Tag Archives: policy

The post in which I don’t bitch about health insurance…

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I know the hip thing to do is bitch about health insurance and the American medical system on social media. There seems to be an entire cottage industry dedicated to telling us how awful everything this. My experience over the last year has been the polar opposite of the narrative I’ve seen being pushed across the internet. 

About a month ago, I got a notice that BlueCross didn’t want to pay for my 30-day heart monitor. Frankly, with the $10,000 bill associated with it, I didn’t exactly want to pay it either. But, as it was “not medically necessary,” according to their note, they weren’t going to pay. That’s despite two cardiologists deciding that that level of monitoring was, in fact, medically necessary. 

After several long conversation with me – and presumably even longer discussions with people representing the hospital system and the test provider, it looks like BlueCross ended up paying out about $3,000 as the “insurance rate.” I just paid $36 as my portion, and everyone now appears to be satisfied that they’ve done their due diligence and has gotten a fair shake. 

I honestly was expecting more of a fist fight on that. Who really knows? It may yet come back to rear its ugly head, but for now I’m considering it a win.

Look, I’ve learned a lot about health insurance in the last year. It’s not an ideal system. It requires you to keep a very close eye on your treatment plan and everyone involved in it. Even more so, it means staying on top of your insurance provider, knowing their terms of service and the ins and outs of your policy, and questioning everything that doesn’t pass the common sense test. That’s just the baseline starting point to participate in the system. I don’t know that it would be any less complex under single payer. Under any universe of care, I expect that I would want to be very aware of what was happening and the services that were being provided on my behalf. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Protests. I’ll be honest, I can’t remember a sign waving, getting in the way of things protest that I’ve ever knowingly supported. The tactics most protesters employ seem almost perfectly designed to guarantee that I’ll either quietly oppose them or openly mock and deride them. The small “r” republican protestors who have been popping up in London this week aiming to disrupt the most solemn state occasion of the late Queen’s funeral are probably exactly the kind of friendless cranks you might expect to engage in that kind of ill-timed, boorish behavior. I’m not saying the Crown should necessarily haul them off to the tower, but if the rest of the populace got together and heaved them directly into the Thames, I’d likely look the other way and then have a good laugh about it.

2. Lindsey Graham. For the last six months every Republican who could find a TV camera earnestly declared that abortion was an issue that should rightly be resolved by the states. That the federal government has gotten too large and overreaching is a reasonable argument. The remedy, of course, isn’t to hand that misbegotten power to the states, but rather return it directly to the people, who are the font of power under the American system, and allow them each to decide based on their own particular light. But then here comes Lindsey Graham, boldly introducing a bill that not only flies in the face of small government orthodoxy, but which will be wildly unpopular with 60% or more of the electorate. It might buy him some votes from the Republican base in South Carolina, but otherwise it makes him look like a fucking moron.

3. Eyes. My eyes suck and have since I was a kid. Take away my glasses and I could probably squint my way through things at very close range, but forget about telling the difference between a car and a cow more than a couple of dozen yards away. I’m headed off to my annual eye exam tomorrow, where I plan to spend my hour griping and complaining that by 8PM, my eyes are shot. It’s a situation that’s beginning to interfere with my evening reading and that obviously can’t be allowed to stand. With the return of wasting hours of the week commuting to the office for reasons that defy logic, but make perfect sense to management on the near horizon, I can’t afford to lose another hour or two in the evening with my eyes running everything together into lines of black smudge. 

Maybe I could offend everyone…

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For the last few weeks I’ve been pondering on the idea of a new limited series of posts. Maybe six or twelve posts here, expanding on my view of all the controversial stuff that seems to preoccupy our every waking moment.

I’m thinking here of abortion, voting and voting rights, free speech, LGBTQ issues, the Second Amendment, the environment, healthcare and the social safety net, and fiscal responsibility (or lack thereof). I’m sure offhand I’m missing some of the key topics that make people do the crazy.

It feels like good mental exercise to a) Refine my own thinking a bit and b) Likely offend, anger, annoy, or otherwise agitate every single person who reads the blog or follows me on social media over the course of two or three months. I mean with goals like that, what could really go wrong?

