ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-14-19)- Please remember
small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic
It's "open enrollment" time at my job. That's when I take an educated guess on how badly I'm going to injure myself next year so that I can sign up for the health insurance plan that's going to do me the most good. Will I be in good hands? Will my insurance company be on my side, like a good neighbor? It's really a form of legal gambling. Obviously I can't predict the future, so I have to handicap myself regarding how much I'm going to handicap myself. I've always done stupid things in the past, so realistically, I should be able to continue doing them well into the future.
Once, I blew out my knee skiing on Birch Hill, up in Patterson, not that many years after it was a petting zoo. How is that possible, you might ask, if there were no farm animals left on that little hill to ski over? I will admit it wasn't easy but that's never kept me from injuring myself. Another time I blew out the same knee even more thoroughly playing touch football, and lo and behold, the one place that nobody touched was my knee. Four years ago I fell on the ice at the train station, tore my rotator cuff, and my cuff was done rotating for six months.
So I need decent insurance but I don't want to pay an arm and a leg, nor would I get much for them in their refurbished condition. One thing I've learned is that the higher the deductible, the lower the insurance premiums. So I found a very reasonable plan with a $10,000 dollar deductible, and I can use any doctor I want that is located in Nigeria. They don't have pockets over there, so you should keep any out-of-pocket expenses under your hat.
Actuarially, and I just made that word up, my insurance should be incredibly low. I gave up smoking years ago by standing farther away from the barbecue. I only drink to excess on a social basis, and I don't eat any red meat, because I cook it until it turns brown. I've been watching my calories for years, waiting for them to do something interesting, and I get 8 hours of sleep each day, 9 if I have a meeting that day. I'm in perfect health, although my wife thinks that my hearing is shot, and when she tells me that she only pronounces every other word to prove her point. My hearing is fine, I counter, because I can hear a "Cars For Kids" ad playing on a car radio three lanes away from me and it causes me to exhibit signs of of PTSD.
Last year at around this time I knew I had a big, nasty birthday coming up. I'm getting old, and so I figured I had better ramp up my flexible health care spending account to pay down my $10,000 dollar deductible, in case body parts start dropping off of me like a '57 Chevy. What if I need a knee replacement? What if I need a hip replacement? What if I injure my knee while having my hip replaced? The catch with a flexible spending account is that if you don't use it up, the government gets the money at the end of the year, and they're probably going to waste it on something stupid. I read somewhere that they spent $518,000 dollars studying how cocaine affects the sex lives of Japanese quail. Supposedly they were trying to extrapolate the results to humans, but instead all they found out was that quail have a lot more fun than quail researchers do.
Well, I didn't end up having a knee replacement or a hip replacement because I couldn't think of anything to replace them with. I had all this money left over and only a month left to use it up before the government gets it and throws a party with a bunch of exotic dancers, some quail researchers and bevy of quail who talk way too fast and don't make any sense. So I pushed a big shopping cart around CVS to use up the balance on some medical-related purchases. I grabbed a case of those Pine Bros. cough drops right off the bat, that was a no-brainer. Next door was the candy aisle, and I'm sure most medical experts would agree that if you run out of Pine Bros. cough drops, Milk Duds would probably make a good substitute, so I picked up some of those and a few Kit Kat bars as a possible source of Vitamin C. I read that if you have a sprain you should treat it with RICE, in capital letters, so they were very adamant on this point, or else my wife had mentioned to them that I was hard of hearing. So I picked up seven bags of rice at the supermarket.
Well, strangely enough, my medical expenses were denied and I still have $500 bucks left in my flexible spending account. I'm going to need to have an actual medical emergency to use up the money. If I was a quail I would blow through that money like nobody's business, but I don't normally engage in the kind of risky behavior that they do. I guesstimate that I'll need at least a sprain or a fracture to reach the $500 mark, but I don't want to break the bone TOO much and go over. Or I could go for a laceration, an abrasion and a wart. I could have a couple X-rays and an MRI, and that way I'll have something to compare it to if I have an injury in the future. I figure that if I try to skateboard on a gravel road, or bungee jump from a 12-foot stepladder, or make some catcalls at the neighbor's cat (he has quite a temper), I should sustain $500 dollars worth of personal injury.
There has been a lot of talk on the campaign trail about "medicare for all," but really, if we could only simplify and de-mystify the health care process just a little bit, the benefit to society would be surprisingly small, but better than nothing. For instance, when I have a car accident, the insurance company should send out one guy with glasses, a tie and an iPad. He can look everything over and report back with an estimate for how much of a mess my car's body is AND how much of a mess my body is. Then a "tow-bulance" drops off my car at the collision repair shop and then takes me to the doctor, who can tell right away if I should be listed as a "total loss." My doctor can be credited with using the phrase, "failing Rick Melén" way before Trump did but way after my 7th grade teacher did.
