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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Donald Trump. Do I honestly even need to add any additional commentary here? The man is a sociopathic threat to the republic. And even if he weren’t, putting forward the argument that West Virginia is the proper venue for his impending trial for attempting to overthrow the government because the jury there would be more “politically unbiased” and demographically balanced and “more diverse” borders on laughable. Or it would if he and his legal team weren’t serious. I have a huge soft spot for West Virginia. I grew up within spitting distance of the south bank of the Potomac, but it’s hard to imagine a more thinly veiled argument for moving his trial. The crimes Mr. Trump is accused of took place in DC and there his trial should stay. Let his lawyers challenge jurors “for cause” rather than shamelessly hoping to find a more politically favorable group of twelve.

Low salt. Before the cardiologist got a chance to yell at me, I’d already started casting out salt. Salad dressings, sauces, just about every recipe I’ve mastered over 20 years, even my beloved giant burrito should be on the forbidden list. So far nothing tastes good. There’s a limit to how much bland stir fry one should be expected to endure. Food should be a joy. Now it’s more something to jam into my face as quickly as possible in hopes I don’t taste much of it. No, it’s not the end of the world and yes, I’ll probably eventually strike on some recipes that aren’t awful, but I’m feeling just a little bit sorry for myself and that might just be the most annoying thing possible.

Management. With the new telework policy signed, management is having entirely predictable trouble with figuring out how to implement this thing they’ve known was coming for almost a year. I’ll illustrate. The policy was published by the executive office on Friday. Wait, wait. Don’t do anything until the directorate has a meeting about it on Tuesday. Fine, you might think. Sit through the Tuesday meeting, get the guidance in person and then send your package in for what should theoretically be simple review and approval as long as you crossed through all the appropriate wickets. No. Now we’re on pause waiting for additional guidance and determinations to be made at the “branch” level, because there’s “more information” to put out and analysis needed.  Maybe more info and analysis is the sort of thing that should have had some academic rigor applied before the thing hit the street instead of piecemealing it out after the fact. Just get on with it. Continuing to bottle this up isn’t winning management any new friends. And their old ones are getting awfully skeptical. If you had almost a year of knowing 90% of what was coming and then seem to be confused and befuddled when it finally lands on your desk, shame on you.

On ignorance and knowledge…

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As I return to the wider world after a weekend mostly ignoring the news, it’s hard not to remark on the level of fuckery my former political party seems to be engaged in at the moment. 

In setting itself up as the party that opposes all forms of abortion, seeks to stringently regulate free speech, and continues to call for Russian appeasement, I’m left to wonder if the Republican Party is actively trying to lose the votes of everyone under 25 years old for the rest of recorded time. Has anyone at the RNC looked at any demographic or polling information about anyone born after about the year 2000? They seem determined to stake out the positions almost precisely designed to antagonize this rising block of voters. It feels like a sure recipe for trading some short-term wins for long term electoral obscurity.

A million years ago, I was attracted to a Republican Party that stood for strong defense, lower taxes, and government that got the hell out of people’s way. That same party now, with its traditional principles hollowed out by MAGA, runs hard in the other directions – seeking to give aid and comfort to Russia, threatening to blow up the economy by refusing to honor the country’s lawful debts, and attempting to involve government in the very core of individual healthcare.

Cowering in the face of foreign adversaries is a bad look. Claiming you don’t want the government meddling in healthcare decisions (i.e., Obamacare) while intentionally meddling directly in actual healthcare decisions between doctor and patient would be absurdist schtick if it wasn’t so damned dangerous. Staking out an infinitely irresponsible position on the nation’s fiscal issues makes elected Republican officials look like nothing so much as modern know-nothings placing the entire post-World War II global financial order in jeopardy. 

I can’t remember a time since I started following politics seriously in the mid-1990s, when one of the major political parties was so determined to be on the wrong side of so many important issues – and so determined to make itself irrelevant to entire generations of the voting public. It’s a hell of a thing to watch this kind of self-inflicted immolation. It’s also a sadly predictable side effect of the misguided belief that “democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

Playing international whack-a-mole…

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In the wake of Americans being killed while, advisedly or not, traveling in Mexico, there are calls to classify the cartels as terrorist organizations. Maybe they are but that’s probably missing the broader point. 

The cartels exist for one reason only – the immense, unquenched demand in the United Sates for their product. That’s it. Full stop.

With a fortune to be made in supplying that demand, going after the cartels is, in my estimation, one big, international game of whack-a-mole. Until we find the silver bullet to crush the demand curve, someone will fill the supply side of the equation. I mean drugs didn’t suddenly stop being a problem when Pablo Escobar was arrested and eventually killed.