So, aside from anything I’ve already thrown out, what are the other grand controversies of the day just begging to be given the once over?

First line…

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First line supervisor is the most thankless job in any organization. You’re supposed to cheerfully implement whatever wackadoodle garbage the gods on Olympus adopt as policy while getting immediate feedback on how utterly fucked up those policies are from the 8, 15, or 25 people working for you. You’re the one who gets to tell those people why leadership’s brilliant ideas that will make getting the job done harder than it needs to be are actually “good for us.” It’s constantly walking the line between being sympathetic and supportive of line employees while not directly admitting that management at echelons above reality has a long ad storied history of screwing the pooch.

I’ve had a lot of jobs I hated, but being a first line was the worst of them. Not because of the work, but because I was never really comfortable identifying as “management.” It’s hard to throw the occasional bomb and agitate for your personal hobbyhorses when you have to spend your days selling guidance from higher to a generally disbelieving audience. In my experience it was never in any way worth the few extra dollars that show up every two weeks for your troubles.

To my current boss’s credit, she didn’t bat an eye when I came in with a request to double my official (pre-plague) telework schedule from one day to two each week. It complied with our official (and unchanged by the plague experience) policy, of course, but it’s a request that did violated the unwritten office policy that prevailed before the Great Plague that we should work from home no more than one day a week. I appreciate getting at least to that point didn’t require a Herculean effort.

After a year of proving the concept, I desperately want to push for more, but the current crop of Olympians have made plain that two days a week is pushing their comfort zone to the absolute limit. There will be a new regime in August. Perhaps they’ll be less mired in thoughts of carbon paper and view graphs… but never let it be said I don’t give credit where it’s due. Flying in the face of custom, even when policy is on your side isn’t the easy path for someone on the first line.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Assessments. I made the mistake of opening my property tax assessment on Sunday morning. I was having a perfectly nice day up until that point. Look, I mean it’s great that the county thinks I’ve picked up that much equity over the last three years, but that in no way means I’m happy about throwing more money to the Cecil County executive and council to piss away buying up even more land for regional parks that seem to be accessioned specifically to provide a place for people to go overdose. 

2. The new normal. I’m looking forward to getting started on the Biden presidency and the conclusion of the Trump impeachment trial. I, for one, am sick and tired of finding myself siding with things members of the Democratic Party are saying and look forward to getting back to opposing 60-70 % of their policy agenda. I’m tired of living in a world turned upside down.

3. Stats. If this week has taught me anything, it’s that my blog readers either a) don’t want to read about insurrection, politics, and all that or b) the zone is so flooded with posts that things aren’t getting through. Views are more than 50% off where I’d expect them to be in a normal week. This, of course, has been anything but a normal week. I’m going to keep doing what I do, even if it’s just me shouting into the void.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. RFID. Rolling our RFID at access points was supposed to make getting to work faster and easier while reducing the manpower required to make sure everyone showing up is actually supposed to be there. Over the last two weeks of the roll out period, seven of ten attempts to use the fancy new “no touch” pass system failed to function properly. It didn’t work and ended up being about two times slower than it would have been if I’d have used the regular access lanes. EZ Pass makes it work on the interstate at 70 miles an hour for anyone with a transponder from a dozen different states, but we can’t seem to figure it out in a limited deployment under controled circumstances at five miles per hour. To quote General Beringer in War Games, “After very careful consideration, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks.”

2. Human feelings. Its been a year since I made the decision that any further treatment for Winston was really just me staving off the inevitable while making him suffer for my own benefit. I’m just now getting to a point where I can look at pictures or the occasional video of him without becoming a blubbering mess. Feel free to ignore me if my eyes still happen to get a bit misty from time to time. Sigh. Human emotions are dumb and I’d like to have mine removed, please.

