My rotating shift is such that once every five weeks I end up doing a week of graveyard shifts (11:45 PM - 7:45 AM). In the spring semester, it so happened that my vacation requests for Spring Break and the week of my senior thesis presentation happened to fall on my regularly scheduled graveyard shift and as a result of taking vacation I didn't do it.
I think that this is the first full week of graveyards I've done since the beginning of the year. No, I take that back - did one in May.
As an experiment, I brought in my CF ExpressCard reader/writer. The Lenovo S10 has an ExpressCard slot (I guess to make up for the lack of USB port - only has 2), and I was curious to see if the Hackintosh would a) see the ExpressCard and, if so, b) read the CF card in the ExpressCard slot. Sure enough, the Hackintosh was able to see the ExpressCard card and read the CF card w/o any problems. Now this makes it more likely that I will use the Hackintosh as a portable download-from-camera-on-site tool. Still has sucky battery life. I did download the latest version of GraphicConverter (great tool, light on memory & processor use). I also downloaded Songbird which, so far, has sucked. Won't play wma files - had to get flip4mac that puts a wma plug-in for Quicktime - that worked just fine.
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Several friends who work at the local college have been shafted by the state legislature. This past legislative session, the lawmakers passed a bill that kicked in on July 1st that mandated a 1.6% reduction in the pay of state worker's to go to their pension fund.
Now, I'm voluntarily having 10% of my pay pulled for retirement, and even then I'm not fool enough to think that this will help out much in the long run. While I have maintained that if I'm still working operations when I can leave at 55 and get the reduced medical package that I will, in all honestly if I'm in decent health I will continue to work.
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Speaking of medical health, we got the "final" bill today for the better 7/8th total knee replacement. I say "final" because apparently things are still being negotiated between the hospital and the insurance company. The hospital billed some $60K, the insurance approved $56K and change, leaving about $4K and change in dispute (while I didn't do a comparison with the "itemized" hospital bill we got, the $4K and change looks suspiciously close to what was charged for the hospital room for 3 days).
Still, if we have to pay the $4k and change, that is little compared to the total bill. The surgeon's bill came in, which was over $10K, of which we owed around $800.
And we still haven't found out what the $19K the hospital charged for "implant - cardiac" was for.
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This brings me to the rant about the discussion of health care. I am lucky to have a decent health plan through work (Cigna), and yes, it is an untaxed benefit. And in all honestly, I wouldn't mind paying *some* taxes for it if it means that those people who are uninsured or uninsurable will get some basic medical care.
However, this leads into a problem of just not enough doctors. In the small city where I live, with a population of around 8000, it seems that trying to get an appointment to see a doctor is next to impossible. We have given up and drive to Los Lunas to see a doctor. The better 7/8ths is still going to the VA hospital in Albuquerque, and the treatment she gets there is, well, shoddy at best. (The VA hospital is re-starting the women's health care clinic, so it may get a little better.) For example, she has "high" blood pressure and the medication she is taking is resulting in migraines five days out of seven; before she would have migraines three days out of seven. The increase in migraines coincided with the blood pressure medication. She has complained to the VA doctors and their attitude is "Having more migraines with low blood pressure is better than fewer migraines with higher blood pressure."
There are dozens of blood pressure medications on the market that, if the VA is really insistant that she takes, that she could try to see if one of them doesn't have the side effects of a) more migraines and b) a constant bad taste in her mouth. But will they try another one? Not unless she basically throws a temper tantrum. In the VA healthcare system, doctors are God; they know all. They don't know how to deal with someone who is educated and who won't take "No" for an answer.
What I'm afraid that will happen if we go to a national health care system is that the VA will be used as a model, at least for buying drugs in bulk. But I'm also afraid that what will happen is that we will end up with doctors who think they are God, will not listen to the patients, and will be immune to malpractice lawsuits. One of the reasons that the VA is seldom sued is that the lawyers representing the patient can only take $1 as payment for their services. This pretty much makes the VA immune from lawsuits, since few lawyers will want to put in the time and effort to take on an organization like the VA system for a mere $1.
This is the system that I'm afraid that we will get. It will be the worst of all possible systems. Yet for those who have no medical coverage, it will be better than nothing.
And we'll still have too few doctors to go around.
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