We’ve been funding both sides of the War on Drugs since the day the phrase was coined back in the Nixon Administration. Fifty years later, you really have to wonder if decades of government policy have made any substantive difference. 

I hesitate to say we should just stop prosecuting this war. You won’t hear me calling to legalize heroin or meth, but it feels like we should at least admit that continual escalation of the war can be reasonably expected to deliver mixed results at best. 

At my most honest, I’ll tell you that I don’t really give a damn what a grown adult decides to put in their body. Personally, I like caffeine and nicotine. My only real objection to “drugs” as a policy consideration is when those who choose to use them start doing crime to feed the habit or when it leads to people blocking up the sidewalks and using the streets and parks as open-air bathrooms. It’s the same logic by which I don’t especially care how drunk anyone decides to get as long as they don’t get behind the wheel of a car or otherwise endanger others with their choices.

So, sooner or later I’m sure we’ll end up labeling the Mexican cartels “terrorists.” They probably are by any reasonable definition… but I don’t expect the words we use to make any appreciable difference in what’s flowing across the border and into every city, town, and village in America. 

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. 

Joe…

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Let me say it straight from the shoulder… I’m not a big fan of Joe Biden as president. From spearheading America’s flight from Afghanistan to the current conflicted economic environment the administration is determined to cheer as rosy, while simultaneously decrying as hard times and painfully inflationary, it feels like the presidency is his in name, but that the hard work of the office remains, somehow, out of his grasp. 

I’ve never met him, but maybe he’s a nice enough old man. I’d be willing to go so far as to say he’s probably well intentioned. He might even be successful his role as head of state (à la Elizabeth II) where the main function is unveiling plaques, making proclamations, and waiving at crowds. I have to believe that even those who supported him during the election have found him wanting when exercising his awesome constitutional role as head of government. His performance when it comes to the hard stuff could, charitably, be called something between mixed and abysmal.

I’m certainly not advocating for a return to the batshit crazy administration of Donald Trump and his band of merry insurrectionists, but the fact that Joe was popularly recognized as the best available option really should concern every one of us. The best thing he could possible do would be to, as soon as the midterms are over, go on television and announce that he won’t seek a second term. I’m sure I’ll still hate the next contender’s policies, but the job deserves someone more engaged and energetic. 

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.

Cartoon villains…

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If I had any standing left as it is with the Republican Party, I’m sure I’d lose it when I confirm for you that despite my disagreement with him on many policies, I don’t hate his living guts. That, of course, doesn’t mean that I’m in any way looking forward to listening to him address a joint session of Congress later tonight.

In part it’s because I just can’t imagine anything like break news happening during a tightly scripted prime time speech. I’m also not sure I have it in me to sit through another lengthy diatribe against anyone in the country who has the audacity to have more than $37 in their pocket.

Sorry, I’m just not going to be the huckleberry who buys into the notion that class warfare is the solution to any problem beyond the abject jealousy some people feel for those who have more money. At this stage of the game it doesn’t seem likely that I’ll ever break into that currently demonized group of “households earning more than $400,000 a year,” though I know a fair number of people who are… and I don’t see any reason why I should support Uncle Sam jamming his hand further into their pockets than I would my own.

Elections, as they say, have consequences. There’s nothing to say that I have to be happy with them. As long as this old body of mine is sucking air, I’ll be on the side of keeping as great a portion of every dollar I earn as possible – and I’ll extend that same courtesy to everyone else… even if the Biden administration wants me to think of those “others” as cartoon villains with top hats and monocles.

Everything old is new again…

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I didn’t vote for Joe Biden (Don’t worry, I didn’t vote for Donald Trump either). Say what you want about the president, but I’m finding him a refreshing throwback to the era when I had a vague understanding about how politics worked in this country. For the last 60-ish days is been chasing the same basic policies that mainline Democrats went after from 1980-2000. I don’t support the lion’s share of those policy ambitions, but they’re predictable and after four years of the Trump administration, I’ve come to appreciate that kind of predictability in a politician.

The throwback goes even further than domestic policy, though. We’re back to antagonizing China and the USS… errrr…. Russia. I mean the Russians are so annoyed they recalled their ambassador. For a cold war kid, it’s the kind of international fidgeting that feels almost like home.

Over the last four years we managed to forget one of the few truisms of our political culture – that although we treat it as a life and death endeavor, a single presidential term is long enough only to tinker around the margins and the results will be nowhere near as good as we hoped or as bad as we feared. Sure, at some point the administration is going to start poking at something I’m personally interested in and I’m going to have to get my dander up. Just now, though, I’m happy to spend a few months being only tangentially interested in politics and appreciating the renewed interest in poking about in international affairs.