I have a good friend of mine –
nice fella, well meaning…and conservative.
Like many conservative-minded folks, he gets a lot of his news from
conservatively-oriented media. No crime
in that – it’s a free country.
Most of us take what we hear on TV and Talk Radio as the God-Honest
truth. We never stop to check the facts.
Or, more importantly, the completeness of the facts we are presented with..
We're all guilty of this. We've been trained to accept whatever we hear from an authoritative source as being the 'Whole Truth'.
The funny thing about facts is
that, if you pick and choose them carefully, they can tell whatever story you
want them to tell. Our favorite media celebrities use this to create sensationalist news stories to keep their ratings up. News, for the most part, is boring. Greed, corruption, blood and gore are what gets us to tune in.
So it cam as no surprise when, during a
recent conversation, my friend recanted some alarming facts about Obamacare that he heard on the radio.
“So you think that Obamacare is
going to be a bargain?” He blurted, “ I just heard that a plan for a family of
five will cost over $20,000 in 2015!”
He was right to be shocked - that's a ridiculous chunk of income right there. Plus, it doesn't include the costs of deductibles, copays, and non-covered services. Under Obamacare, we're going to be paying an extraordinary amount of money for our health care.
The $20,000 figure is not made up - it's actually a figure presented by the IRS.
But, as shocking of a figure as it is, it just doesn't accurately
reflect reality.
My buddy, like most of you, gets
his health insurance through his employer. Like co-pays, this has insulated him from what things actually cost in the world of healthcare. Like most of us, he was blissfully unaware of what health
insurance actually costs in this country. So I filled
him in.
My current health insurance bill
(for my wife and myself - a family of
two) runs me a healthy $28,000.00 a year.
Plus, my carrier raised my premiums 30-40% a year over the last few
years.
So if they raise me once more at this rate (before Obama plan to limit health insurance rate increases kicks in), I
would be paying (for two people-not five) at least $37,000 a year in 2015.
So if Obama wants to sell me
health insurance for $20,000 in 2015, all I can say is “Where do I sign up?”.
Because, unlike the current
system, Obamacare is something that the average American might actually be able
to afford.
And, like Paul Harvey used to
say, that’s the rest of the story.
Yes, I know that this isn't what
the Obamacare bashers on your favorite conservative talk show wanted you to hear.
Sorry about that.
Reality Bites.
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Remember the days of playground fights? When someone supposedly said something about someone else, sides are picked, and a rumble of sorts erupts with a lot of pushing and shoving. Nothing too serious – I’m talking about 3rd graders here, long before post-pubescent muscles increased the chance of anyone actually getting hurt.
I’ll admit that I was a bit of a chicken back then – elementary school politics never truly concerned me, at least not enough to risk bodily harm. However, not lending a helping hand was socially disastrous, as no one wanted to be labeled a chicken. So, I developed a simple strategy – when the fight broke out, pick on the little guy. This was the easiest way to save face and come out unscathed.
Today, I look back at that strategy, and I feel a bit embarrassed. Picking on the little guy - what a despicable and cowardly thing to do. Oh well, I was only 8 – what did I know.
What I didn’t realize back then was that this is a very sound and popular business strategy, especially if you are in the health insurance business.
I was pleased when President Obama was critical of Anthem Blue Cross when they recently posted record profits, handed out huge bonuses, and simultaneously raised rates for small and individual plan subscribers by as much as 39%. This new pricing will effect as many as 1 million of their subscribers. I wonder gow many of them will end up losing their health insurance because of this rate change.
It would be another matter entirely if Anthem Blue Cross had to raise rates in order to stay solvent, and did so across the board. This wasn’t the case. I am also sure that many Anthem Blue Cross individual policyholders will threaten to leave them because of this rate change. Which brings to mind one of my favorite Abbott and Costello routines:
Costello: "I'd rather marry a homely girl than a pretty girl anyway,"
Abbott: "Why?"
Costello: "Well, if you marry a pretty girl, she is liable to run away."
Abbott: “Isn't a homely girl liable to run away too?"
Costello: "Yeah, but who cares?"
Yes, I know, not very politically correct, but trust me, it was very funny in the days before Gloria Steinem.
The point is, Anthem Blue Cross doesn’t care if an individual subscriber leaves. Besides, even if they do leave, chances are they won’t be able to get affordable coverage elsewhere, especially if they have a pre-existing condition.