3. Finding “no.” I am a professional bureaucrat. Over the better part of two decades I have learned many useful tips and tricks. One of them, most assuredly, is how to use process and procedure to slow progress on an ill advised adventure to a bare crawl. Believe me when I say that I know how to run out the clock with the best of them. Sometimes, though, a project is going to take wing no matter how ill advised or badly developed the concept. It’s such a high priority to someone that it’s going to happen. Once a special someone is committed on that course of action, what I need the master bureaucrats to do is fall their asses in line and manufacture ways to find yes instead of laying down every possible hurdle. I see what you’re doing. I know those tricks, So please, get the fuck out of here with that douchbaggery just this one time.

What I did on my snow day…

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My first experience with telework, or working from home, was way back in about 2005 when I was home based in central Maryland and working in downtown DC five days a week. Any option that saved me from the 35 minute drive, 30 minute metro ride, and ten minute walk of a commute (when everything worked exactly the way it was supposed to) was a welcome change.

Since then I’ve worked for bosses that were true believers in the virtue of having employees work from home and I’ve worked for others that were firm in the belief that nothing happens unless they could physically see asses in seats right outside their own office door. The truth is, even though I support the idea and take advantage of it at every opportunity, I recognize that finding success working from somewhere other than an office can be very much driven by the personality and work style of the person doing the work.

If that sounds like less than a full throated argument to let everyone work from home as often as they want, it probably should. There are some jobs – and some people – that would be badly served by having that kind of flexibility in deciding were the work gets done. By contrast there are plenty of people and situations that are perfectly well suited for doing the work from anywhere. So, if you ask me if I support telework, the honest answer is, “well, that depends.”

I like to think I’m reasonably successful at carrying out the vast majority of my day-to-day tasks regardless of where I happen to be physically located. Tending to email, participating in meetings, reading or writing, pondering recommendations are all things that, thanks to the wonder of the interwebs, are location agnostic.

Due to the slightly comic language of the agreement that lets me work from home on a regular basis, when the outpost of the bureaucracy where I work is closed, I’m on the hook to log and and carry on business as usual. The catch, of course, is that I’m one of the few people who have taken advantage of this opportunity… which means my snow days are largely made up of sending email and leaving voicemails for people I already know aren’t going to be around to read or listen to them for 24 hours. Yes, it’s ridiculous. No, it doesn’t get after the kind of continuity of operations anyone wants to pretend we have during an emergency. It’s just the way things are.

If sitting around largely talking to myself on a few rare days in the dead of winter buys me a day a week of staying home and working in my fuzzy slippers the rest of the year, it’s a farce I’m perfectly willing to go along with to keep the peace.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Being polite. I realize the social convention that tells us it’s bad to walk around punching people in the face exists to protect all of us from each other. God knows there are probably of plenty people out there who would like nothing more than the opportunity to slug me with no repercussions, but still, there’s something infuriating about being in a position day-in-and-day-out of being annoyed to your wits end and not being able to say or do anything about it because it would be considered rude. The people who don’t get typical social cues shouldn’t be covered by normal social conventions. When I’ve turned my back to you and you keep talking, I should be allowed to punch you in the face. Invade my personal bubble? Punch in the face. Have no clue that others aren’t interested in a monolog about your top five worst medical problems? Punch in the face. Twice. You get the point. When someone lives outside society’s norms, maybe they shouldn’t be protected by those norms. If your feelings get hurt and your nose gets bloodied in the process, well, maybe that’s just a lesson learned… and yet for some reason when you tell someone they’re being an obnoxious douchecanoe, you’re suddenly the asshat. There is no justice.

2. Celebrities. You know the funny thing about celebrities behaving badly? Their asshattery is only covered by the news outlets because we all tune in. Justin Bieber getting a DUI? News. Brittany Spears flashing her hoohaw. News. Kim and Kanye doing anything? News. Except the thing is, it’s not news. People get DUI’s, show their lady parts, and are generally stupid every day of the year without it being the lead story on every website and newspaper in the country. Celebrities get the attention they do not because they behave badly, but simply because we allow it to be so. It’s the classic example of ignore it and they will go away. Or at least they’ll continue to get into trouble, but do it more or less in anonymity and without it becoming a spectacle. It’s a crying shame that we all can’t just agree to ignore these tools until they stop getting the ink they so desperately want.

