Octopus Overlords

Brian wrote:You follow the colostomy twitter too?

Oh, you're full of shit.

Not any more. You'll be getting the tweet about it shortly.

I can barely contain myself.

#poop

The Meal wrote:

hentzau wrote:There are two old people sitting next to me here at Panera, talking about colostomy bag failures in great detail.

I'm glad I wasn't eating the black bean soup.

That just came by on my twitter feed. Nice try.

Dork. That IS me. Hentzau wasn't available when I signed up for Twitter.

Tell me about the voice capabilities of your iPhone, and I'll confirm.

The Meal wrote:Tell me about the voice capabilities of your iPhone, and I'll confirm.

you mean the fact that it plays Rush no matter what I ask for?

No, I just saw the thread here where you said that. You're really stealing a lot of material from this person's twitter account, thief!

Thief spelled backwards is feiht. An Arab word for tall women.

Reasons why medical insurance costs so much:

A year ago my doctor asks about my sleepapnea. I suffer. The machine doesn't work. That's life.
Have you thought about other treatments. I think about the bipap (which is now called a mandibular adjument something something something something) occasionally but whatever.
Talk to your dentist and see if it's covered.

Six months ago I go to the dentist and the tell me they can make an appliance but it won't be covered. It's about $900 bucks and he won't even touch me until I go see an ENT. I'm pretty sick $1000 medical experiments on me. So this is a good excuse to let this drop.

I go back to my PCP and she tell gets me a referral to an ENT.

A month and a half ago, I go to the ENT and sure enough, my throat is way too tight when I breath and this at least partially alleviated when my jaw is pulled forward.

She says everything should be covered as long as I demonstrate medical need, so I need to go back to the sleep clinic but I'd want to make sure she was right.

So I call my insurance people and they tell me that the only way to know if its covered if for the PCP to enter the codes and see what comes up. In essence BCN won't talk to me about coverage because it all comes down to the doctor's office computer codes. I call my PCP and they say they'll look in to it and get back to me.

So yesterday comes and the sleep clinic call to schedule me for an appointment. I explain that they are welcome to set me up for an appointment but if the mouthpiece isn't covered, there's no point in me going. So we agree that I will call my PCP again today. My PCPs office tells me that they can't tell if the mouthpiece will be covered until I do sleep study.

All in all this will cost me about $90 out of pocket (before the mouthpiece). No big deal. All in all it will cost the insurance company probably six or seven thousand dollars in procedures that will all be meaningless if they won't cover a mouthpiece that may or may not help me.



Hell, the doctor's must love it. It's all money they will get from the insurance office. Ultimately insurer's don't care because the cost of this expedition is just going to eventually get passed on to my employer anyway.

I just don't get it. I would have already been cheaper and more expeditious to have just crafted the mouthpiece which may or may not help.

This only makes me wonder will this will go when medicine becomes socialized for real.

Did you know you can buy a mouthguard off the shelf at CVS for about $10? Not as good as custom made, but good enough to tell whether it will work or not.

Here's another reason medical costs are out of control: The colonoscopy that I had last November was supposed to be 100% covered by insurance. We called Blue X ahead of time and asked. Was it recommended by your doc, and are you over 50? No problem! They didn't even collect a copay.

Eight months later we are still fighting bills for $1900, $1800, $223, and $186. Everybody agrees that we don't really owe them, but the bills were coded wrong when submitted, and changing that takes an act of God. The billing agency works for the lab that works for the clinic, and nobody will own the error.

Last week everybody got a paper letter documenting all of our phone calls with contact names and numbers and the results of each call. If they want the money let them sort it out amongst themselves; we've given up. Ultimately these bills will all be turned over to a collection agency and everyone can finally forget about them, but an awful lot of time and effort is being spent dodging responsibility in the meantime.

Ironrod wrote:Did you know you can buy a mouthguard off the shelf at CVS for about $10? Not as good as custom made, but good enough to tell whether it will work or not.

It's not just a mouth guard. I understand why it will cost so much, it will be cast to reposition my jaw when I sleep in exact place they want to put it. I get all that. I just don't get that the hullalballoo to find out if this will help me will probably cost the insurance company 6 times the amount it would cost to just get the damned thing made. It's a mouth piece, not a narcotic.

Eight months later we are still fighting bills for $1900, $1800, $223, and $186. Everybody agrees that we don't really owe them, but the bills were coded wrong when submitted, and changing that takes an act of God. The billing agency works for the lab that works for the clinic, and nobody will own the error.

That's what I want to aviod. That and to eventually find out my code won't be covered at all.

Last week everybody got a paper letter documenting all of our phone calls with contact names and numbers and the results of each call. If they want the money let them sort it out amongst themselves; we've given up. Ultimately these bills will all be turned over to a collection agency and everyone can finally forget about them, but an awful lot of time and effort is being spent dodging responsibility in the meantime.

It'd be nice if it worked that way. I spend four years fighting an $800 ambulance bill where I had to talk to AAA, BCN, the ambulance company, and Oakwood hospital. They'd never talk to each other. Ever.

And now they won't talk to me. Everything has to be done behind the scenes... where I still don't think they talk to each other.

Fuckers.

Four years might be my hyperbolous angry bad memory taking over. It might have only been two. It's hard to say over decade later.

Did you know your jawbone is the only bone in your body to hold your lower teeth?

I thought yours were kept in a cup on the nightstand.

Brian wrote:I thought yours were kept in a cup on the nightstand.

His only bone?

Ever get the feeling that one day you are going to stand up your knee is going malfunction and you leg is going to happily bend totally the wrong way?

You ever have a few beers and piss a few later and marvel at the speed at which your kidneys work. They are marvelous.

Earwax should be a food group.

I made a peg game.

