Why Health Care Costs So Much

Pretty funny topic, right? I just received the bill for my hip replacement (for about $50k, by the way). Since I have a "Health Care Account" to pay for some of the bill, I called the hospital's accounting office to ask them to flag my account so that I would know when the account had paid out and I would know what my share of that expense would be.

"We don't have anyway to flag an account for notification. We service at least 100 accounts in this office."

"I didn't mean you, personally. I assumed you had a computer system that you could access and that system might have a way to note when money had been credited to an account." (Yep, I was being sarcastic.)

"No, we don't have anything like that." (Yep, he was being too dumb to recognized sarcasm.)

Oh boy. It's hard to imagine that long bill was hand typed, but I guess it's possible. There were a lot of people typing shit into computers while I was in the hospital, but maybe all that stuff just ended up on a piece of paper for the accounting department to copy into their ledgers. Then, the accountants handed off their papers to the customer service characters and they will toss paper back and forth until someone realizes the bill is paid (or not).

Heard this Before?

When Rick Perry endorsed Newt Gingrich, he had this overwhelming recommendation for Newt, "Newt is not perfect, but who among us is?” I wonder how many times that has been said before?For a character who fashioned himself as the representative for traditional family values, Perry has gone off the deep end with Newt. The only family value tradition Newt has is that he trades in his wife for a new model every 4-5 years. The boy is Penthouse Magazine's dream President.

Perry justified this ethical flip-flop by saying, "I believe in the power of redemption.” Really? Newt Gingrich is born again? Somebody really believes that? I can't decide if I want to sell Perry the Brooklyn Bridge or my own real estate for 500% of current value.

Short Memories, Tiny Minds

The poofs at Faux News are upset that the Muppets are waging class war on the 1% and the poor oil billionaires. Obviously, they've missed the last couple hundred years of American life and literature. The basic theme of practically every story in our history is about the battle between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. If you can find a western, even a Ronald Reagan or John Wayne western, that isn't about some powerful rancher, mine owner, crooked sheriff or marshal, or some other rich gangster who has taken over the town, corrupted the characters who usually work as enforcers, cops, or gangbangers for the interests of the ruling powers, and bought the town with money and guns. It has to be the oldest story in the US.

Face it, girls. It isn't a story unless it's about the rich and powerful against the rest of us. Call it "class warfare" or call it reality. Either way, it's an American story. If we aren't fighting our side of the battle, it's just class slaughter.