3. Policy. As a rule, policy is something I’ve always considered a guideline. It’s the user’s manual version of how to do things – 98.9% of the time, policy coverers just about everything you’ll deal with on a regular basis. Conveniently, though, policy very rarely has the force of something more codified, say like a regulation or a law. That means there’s almost always a way to get an exception to policy (or in more extreme circumstances just ignore the policy because it doesn’t pass the common sense test within the context of new or extenuating circumstances). No one is doing themselves a service when the blindly follow something just because “that’s how it’s done” or “that’s the policy.” You see, the problem with blind adherence to anything is that it so often comes with unintended consequences… and those so very rarely end well for anyone.

In my own name…

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There’s a certain amount of hubris to running a website in your own name. It certainly makes you easy enough to find (*cough* #1 search result for Jeffrey Tharp on Google *cough*). It means there’s nothing to hide behind when you make a mistake or take a position on an issue. All you have is your good name and the words you choose to make your argument. When it’s your name up there in the address bar, you’d better Harrassmentbelieve there’s an incentive to get it right the first time. In more than seven years of blogging, I’ve never posted anything to this site or the ones that came prior to it that I was ashamed or embarrassed to see running with my given name in the byline.

Of course on the internet it’s easy to be mostly anonymous. It’s easy to fire off a comment or an email when there’s no apparent accountability. The truth is, nine times out of ten there isn’t any accountability. That’s just one of the charming ways the internet is still like the Wild West.

With that being said, it is my personal policy and the official policy of jeffreytharp.com to refer any and all comments that are threatening or of a harassing nature to the sender’s service provider with a request to cease and desist and to preserve copies of all associated posts, comments, and emails for use in any criminal or civil investigation and/or litigation that may arise as a result of failing to comply with this request. We are not going to be drug into the ugly internet business of feeding the trolls, regardless of how tempting that might be.

I reserve the right to edit, modify, or delete all comments that do not comply with WordPress terms of service or that I deem inappropriate, harassing, or threatening. I continue to encourage feedback, discussion, and open debate about the issues, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to open this blog as a free for all. If that’s what you’re looking for, I suggest you go buy your own domain name, set up a website, and rant about how unfair life is on your own nickel, because you won’t be doing it on mine.

Yea verily I say unto you, here endeth the lesson.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Policy. As a young intern many years ago I cut my teeth as a policy guy. I know how to read them, how to write them, and how to interpret them to mean pretty much anything I want them to mean. That’s why I always enjoy it when someone decides to try “selling” me on the virtues of one particular policy or another. It’s pretty easy to spot a blatantly one sided policy when I read it and no amount of talking around it is going to convince me that it’s really a good thing or beneficial to me in any meaningful way. Conveniently, I don’t have to like it or even agree with it, I just have to comply it… and I’ve been doing that for years.

2. Roadside Produce. When it comes to fresh produce from the roadside there’s a fine line between perfectly ripe and apt to go bad somewhere between the point of purchase and the time I get it home. As much as I appreciate the three cantaloupes for $5 deal you’re making me, I’d appreciate it more if the bottom half of your melons weren’t, you know, squishy. Same with the $10 a dozen ears of corn. While I appreciate a bargain as much as anyone, I’m not feeding an Amish family with this purchase, so how about sizing some deals that are more appropriate for meals involving fewer than 10 people?

3. Salad. In an effort to be slightly less heart attack prone, I’ve been eating a lot of salad over the last two years. In that time, I’ve really only noted one thing with any consistency – That no matter how many different kinds of dressing you have, at the end of the day you’re still eating a bowl of weeds. Sure, sometimes the weeds are topped with bacon or chicken or eggs or croutons, but regardless of what you add on, it’s all built on a foundation of weeds. I’ll get plenty excited over a well-cooked steak or even a barbeque chicken, but I just can’t seem to get myself revved up for salad any more. It seems to me that life is entirely too short to spend 1/3 of your meal times face to face with food that only tastes good when you slather it in 101 different toppings.