meds and feel better, how do I know which is responsible? It's like my experience engineering race cars. You change one variable at a time. If you change two things and go faster, which change did it?
My other objection is that I don't know that I really need anti-depressants. I may get there, but I want to try just the lithium alone first. I am lucky to have an uncle who has been a dear friend for 40 years (ever since he married my aunt) let me stay with them while I get sorted out.
Thanks all for the kind words. I appreciate the support more than you know.
25596. wabbit - 8/25/2009 12:19:17 AM Dubai and iiibbb, I've moved the car conversation to Sports so it will be archived. 25597. Ms. No - 8/25/2009 12:37:41 AM Dubai,
I agree with you on the two meds thing. I'm not a doctor, though, so what makes perfect common sense to me may not be medically sound. I think things have gotten a lot more refined than they used to be where it was just "keep throwing meds at the patient until it seems like something works."
Please feel free to ask me anything. If you come across something you'd rather not post in open forum, you're welcome to email me if you'd prefer. Seriously, I've had some rough experiences and some really good help and if I can help somebody else out with this crap, I'm happy to do it. 25598. wabbit - 8/25/2009 1:14:34 AM I'm not going to MOVE posts from here to the Health thread, but in the interest of having these later, I've copied most of the med discussion over. If nobody minds too much, it will save me time later for everyone to carry on there. Thanks! 25599. Ms. No - 8/25/2009 3:08:45 AM eep! Sorry, wabbit. ;-> 25600. Dubai Vol - 8/25/2009 7:50:21 AM No worries, mate, good call, and thanks, Ms. No, for the offer. I really don't mind airing my laundry right out in front of dog and everybody, as I feel it's part of the charm of an open forum: others can benefit and learn from our experiences.
Also, I use the same screen name all over the intertubes. It's not a very clever name, just picked it for the first board I ever joined, a discussion of UT football where everyone had a variation of VOL in their names: VOLtaire, ReVOLver, etc. (Tennessee being the Volunteer state)
Any road, I've been Dubai Vol everywhere ever since. Having the same name is more than just a convenience: Dubai Vol is my name just as much as my real name, and just as I would not sully my good name IRL, I am less inclined to be casually offensive as Dubai Vol. I'm deliberately offensive often enough, but that's just how I roll. 25601. Ms. No - 8/25/2009 8:07:55 AM Ha! You said UT and my home bias immediately assumed Texas --- as if it's the only UT in the country.
This is the only place where I post as Ms. No --- and the only place I've ever posted under my real name --- well, the Fray is where it started. I didn't change my name here until a year or so in. 25602. Ms. No - 8/25/2009 8:08:22 AM toys? 25603. Ms. No - 8/25/2009 8:08:45 AM how 'bout now? 25604. Dubai Vol - 8/25/2009 9:09:50 AM Augh! Sorry. Preview is my friend, preview is my friend....
My aunt is out of town at an artists' workshop, so my uncle and cousin and I are baching it. Nice to have a kitchen and people to cook for again. Still getting used to the oven, but got a decent pizza crust out of it at last. Also nice to be saving my uncle some money, as he doesn't cook at all and would be out every night otherwise. 25605. iiibbb - 8/25/2009 1:34:56 PM I have fond memories of Knoxville. 25606. iiibbb - 8/25/2009 2:25:26 PM What a strange morning.
My wife is starting to feel guilty about "making" me leave my job since I haven't gotten one yet. Although I have had a few panic attacks about it, now's not the time to panic about it; still, she feels guilty. On one hand I'm glad that she's feeling this, on the other I wish she'd given me a little of this recognition and understanding while we were in MS.
However, at the end of the day MS was not sustainable so I don't really have regrets leaving. I told her that if things in MS didn't work out that I would leave with a happy heart. I'm not sure how much of it she believed then, and maybe the way I'm taking the current situation makes her think she should have tried harder there.
When I'm feeling really bad about the present there is a small, secret kernel that thinks she could have tried harder in MS. I sometimes feel that she forced some decisions that would have better been deferred if we though MS would only last 18 months (which we did have a certain inkling of that).
I really hate having that thought because I think it takes away from what I'm trying to do for her career. At the end of the day MS was unworkable. She had a job there, but she didn't.
What bugs me now is that she's been working with her current boss for the past 3 years, but now that they're in the same place there seems to be some friction developing. Most of it is due to the fact that her boss, a very nice person, is a bit of a micro-manager and is going through a very serious life problem right now and is not able to devote the kind of attention to the work as she ought to, but still wants to micro manage. This kind-of drives my wife a little nuts. Hopefully she's not having buyer's remorse. She has to be in this job for 12 months or else we have to pay the moving money back. We're not going to do that.
Where's that leave me?
Nowhere new. I need to find a job. It needs to be good enough to put on a CV. I think I will find one, but it's taking some time. I just wish it would happen sooner rather than later.
She won't let me take a part time job... she says the guilt would be so great she couldn't look me in the eye. I hate that she feels the pressure that way. It seems to me the individuals in her clan make a lot of decisions out of guilt or defiance. I'd like to think being with me has diminished that a little bit, but that's 40 years of programming vs. 3 years of marriage.
The one personal resolution I think I will make because of this experience... I had gotten kind-of comfortable in my jobs and did my share of goofing off because so much of it came natural. I think this is going to snap me back into focus. If I've got some on-job downtime from now on, I'm going to use it to expand my skillset instead of shooting the shit with someone down the hall. 25607. iiibbb - 8/25/2009 4:24:43 PM I can't talk to anyone in real life about this stuff... 25608. alistairconnor - 8/25/2009 4:55:56 PM It seems to me the individuals in her clan make a lot of decisions out of guilt or defiance.
I've been dealing with similar cultural characteristics... in my girlfriend's case, I think of it as pride (though the French term, "orgueil", is stronger). It takes some adjusting to... it's impossible to fight, in my experience. 25609. iiibbb - 8/25/2009 4:56:12 PM Another thought... in all of this... the only time she really hurt my feelings is when she told me I was too "risk adverse" when I was considering staying in that job until we sold the house.
I'm leaving my job for her and I'm "risk adverse".
As it turns out I'm happy I didn't stay because the house turned out to be so hard to sell this year... and we wouldn't have a baby on the way...
... but that stung.
Taking the job in MS in the first place was a big risk.
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