Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

This is Beyond Unacceptable

Damn the Republicans all to Hell.

I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have decent insurance. Come to think of it, I do know. I’d die.

I’m on two types of insulin, as undoubtedly most Type 2 diabetics are: a short acting type to be taken before meals, and a once-a-day long-acting variety that helps keep glucose stable the rest of the time.

In my particular case, it’s Novolog for short-acting, and Tresiba for long-acting. My endocrinologist prescribes these in 90 days supplies which—as you can imagine—is a lot of boxes of pre-filled syringes. With my insurance I pay $80 for each 90-day supply; a steal I know. I looked at the retail price they conveniently print out on each order, and I was beyond shocked. (The same goes for the other medications I take on a regular basis.)

Novolog—which is basically just plain old insulin—in that 90-day quantity retails for $3100. The Tresiba goes for $2400.

So, four refills a year of each would come to a grand total of $22,000 a year.

That comes to a little less than a third of my pre-tax income.

Who can afford to pay that?

And don’t even get me started on the cost of the Libre3 monitors…

2 comments

Posted on

Unacceptable

Who pays for medical bills after mass shootings?

When Ashtin Gamblin remembers the night she was shot nine times, she can picture herself lying in the ambulance and worrying about whether she could afford it.

“That’s how the American medical system is,” she told ABC News. “I just got shot and I’m concerned about how I’m going to pay for the ambulance ride.”

5-year-old children in Texas are being given Winnie the Pooh books that teach them how to survive a school shooting

The book, titled “Stay Safe,” was sent home in the backpacks of pupils in the Dallas Independent School District last week, according to the Oak Cliff Advocate. The book is being given out to elementary school children.

On one page, the beloved bear from the Hundred Acre Wood tells kids: “If danger is near, do not fear. HIDE like Pooh does until the police appear.”

Another piece of advice reads: “We should all hide without a sound in a place where we cannot be found,” showing Pooh peeping out from inside a honey pot.

[Source]

0 comments

Posted on

Belief in Gods and Other Religious Concepts Has Declined Since 2001

There’s a bit of good news to report from a recent Gallup poll. Their strange title gives most of it away: Belief in Five Spiritual Entities Edges Down to New Lows. But what are the five entities?

    1. “God” (I’m unsure which one this is supposed to refer to)
    2. Angels
    3. Heaven (how is this an entity?)
    4. Hell (again, how is this an entity?)
    5. The Devil

It should not surprise (but may disappoint) you that 74% of their respondents profess belief in some sort of god. Sadly, the United States continues to be an outlier here. Still, this number has dropped quite a bit since 2001. And while only 12% of those surveyed say they don’t believe in gods, that number has increased.\

According to Gallup:

As the percentage of believers has dropped over the past two decades, the corresponding increases have occurred mostly in nonbelief, with much smaller increases in uncertainty. This is true for all but belief in God, which has seen nearly equal increases in uncertainty and nonbelief.

Those of us who don’t believe in these things should find this news encouraging. Perhaps more of our neighbors are beginning to come around. Caution seems wise, though, since some religious believers will see this as a reason to clamp down and push their beliefs with more force.

Gallup’s results also show that belief in these entities (or concepts) breaks down as you’d expect on political lines. Belief is much higher among Republicans than Independents or Democrats. This is consistent with most of what we’ve heard from leading Republican presidential candidates, and it is cause for concern. Electing such people would be bad for secularism and those of us who value it.

There are plenty of issues where Americans are divided. Religious belief seems like a big one. I watched an interview with several Republican voters recently where they were asked a number of thought-provoking questions. They agreed that nobody who supported reproductive rights was really a Christian. If nobody on the “other side” is Christian, we should not be surprised when we hear rhetoric about crusades or spiritual warfare.

“Christian” continues to be used as a proxy for moral goodness. If none of my political opponents are Christian, none of them are good people. These beliefs are harmful. They bleeds over to how I view my neighbors, and it affects how I treat them. This goes beyond division and ends up as hatred.

Image by Andreas Breitling from Pixabay

[Source]

0 comments

Posted on

These Are Were Going Up in the Neighborhood

They started going up last year on a piece of property that has sat vacant for decades. I like them architecturally, even though they’re horribly out of step with the rest of the area (mostly built-up during the 1940s and 50s).

When we moved back over here in April, it looked like they were about 95% finished, but in the intervening months they’ve just sat there, still enclosed in a construction fence and no further progress has been made on them.  Looks as if the developer ran out of money because there’s now a for sale sign out front – not for the individual units, but for the entire property.

0 comments