It's all quiet on the western front around here on this cold and snowy January evening. Duncan is downstairs, playing a video game I am sure, the girls are out on various social pursuits with their friends, and Dan is on his way home from a game. It's just me and little old Piper hanging out on the bed together and pondering the ways of the world.
And there is much to ponder, to be sure. I have given up Facebook for a bit, after feeling increasingly and overwhelmingly bombarded by other people's lives and opinions. I feel the need to step back and just think my own thoughts about things for a while. I'm tired of feeling like I need to share my latest epiphany with the world, or impress my neighbors with my latest achievement/acquirement/ accolade. Social media can definitely be a state of disease. It is absolutely possible to know too much about people you barely know.
And on the state of health care/ insurance: I am almost tempted to get back on Facebook and re-read something I read on there about how terrible it is that some people expect us to actually pay for our own health care. It said something about how if ACA goes away, we will be stuck paying for our own doctor visits, hospital care, chemotherapy, etc. Okay, well, who else should pay your bills? Just because you pay an insurance premium doesn't mean that everything from there on out is free. Do people realize that insurance companies are a FOR PROFIT business? Do they realize that for the most part, insurance companies and "big pharma" are publicly traded, which means the chances are very good that somewhere in their IRAs or 401K's they are probably invested in those very same insurance and drug companies that we all claim are ripping everyone off? Health care costs money. It is a sad truth. Somebody somewhere is going to have to pay for it. It is not free, no matter how you stack it. If everybody is paying their insurance companies less money than the insurance companies are forking over, eventually, the insurance company will go bankrupt. I don't have any answers. I don't know how to solve the problem. But I sure am tired of the half-assed arguments I hear all the time from people who don't even understand how gigantic the problem is. And those arguments come from both sides of the political fence. I am also tired of dummies coming into the pharmacy and complaining about the cost of their drugs, and complaining that the insurance company wants a say in what drugs the doctor prescribes and how often they get to take them. I want to scream at them and tell them they are welcome to pay for their own damn drugs. If someone else is going to pay your bills for you, then they sure as heck have the right to ask questions about what kind of tab you are ringing up. Especially when the guy helping you ring up the tab is a doctor who has no freaking idea what anything costs, and is being wooed and wined by drug reps left and right. Most of the doctors- no, ALL of the doctors I work with are fantastic people who are too darned busy saving and improving lives to keep track of the most economical drugs to treat their patients with. So if an insurance company balks at paying $400.00 for the fancy new name brand the doctor prescribed when there is a $15 drug that works every bit as well, can you blame them for wanting to know what in tarnation that doctor is doing?
On the MoTab: go sing your hearts out at the presidential inauguration, little saints. Unless you don't want to, and then, just don't. You apparently do not get thrown out of the choir if you don't go sing. But please, please do NOT resign from the choir over the fact that they agreed to sing at the president's party and then write a big long preachy and illogical letter about why you are compelled to resign, and go be on all the news shows spouting your crap. Do or do not. Just please don't whine about it. I don't like Donald Trump, and I wish he was not the president. But he has not yet created any fascist or racist or sexist or tyrannical laws. When he does, we will all rise up against him, I am sure. But until then, give the man a break. And give everybody else a break. All the bellyaching is getting really old. Hillary Clinton is every bit as rotten as Trump, and you know it.
Call me heartless, but I don't really care that much that Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds died one day apart. It is mildly and morbidly entertaining, but really, what has changed for most of us? You can still watch all of their movies, which is really the only thing you loved about them anyway. It is endlessly more fascinating to me to know that when they exhumed Medgar Evers 28 years after his death, his body was still in pristine condition. It's true, look it up. There are pictures.
And for the love of Pete, please stop trying to sell me lipstick. I am not paying $25.00 for a tube of lipstick. It will not change my life. I understand that it is wonderful lipstick, and it has changed your life, but that is not the kind of life I lead. I don't wear lipstick, I don't believe in essential oils, I don't need any more kitchen equipment and I do not want to be in your downline. Go away now. The End.
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