All that Anthem Blue Cross (or any other health insurance carrier for that matter) cares about is losing the large groups, of 50,000 or more subscribers. A loss like that would severely affect their bottom line. “So you want to take your overpriced individual plan elsewhere? Don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you on the way out.”
But if you were the administrator of a large group, well, that’s a different story. They’ll wine you and dine you, and cut your rates to the bone to keep your business. We’ll just make up the difference by overcharging the little guy. There is no actuarial reason for doing this – you don’t have higher medical expenses if you work for yourself as opposed to working for GE. They charge the little guy a higher rate for a very simple reason – they can.
I know that this is just business, but it doesn’t help the policyholder whose health insurance now costs more then his mortgage.
Fortunately, there are 2 simple solutions to this problem, one that has the government tell the carriers what they can’t do, and one that tells subscribers what they can do.
The first solution is having the federal government pass a law that all health insurance carriers must have the same rates for all subscribers across the board – no loopholes allowed. This involves ‘big government’, and I can see the tongues wagging about this on Fox News for months on end. Besides, I don’t think they would ever get this through Congress. So this is not the best solution.
The second solution is to allow individuals to form groups so that they can purchase their insurance in bulk like the other big groups. New Jersey has a small business group called NJBIA that does just this for auto insurance, and the rate differences are outstanding. The problem is, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION, there is a federal law that prohibits groups doing this for health insurance! I wonder who passed that law? I also wonder what corporations contributed heavily to their campaign funds? Want to take a guess?
As an adjunct to either plan, the federal government should allow people to purchase health insurance from any health insurance carrier they want. So, if I want to purchase a policy from Horizon Blue Cross in NJ or Anthem Blue Cross in California, I can choose the carrier that has the best rates and coverage. The problem now is, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION AGAIN, there is a federal law that prohibits you doing this for health insurance.
It seems to me that the second plan would be easy to pass Congress and implement, especially if there was a grass roots effort to make people aware of how unjust the existing laws are. Oh, to be sure, the Spin Doctors will be hard at work coming up with reasons why we shouldn’t allow these two laws to be changed, but please don’t believe a word they tell you. This plan promotes business and competition, and eliminates a de facto monopoly that many carriers now enjoy on our health insurance dollar. Monopolies are illegal, right?
When little guys gang up, they become a formidable foe. The health insurance carriers would learn that, sometimes when you pick on the little guy, it turns out that his name is Lee…first name Bruce. By making these simple changes, the government can make drastic inroads to making health insurance affordable for everyone.
After having time to digest the whole Fast Buck Freddie incident, I have one burning question left unanswered . Who was Freddie trying to scam?
Yeah, I know he was trying to scam me, but, who did he think I was? Did he actually think that I was capable of falling for his brand of Bull? Does he really think that there are people who lack the modicum of intelligence needed to see through his scam? Do such people actually exist outside of an institution?
I cannot, for the life of me, imagine that there are people alive on this planet who have the minimal skills needed to type an email or post an advertisement who are, nonetheless, stupid enough to fall for Freddie’s scheme. And yet, I know that, since he and his countrymen are actively pursuing these rip off schemes, that there MUST be some people out there who actually fall for this nonsense and lose their hard-earned money. Otherwise, obviously, Freddie would not be pursuing his little enterprise.
I had an acquaintance, Tony, in college. Tony envisioned himself as a young Hugh Heffner, living the Playboy lifestyle. No matter what the weather, Tony would walk around, inside and outside the dorm, wearing his blue bathrobe. Upon meeting a new young lady, Tony would immediately and unabashedly proposition her in the most graphic terms imaginable.
Tony got his face slapped a lot.
Tony also had a very active sex life.
As he explained it, it was strictly a numbers game. He knew that (by his count) one out of 80 young ladies was going to say yes, and that one yes was worth 79 face slaps.
Yes, Tony was a creep, but he was a happy creep.
I guess that Freddie is, in his own way, a lot like Tony. And Craig’s List (and the Internet) are his blue bathrobe.
STILL, I cannot, for the life of me, picture who Freddie’s target victim is. Until I remembered Mrs. Kerrigan.
Mrs. Kerrigan was my High Scholl Algebra teacher. She taught me how to figure out when certain trains would reach Chicago, as well as lots of other useless things. She also taught me Venn diagrams.
Since my High School days, I have never, ever, found the need to create a Venn diagram – until now.
So here, for the world to see, is my first real-world Venn Diagram:
Wow, I can actually envision who Freddie’s target victims are!
