Auxiliary Memory

by James Wallace Harris,

Having great health insurance doesn’t mean you won’t get billed for bankrupting procedures. Hospital stays are a frenzy of billable codes. True costs are revealed after the bills come in. Expensive procedures are sometimes done by non-networked doctors while you’re unconscious. You can be told to do things your insurance won’t cover. The costs of drugs are skyrocketing. What if you need medicine that drains your bank accounts? Do you choose poverty or living?

I’m reading An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal. Rosenthal carefully chronicles how medical costs have risen since the advent of health insurance. Most people won’t read this book because they don’t worry about the future. They won’t start worrying until a certified summons arrives via FedEx from a collection agency lawyer notifying them of their court date.

I worry about the future all the time, which is why I love books like An American Sickness. It bothers me that my country is so third-world when it comes to healthcare. Conservative scream about the dangers of socialized medicine, but they are only mouthpieces for the plutocrats who make billions off of the healthcare crisis. So many other nations around the world have practical healthcare policies that are affordable. Americans are told other countries have horrible healthcare, but that doesn’t appear to be true. The United States has premier medical treatment if you have the money. Since plutocrats have money, that’s all they care about. They don’t care about us.

Reading An American Sickness is about the unfairness of our system. Our healthcare system is based on greed, and most folks ignore this outrage as long as they don’t see it on the bills they receive. The medical industrial complex is in cahoots with the health insurance industry. Both are making obscene amounts of money. As long as we’re not personally billed for those huge costs we choose to ignore their crimes.

Doctor, hospital, and drug costs are now growing too big to ignore – so we do need to look at what they’re doing. And some of those costs are being passed onto us. Rosenthal has done a great job of packaging what we need to know in one easy-to-read volume. Her book is painful to study because it will make you feel helpless. Our system is thoroughly corrupted. However, she does offer knowledge and advice that can help in little ways at the personal level.

Interestingly, the corruption works within the rules. The unethical audacity of the greedy scam the system usually within the laws. But like Wall Street, they are clever about finding loopholes, getting laws changed, or buying off congressmen (in perfectly legal ways). The reason why Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to repeal Obamacare is that they don’t want medical costs contained. Healthcare will generate trillions in wealth if we allow the greedy free reign. Great for fat cats siphoning off wealth from everyone else, but rather hard on us ordinary tabbies.

Elisabeth Rosenthal is the Editor-in-Chief for Kaiser Health News. Here’s a sample of her writing online:

• Those Indecipherable Medical Bills? They’re One Reason Health Care Costs So Much – The New York Times
• Series: Paying Till It Hurts – The New York Times
• Her columns at The New York Times

If you aren’t ready to read her book, here are some useful articles to read online. But they just scratch the surface compared to the coverage in the book.

• Surprise! Insurance Paid the E.R. but Not the Doctor – The New York Times
• Surprise Medical Bills: Why They Occur and What To Do – Forbes
• 10 Statistics about US Medical Debt that Will Shock You – National Bankruptcy Forum
• What is Upcoding in Medical Bills? – Very Well
• Upcoding – Healthcare and Medical Fraud – Whistleblowers International
• Reading Your Doctor’s Medical Services Receipt – Very Well
• Patient’s Guide to Medical Codes – Very Well
• Surprising Things Not Covered by Health Insurance – Very Well
• Why You Pay More if You’re Hospitalized for Observation – Very Well
• Drug costs skyrocket for many older Americans, despite Medicare coverage – L. A. Times
• Why Are Drug Prices So High? We’re Curious Too. – The New York Times
• Amid Opioid Crisis, Insurers Restrict Pricey, Less Addictive Painkillers – The New York Times

I have a feeling this subject is boring to most people. Worrying out healthcare costs is like worrying about identity thief. I asked a bunch of my friends what they were doing about the Equifax brouhaha and most said nothing. I think we tend to put things off until a crowbar slams across our hands. We’re already in a crisis and its starting to pain many. The Republicans are once again trying to repeal Obamacare. Don’t wait until it’s too late to react.

JWH

by James Wallace Harris, Sunday, September 17, 2017

I’ve read 1,004 books since 1983 when I began my second reading log. I kept another log in the early 1970s where I read 495 books during an 18-month period when I dropped out of college trying to find myself. I read then mostly a mountain of science fiction which provided little enlightenment. I often read a book a day during my K-12 years. I wish I had kept a reading log of them. I guess I’ve read between 2000-3000 books since 1962. But how much did they add to my life? I’d guess 10% affected me in a lasting way. Which suggests I could cut out 90% of my reading, but I’d truly miss another 10-20%.

Looking over my current log I find many forgettable titles. A few hundred were great books, and another few hundred were entertaining page-turners, but the rest were time wasters. My father often yelled at me when growing up, “Get your goddamn head out of that goddamn book and go out and goddamn play.” He was probably right most of the time.

Pamela Paul has a book out, My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues where she writes about her reading list. Bob is “Book Of Books.” I wish I had written a book about my reading history. She started her list in 1988, so we cover roughly the same time period. I haven’t read My Life with Bob yet because I’m waiting on the Audible edition that comes out on the 26th. From reading the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon, and reviews I can tell we’re kindred spirits. I’ll be listening to her book at a great time because I’m reevaluating my own life-long reading habits.

I’m trying to develop a refined approach to reading and buying books. I’m choosing to read fewer books. I love being a bookworm, but I need to use my time wisely, now that my supply of remaining years is dwindling.

I’ve been studying my list of 1,004 books and I have reduced them to the 100 titles that mean the most to me. Some books are written by favorite authors and represent a jumping off point for many additional titles. Even though I read these books from 1983-2017, they really represent time traveling across the last two centuries.

There were another fifty books I wanted to cram into my Top 100, but I was ruthless. I could write a blog post or chapter of a book about each of the novels below. In fact, I started to do just that, but then I realized I would have taken me months. So, all you get is a list.

The titles below represent who I am. Reading them is how I’ve programmed myself since my early thirties. I’ve read many books by most of these authors, and I’ve read some of these titles below more than once, some many times, and will reread them in my waning years. I’ve listened to most of them on audio.

There are a few titles that made a great impact on me years ago. I just had to list them, but I won’t reread them because they are dated. Over time this list will distill into another list because my memory can only handle so many books. In five years it might only run 75 titles.

The biggest surprise was in an early draft I had six books by Bart D. Ehrman on Christian history. I’m an atheist. But those six books model studying history wonderfully. If I had drawn up this list in the year 2000 it would have been mostly novels, and most of them would have been science fiction. My soul is slowly shifting to nonfiction and classics.

[I’m going to link certain titles to essays I’ve written or books on Amazon which explain why these books are worth reading, or just a link to the book on Amazon.]

JWH