It's "open enrollment" time at my job. That's when I take an educated guess on how badly I'm going to injure myself next year so that I can sign up for the health insurance plan that's going to do me the most good. Will I be in good hands? Will my insurance company be on my side, like a good neighbor? It's really a form of legal gambling. Obviously I can't predict the future, so I have to handicap myself regarding how much I'm going to handicap myself. I've always done stupid things in the past, so realistically, I should be able to continue doing them well into the future.
Once, I blew out my knee skiing on Birch Hill, up in Patterson, not that many years after it was a petting zoo. How is that possible, you might ask, if there were no farm animals left on that little hill to ski over? I will admit it wasn't easy but that's never kept me from injuring myself. Another time I blew out the same knee even more thoroughly playing touch football, and lo and behold, the one place that nobody touched was my knee. Four years ago I fell on the ice at the train station, tore my rotator cuff, and my cuff was done rotating for six months.
So I need decent insurance but I don't want to pay an arm and a leg, nor would I get much for them in their refurbished condition. One thing I've learned is that the higher the deductible, the lower the insurance premiums. So I found a very reasonable plan with a $10,000 dollar deductible, and I can use any doctor I want that is located in Nigeria. They don't have pockets over there, so you should keep any out-of-pocket expenses under your hat.
Actuarially, and I just made that word up, my insurance should be incredibly low. I gave up smoking years ago by standing farther away from the barbecue. I only drink to excess on a social basis, and I don't eat any red meat, because I cook it until it turns brown. I've been watching my calories for years, waiting for them to do something interesting, and I get 8 hours of sleep each day, 9 if I have a meeting that day. I'm in perfect health, although my wife thinks that my hearing is shot, and when she tells me that she only pronounces every other word to prove her point. My hearing is fine, I counter, because I can hear a "Cars For Kids" ad playing on a car radio three lanes away from me and it causes me to exhibit signs of of PTSD.
Last year at around this time I knew I had a big, nasty birthday coming up. I'm getting old, and so I figured I had better ramp up my flexible health care spending account to pay down my $10,000 dollar deductible, in case body parts start dropping off of me like a '57 Chevy. What if I need a knee replacement? What if I need a hip replacement? What if I injure my knee while having my hip replaced? The catch with a flexible spending account is that if you don't use it up, the government gets the money at the end of the year, and they're probably going to waste it on something stupid. I read somewhere that they spent $518,000 dollars studying how cocaine affects the sex lives of Japanese quail. Supposedly they were trying to extrapolate the results to humans, but instead all they found out was that quail have a lot more fun than quail researchers do.
Well, I didn't end up having a knee replacement or a hip replacement because I couldn't think of anything to replace them with. I had all this money left over and only a month left to use it up before the government gets it and throws a party with a bunch of exotic dancers, some quail researchers and bevy of quail who talk way too fast and don't make any sense. So I pushed a big shopping cart around CVS to use up the balance on some medical-related purchases. I grabbed a case of those Pine Bros. cough drops right off the bat, that was a no-brainer. Next door was the candy aisle, and I'm sure most medical experts would agree that if you run out of Pine Bros. cough drops, Milk Duds would probably make a good substitute, so I picked up some of those and a few Kit Kat bars as a possible source of Vitamin C. I read that if you have a sprain you should treat it with RICE, in capital letters, so they were very adamant on this point, or else my wife had mentioned to them that I was hard of hearing. So I picked up seven bags of rice at the supermarket.
Well, strangely enough, my medical expenses were denied and I still have $500 bucks left in my flexible spending account. I'm going to need to have an actual medical emergency to use up the money. If I was a quail I would blow through that money like nobody's business, but I don't normally engage in the kind of risky behavior that they do. I guesstimate that I'll need at least a sprain or a fracture to reach the $500 mark, but I don't want to break the bone TOO much and go over. Or I could go for a laceration, an abrasion and a wart. I could have a couple X-rays and an MRI, and that way I'll have something to compare it to if I have an injury in the future. I figure that if I try to skateboard on a gravel road, or bungee jump from a 12-foot stepladder, or make some catcalls at the neighbor's cat (he has quite a temper), I should sustain $500 dollars worth of personal injury.
There has been a lot of talk on the campaign trail about "medicare for all," but really, if we could only simplify and de-mystify the health care process just a little bit, the benefit to society would be surprisingly small, but better than nothing. For instance, when I have a car accident, the insurance company should send out one guy with glasses, a tie and an iPad. He can look everything over and report back with an estimate for how much of a mess my car's body is AND how much of a mess my body is. Then a "tow-bulance" drops off my car at the collision repair shop and then takes me to the doctor, who can tell right away if I should be listed as a "total loss." My doctor can be credited with using the phrase, "failing Rick Melén" way before Trump did but way after my 7th grade teacher did.
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