...same old story, same old act One step up and two steps back
Bruce Springsteen, "One Step Up"
Ah, the Boss – unofficial poet laureate of my generation.
Bruce certainly knows a lot about life’s ups and downs. This is in no doubt due to his experiences living in the great Garden State.
Witness, if you will, the latest debacle surrounding Medical Marijuana in New Jersey.
The prior governor, John Corzine, was certainly no Cracker Jack prize. His free-spending attitudes nearly bankrupted the state. But, giving proper respect where it’s due, Corzine did do at least one thing right: Shortly before leaving office, he made New Jersey the 14th State to approve the use of Medical Marijuana.
Now the new governor, Chris Christie, is doing a lot of good things to help the state get back on its’ feet financially.
Many are talking about him being a front runner for being the Republican presidential candidate in the next election. However, he is doing one thing very wrong here – he is doing whatever he can to sabotage legal Medical Marijuana in the state.
OK, I get it – Medical Marijuana wasn’t his idea – it was dumped upon him by his predecessor as a parting shot. But, Mr. Governor, that’s not any reason to try to sabotage a good idea.
At first, Governor Christie did whatever he could to drag the state’s collective feet on Medical Marijuana. He claimed that a production system had to be established. A distribution systems had to be in place. The entire matter required a great deal of study and evaluation. But, to anyone with half a brain, it was easy to see that this was just stalling tactics on the Governor’s part.
Hey, General Eisenhower didn’t ‘study’ and ‘evaluate’ this much before invading Europe in 1944. Besides, if he ever bothered to tour any college dormitory in the state, he would have seen that many production and distribution systems are already in place….
Finally, after a year of delay, the Governor is now talking about ‘compromises’ in order to get Medical Marijuana off the ground in NJ. Chief among these ‘compromises’ is his declaration that Medical Marijuana can only be prescribed as a ‘last resort’ medication when all other medications have failed. In other words, if you are lying on your death bed, suffering through the final stages of terminal cancer, maxed out on morphine, Christie will give you a reluctant green light to light up.
Give me a fricken break.
Another compromise will limit the potency of Medical Marijuana. Yet another great idea. Patients who are dealing with extreme health issues will be forced into inhaling greater quantities of smoke in order to receive the needed dose. After all, conventional wisdom in the 1940’s was that smoking was good for you – none of this new-fangled anti-smoking rhetoric from Trenton, thank goodness.
Maybe they should pass a law taking that pesky surgeon general’s warning of the side of the cigarette pack – that stupid warning makes it so much harder for teenagers to look cool these days.
No other prescription drug is limited by such provisos, including popular pain killers like Morphine, Codeine, Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, Methadone, Fentanyl and Meperidine.
These drugs are all opiates, closely related to heroin. And they all carry the terrible potential side effects of addiction, overdose and death. (Of all the potential bad side effects of modern pharmaceuticals, death, for me, is one of the biggies). But the good Governor obviously doesn’t have a problem with these popular medications, even though they carry with them the very real risks? No siree – pop ‘em if you got ‘em – it’s OK with Governor Christie!
After reading about the latest developments with Medical Marijuana in NJ, I had to stop and check a calendar, and yup, it turns out that it actually IS the year 2010. So why are we still treating Medical Marijuana like the good people of Salem Massachusetts treated their single womenfolk back in the 1600’s? The governor doesn’t appear to be stupid or naive – so why the witch hunt on Medical Marijuana?
Perhaps the governor is concerned that, if Medical Marijuana was given the acceptance that it deserves, millions of dollars of the NJ economy would flow out of the state and across the river into Philadelphia. Philadelphia is, after all, the home of the Tastycake factory.
Come to think of it, the Governor is a known Twinkie aficionado – perhaps he is fearful of a shortage of his favorite sweet snack?
Applying Ockham’s Razor, it’s most likely some other influence that is affecting his decision making regarding Medical Marijuana – but what, pray tell, can it be?
Let’s take a moment to ponder this query – and whilst we ponder, here is an interesting, totally unrelated, factoid.
Did you know that 10 out of the top 12 pharmaceutical companies in the world have ties to New Jersey? Here’s a list:
1 - Johnson & Johnson - 5 NJ Locations including US and World Headquarters
2 - Pfizer - 7 NJ Locations
3 – Roche - 2 NJ Locations
4 – GlaxoSmithKline - 2 NJ Locations
5 - Novartis - 3 NJ Locations including US Headquarters
6 - Sanofi-Aventis - 2 NJ locations, including their US Headquarters
7 - AstraZeneca - No NJ connections (Boo! Hiss!)
