Comparing Health Insurance Plans

A visual representation of the progressive Democratic plan:


(Seattle Childrens Hospital)


But the Republican are offering choice:

That Thing I Quit

I used to, as of a couple minutes ago, go to the Opinions section of the local newspaper and write comments defending reason and compassion. I quit. It's a waste of fucking time.

A great many of the people who write letters-to-the-editor and comments thereon are a bunch of fucking assholes who don't give a flying fuck about anyone, not even themselves. They may be uneducated on the topic of choice, yet they remain staunchly convinced somehow that they know much more than they make evident. And they are never so right as when they are completely and utterly wrong.

They are mean-spirited; more then that, they are in love with mean-spiritedness. It moves them to states of excitement.

And I am fucking sick of them.

They are Blake's pebbles. Let them have the world, their world, and let them ruin it for all of us. In that they will have their hell but call it heaven.

Tire on the Mountain

Why yes, that would appear to be a worn tire.



On a Maserati, no less.



It must be the economy or something. It's interesting what you can see while walking through an example of The Great American Parking Lot.

Banking No Crisis

After our trip to Sedona, the car was covered in red rock dust from prowling the dirt roads in order to get to hiking trailheads and scenic views. So yesterday we went to the carwash. Phoenix has a million of these.



It wasn't busy at all, considering it was Saturday. But I counted a dozen-and-a-half people rubbing down the cars.

As we stood under the misters sipping iced tea while waiting, I noticed that workers were running across the street to a parked vehicle. One still nearby us asked another "Where do we cash our checks?" He held his paycheck in hand.



In turn, workers would cross at mid-street to approach the white pickup truck, then they'd come back counting their cash. I even saw a woman come up to this impromptu check-cashing service after walking from a nearby apartment complex.

One of the young men who used this service was the blue-eyed shaved head dude who asked us about a miniscule windshield chip when we drove up to the carwash. Every time you get your car washed at a place like this, they always provide the additional opportunity to have even the tiniest almost invisible little ding repaired, knowing that a lot of auto insurance companies will pay for several of these fixes every year.

Point being, not every person who used the bank across the street appeared to be possibly undocumented.

For No One Dose

While sipping morning coffee (French-pressed,) in the proximity of spectacular Bell Rock, this occurred to me:

A few weeks ago at work I gave a patient an injection of Epogen, a drug frequently used by hemodialysis patients and others at risk for chronic anemia. It was a high dose, 40,000 units, but that's not unusual.

As I prepared the dose in the nurses' medication room, I recall thinking that one dose costs over $500, which is more money than I earn in a 12-hour shift of work. One single dose.

So when people talk about "holding down the cost of health care," I bristle at the thought that cutting nurses' compensation may be on their minds. Or at least reducing the meager yearly increases we are fortunate enough to get.

Us nurses, yes, we really are a bunch of lucky duckies.