Also Genetica is awesome (well it's great right now, but with their next update it'll be awesome...hopefully I won't have to wait too long as I bought it, not realizing some of the features were from the next version..still great for tiling procedural textures).

LordMortis wrote:Reasons why medical insurance costs so much:

That stinks.

I moved cities and had to find a new dentist. None of the dentists in the town took my insurance. Since I knew I was going out of network, I wanted to get some idea of what I would end up paying. I called the insurance company and asked how much they covered for a normal checkup and cleaning. They said "customary and reasonable." I asked what that meant and they said they couldn't tell me. They said to ask the dr.'s what they charged and work from there. But how was I supposed to know if they were in the ball park? Do I call 10 Dr.'s and take a survey? It was crazy and frustrating.

I ended up just picking one I liked and it turned out that we owed him $5 after insurance. I could have been a much better consumer if I had just known what they would pay.

The inability to comparison shop for routine care -- plus lack of incentives to do so -- is a huge reason that a market-based medical system is failing.

Pleasant surprise. While my PCP continues to do not much, the sleep studies reception person is doing a mind blowingly great job. She took BCNs number and all of my insurance information and has been contacting BCN on my PCPs behalf. Sadly she's met with the same annoyance I have, that they won't talk to her about specific coverages and go off on how it may or may not all depend on how the PCP books the code. But she is just as annoyed by the system as I am and is working on my behalf with great and unnecessary and unexpected effort.

Thank you to her. She not only gets kudos for doing her job which is alway good in itself, but huge kudos for going way beyond what I would ever expect. She's even recommended a dentist to me who specializes in sleep disorders and said their office might be able to help me get the whole insurance thing moving on the right track.

With everything she has brought to the table, she could start lying through her teeth and I'd totally trust her.

But by now this no longer a random post, so...

Doves in suitcases.

stessier wrote:

LordMortis wrote:Reasons why medical insurance costs so much:

That stinks.

I moved cities and had to find a new dentist. None of the dentists in the town took my insurance. Since I knew I was going out of network, I wanted to get some idea of what I would end up paying. I called the insurance company and asked how much they covered for a normal checkup and cleaning. They said "customary and reasonable." I asked what that meant and they said they couldn't tell me. They said to ask the dr.'s what they charged and work from there. But how was I supposed to know if they were in the ball park? Do I call 10 Dr.'s and take a survey? It was crazy and frustrating.

I ended up just picking one I liked and it turned out that we owed him $5 after insurance. I could have been a much better consumer if I had just known what they would pay.

Even worse, reasonable and customary is different region to region. There is no way that I am aware of to figure out what's what if the insurance company won't tell you and I've not been able to find a way to get them to tell me.

Surprisingly, roast cat isn't all that bad.

I saw Kung Fu Panda last night for the first time. I was quite amused - decent movie.

Now I'm not an expert or anything - I only studied one year of Kung Fu and I can't even remember the name of the version - but it certainly looked like they learned Karate rather than Kung Fu. That irritated me by the end.

Perhaps I am asking too much of an animated giant panda voiced by Jack Black and mentored by a red panda voiced by Dustin Hoffman?

I'm waiting for the guinea pig one.

The 5 o'clock whistle's on the blink.

I have no more napkins at my desk. Whenever I grab food from a restaraunt I keep the extra napkins that they dumped in the bag next to my box of snot rags. I'm not a wasteful person so throwing unused napkins away seems silly, even if all it ever does is save the company (or me) fifty cents a year. But alas, I went to grab a napkin to whipe my Dorito spice stained thumb and forefinger and that napkin bearing corner of my desk is bearing no napkins.

Forsooth, I am sans paper cleaning product and am bound to an afternoon of Doritio tarnishing despaire. That or I have to walk my ass to the kitchen. What happened to the good ole days when it was OK to just lick your fingers? They're my fingers. It's my keyboard. I know where they've both been and where they are both going. Why should I feel so dirty by licking them. And yet I do.

LordMortis wrote:It's my keyboard.

Brought it from home, did you?

Why do people insist on putting less than and greater than signs in data that's going to be transferred via XML?

How come nobody sells beer in plastic bottles? Not saying they should....

Ironrod wrote:How come nobody sells beer in plastic bottles? Not saying they should....

Haven't been to an pro athletic event lately, have you? No glass permitted in the stadium.

Ironrod wrote:How come nobody sells beer in plastic bottles? Not saying they should....

I have to say one of the best beers I've had was in a plastic bottle. Straight from Germany. Karlskrone Weizen.

Isgrimnur wrote:

Ironrod wrote:How come nobody sells beer in plastic bottles? Not saying they should....

Haven't been to an pro athletic event lately, have you? No glass permitted in the stadium.

No, I've not been subjected to a sporting game since I was a child, so I have never witnessed this miraculous transformation of plastic into glass. It seems to me like plastic could offer the weight and unbreakability of cans without the nasty metallic contamination.

When I was in New Orleans they sold beer in plastic cups that you could take with you, even when you were driving.

Purple should be a fruit.

Some are.

Hmmm 19 Acres of land, I can probably afford it, we would have to set on it awhile. Seems like a decent location, but it would eat into our financial padding. I'm sure we could re-sell it at some point. Hydro runs to the other side of the road, there's a hill, wooded area. Oh and it's covered in poison ivy...so I can't really go have a look just yet. Noticed Bell service nearby also, though I might be able to hit the town water tower as well (for wireless internet).

I pronounce morning like it rhymes with yarning and not like it rhymes with warning. I don't know why. And even though I know I pronounce it incorrectly, I still say it that way.

I pronounce mourning correctly.

It makes no sense. I think I may need a memory wipe.



If I have in my abdomen and chest to be able to suck my gut in, what makes me think that if I got healthy my gut would suck itself in then?