8 - Abbott Laboratories – 2 NJ Locations
9 - Merck & Co. - 4 NJ Locations including Global Headquarters
10 - Bayer HealthCare - 2 NJ locations
11 – Eli Lilly – No NJ locations
12 - Bristol-Myers 2 NJ locations including Corporate HQ
Those ten top compsnies with ties to NJ had combined revenues in 2009 of around 389 billion dollars.
That’s not a typo – that’s Billion with a ‘B’
Isn’t that interesting?
OK, enough pondering – let’s get back to our main topic.
Rats. Ponder as I may, I still can’t figure out why so many of our elected leaders are so against Medical Marijuana.
I guess we’ll never know why our politicians are so freaked out by an ugly little weed that has proven medical benefits with very few harmful side effects. Mind you, I am not talking about making it available to everyone - or decriminalizing it - that's someone else's bailiwick - I refer only to it's medicinal use. Also, Medical Marijuana is not some illicit substance that outlaw bikers are cooking up in an abandoned trailer out in the woods – it’s a silly little plant that anyone could grow in their backyard. And that, my friends, is the problem.
Big Pharm doesn’t want the competition. In fact, none of the formulations that they produce can compete with Medical Marijuana when it comes to the ratio of benefits/harmful side effects. In addition, no one needs Big Pharm to produce Medical Marijuana – almost anyone could produce their own backyard. Big Pharm hates competition. They spend billions on lobbyists and spin doctors to help ensure that no one rains on their 400 billion dollar cash parade. In the meanwhile, millions of Americans are suffering needlessly because they are being denied medicinal use of this ugly little weed – and it’s just not fair. In fact, from my standpoint, it’s downright criminal.
So what are we going to do?
Well, regular readers of my blog should know that I have already published the solution last Spring. If anyone had the foresight to follow my lead, the debate over Medical Marijuana would already be moot point. In case you missed it, here’s a link to my brilliant idea:
Barring this solution, I would ask a special favor of all our lawmakers who continue to roadblock Medical Marijuana– something we all should demand them to do before they consider any further legislation against Medical Marijuana. It wouldn’t take them very much time, but I’ll warn them up front, it may be a very difficult for them to do.
In fact, it may be the most difficult thing that they will ever have to do.
First, I would ask them to visit a few people in their constituency. People wasting away in cancer hospices. Other people who are in the midst of battling cancer, and who are devastated by the horrible side effects of chemotherapy. Other courageous souls who are trying to live with Multiple sclerosis. Or with the insidious creeping blindness of Glaucoma. Or living with chronic pain. Or who are dealing with a host of other debilitating diseases and conditions. People whose suffering might just be eased, if only by a little bit, by a silly, ugly little green plant.
Then, after visiting these people – people who they’ve sworn a sacred oath to represent – after seeing and experiencing the hell that is their daily lives – I would ask them to go back to their homes, walk into their bathrooms, and take a long good hard look at themselves in the bathroom mirror.
That’s all I would ask of them.
I bet they can’t do it.
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Because of your obsession with organized crime, most Americans are infinitely familiar with the world of organized crime – even those who live in North Dakota.
Over the years, ‘Mafia’ movies are perennial favorites with the American moviegoer. Such classic films like the Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America, Casino, and my all time favorite, My Blue Heaven have given us a an immersion into the life of American Mafioso.
Not to be outdone, the small screen has contributed to our national obsession with such classic series such as ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire’. The History, Discovery, and Biography channels also contribute their fair share of Mafia inspired reality stories.
Fortunately for me, being raised in Northern New Jersey, I was never subjected to the real thing . RIP, Tony Pro.
Most of us are familiar with the modus operendi of the American mob. Gambling, Robbery, extortion, and prostitution were all major revenue streams for the 20th century mobster. However prevalent these activities were, however, the classic mob fundraiser has always been The ‘Protection’ racket.
The way ‘protection’ works is simple - If you don’t want your small business to suffer from broken windows or worse, you would pay your local mafia soldier a weekly stipend to ‘protect’ your business interests. An ‘unprotected’ business also suffered because legitimate customers were fearful to patronize the establishment, as they might be subject to some form of retribution themselves for doing so.
Thankfully, law enforcement has worked tirelessly over the past century to help eradicate this type of “strong arm’ behavior.
Today, the world of ‘Protection’ schemes is mostly limited to the silver screen…and your doctors’s office.
Yes, health insurance companies utilize many of the same threats that mustached Pete’s used to employ in their protection schemes. Sure, they don’t send a few goons to an office and have them crack a few heads (that could potentially result in some unwanted and expensive neurosurgical claims to process – and they certainly don’t want that) but they do employ many of he same fear tactics in order to get providers to join their networks (and accept lower fees).
Thirty years ago, when manages care plans were first being marketed, physicians were urged to join the networks in spite of the lowered compensation that they offered. “Soon everyone will have this type of insurance” they were told. “If you don’t join our plan, ou soon won’t have any patients”. Many physicians fell for this line, and soon afterwards the hold outs started following them as they grew fearful of being left out.
Like the Mafia itself, these physicians soon discovered that, once joined, these networks were almost impossible to get out of. Leaving a plan would mean losing a significant chunk of their patient base all at once as these patients would switch to an in network office in order to avoid the high out of pocket expense of “out-of-network” benefits. Like a small businessman beholden to a Godfather, these in network offices were forced at accept an ever-growing list of demands and compromises from these carriers lest they get dropped from a plan.
This scenario was especially true of primary care physicians. Sub-specialists could normally survive leaving a network (or never joining one in the first place) especially if they were the “only show in town”.
I worked extensively with one such sub-specialist who never joined any insurance networks. He was constantly barraged by different insurance plans, all cajoling him to join their networks. When he refused, they would always act incredulous at his audacity. As time went by, these same companies would make his business more and more challenging as they would underpay or even out rightly deny claims for out of network benefits. It soon became a full time job to collect on these out of network claims. We would have to make numerous phone calls and write threatening letters to the carrier. At one point Horizon Blue Cross decreed that they would no longer accept letters of phone inquiries regarding claims from out of network physicians. If the patient was deceased or incapacitated (as was often the case with his office) there was nothing that you could do with the carrier to collect on a claim. Often we would enlist the aid of the state medical society and the Department of Insurance to intercede on our behalf. Often we would be forced to hire a well known law firm to handle our collections from these carriers. It would often take years to collect on a simple claim.
While they didn’t employ goons carrying baseball bats or ice picks, these were nonetheless strong arm tactics used by these companies to threaten the doctor and to get him to ‘play ball’.
I think I know why you can’t buy Blue Cross insurance from an out of state plan – doing so would violate the RICO Act.
If an Italian-American businessman tried to use these same tactics with his customers, he would end up on trial racketeering charges. Yet, we allow our health insurance companies to use these fear and intimidation tactics without any retribution.
Tony Soprano types used to claim that they were in the ‘waste management’ business. Today, it wouldn’t surprise me if they say that they are in ‘health insurance’.
I’m just shy of my 10,000th read of this blog. Actually, since I didn’t start using a counter until several months after I started writing the blog, I’m probably well over my 10,000th hit already. However, I’ll stay my celebration until the counter makes it official today or tomorrow.
At this mini-milestone, I am getting reflective as to why I bother to write this. Yes, I’m both passionate and concerned about the current state of health care, but can I really make a difference? Well, maybe, but there are no concrete guarantees that all of this will ever amount to much. So, why do I do it?
I have come to the realization that, like the scorpion on the frog’s back swimming across the stream; it’s just in my nature.
I recall a time 25 years ago when I purchased my first townhouse. It was new construction, and like many things built in the 80’s boom years, it wasn’t built to the highest standards. This was the day of the Yugo, remember.
The townhouse looked real nice from a distance, but it was plagued by a host of quality issues due to poor construction. The first time I turned on my shower, for example, nothing came out – at least out of my shower head. The shower water did pour into my next door neighbor’s living room, however. Not the most ideal way to meet your neighbor, trust me on that. Luckily for me, Sal was a good sport about it – Sal was a tough Italiano who worked on Staten Island in the waste management business. I remember being both upset about my malfunctioning shower and relieved that I wasn’t bathing with the fishes, if you catch my meaning….
Anyhow, the shower incident was just a harbinger of things to come. Everyday, it seemed, my neighbors and I added to our punch list of everything that the builder needed to fix under our homeowner’s warranty. In the meanwhile, the builder dragged their collective feet as they tried to stall us until the warranty expired. It soon turned into a game of wills and wits, with the homeowners pitted against the big corporate builder.
As winter approached, my fellow homeowners all started to voice the same complaint – the units were next to impossible to keep warm. Cold drafts pervaded the units, especially on the second floor. The builder, of course, denied any wrong doing.
One evening, as I sat shivering in my bedroom, I noticed that the drafts seem to emanate from the floor adjacent to the outside wall. In a moment of inspiration, I developed a theory of why we were getting the nasty, unstoppable drafts. The townhouses were designed so that the second stories were actually larger then the ground floors – they cantilevered out about 3 feet on either side. This overhang must not be insulated – Eureka!
The next day, I excitedly called the builder’s office to clue them as to the root cause of the draft problem. Instead of thanking me, they just dismissed my revelation – the units were all properly insulated they assured me. There was no way that the second story overhangs weren’t insulated. When I protested, they explained that I was crazy to think that the builder wouldn’t insulate such a critical area of the townhouse. Besides, the underside of the overhang was already sheathed in aluminum siding, and it would be very expensive and labor intensive to remove that siding just to prove me wrong, so the case was closed – period.
So, my neighbors and I continued to freeze throughout that cold, cold winter, until one night, as I shivered, I had another brilliant revelation – if the builder wouldn’t inspect the overhang space from the outside, I would do it from the inside. Like a man possessed, I grabbed my electric drill, attached a hole saw, and tore back the carpeting in my master bedroom. After cutting a neat 2 inch hole round hole in the floorboards, I shone a flashlight down into the abyss. Shocked but satisfied, I saw nothing in that large open space – except for the underside of the aluminum siding. As I suspected, the entire area was totally uninsulated.
The next morning, I stormed into the builder’s office and tore them a new one. I demanded that the site manager accompany me back to my house and see for himself how my overhang was uninsulated. After sheepishly admitting to their oversight, they got a work crew to come out, remove the siding, and insulate the overhang.
They assured me that this was just an isolated incident.
The insulation refit solved the heating issue in my master bedroom, but then I noticed that the guest bedroom had a similar problem. I asked the builder to please schedule a crew to come out and refit that overhang as well.
“No way” they told me. The master bedroom problem was an isolated incident – there was no way that they were going to tear apart my other overhang just to satisfya draft that surely must exist solely in my imagination. After failing to win that argument with them, I stormed back to my townhouse, got out my hole saw, and repeated my little craniotomy in my guest bedroom floor. No surprise to me – that overhang also had not been insulated either. Another work crew was dispatched to tear apart the overhang in the back of my house.
As the winter progressed, I bragged to my neighbors how my little hole saw brought down the evil empire of Kaplan and Sons. Of course, through chattering teeth, they explained that they had the same cold drafts, and the same cold shoulder given to them by the builder – my unit was an isolated incident, they were told – all the other townhouses in my development were properly insulated.
The revolution started with my neighbor Sal. He asked if I could come over with my hole saw and drill through his floors? Happily, I obliged (Sal, besides being a nice guy, was not the sort of man you refused unless you actually wanted an ice pick in your ear).
Of course, the results were the same in Sal’s townhouse.
Soon, I became the Johnny Appleseed of Belcourt. Have hole saw, will travel. I flitted from unit to unit, drilling holes in many of my neighbor’s floors. I actually never found a single overhang that was insulated. And I drilled enough holes to wear out my hole saw and my drill.
Several months later, my wife and I chanced to walk by a work crew refitting yet another overhang with insulation. After they removed the aluminum fascia, they gazed up at yet another neat 2 inch hole in the floor above their heads. On workman griped – “Yep, the asshole with the hole saw is at it again”. I bit my tongue as I walked past them, but my chest filled with pride.
I was that asshole, and I was damn proud of it.
So may be that’s my motivation for writing this blog. Someday, somehow, I dream of overhearing some CEO of a pharmaceutical company or insurance company referring to me as “that asshole with the blog”.
I know that the chances of this actually happening are between slim and none, but an asshole can dream, can’t he?
***** Found this Interesting, Entertaining or Informative? Please read the complete blog at: *****
http://healthcarehullabalo.blogspot.com/
Who are you? Do you agree with me, disagree with me, or have another perspective to share?
PLEASE put your 2 cents in by leaving a comment or email me at HealthcareBlog@SystematixOnline.com
Posts
I have a good friend of mine –
nice fella, well meaning…and conservative.
Like many conservative-minded folks, he gets a lot of his news from
conservatively-oriented media. No crime
in that – it’s a free country. 
