My friend Kathy and I were lamenting the other day how expensive it is to exist these days, let alone stay healthy, especially as a middle-aged human, with or without medical insurance. She has been nursing an injured, worn-out shoulder, diligent with ice, stretching and rotator cuff exercises, but knows it will need surgery to fix properly, something she can't afford. She was with me when I broke my tooth.
"Shit. There's another two grand, just like that! What's next?" I said.
"I know what you mean. It's like you're afraid to move because something might break and you can't afford to fix it," she said. I laughed, but truer words were never spoken.
I recently had minor surgery, a nether-regionectomy and gynecological spelunking as I like to call it. The medical staff at North Hawaii Community Hospital liked my description of the procedure and seemed amenable to changing its official name to exactly that, an NRGS for short. Prior to the surgery, my primary care physician had wanted to schedule me for an MRI. The ultrasound looked fuzzy, to get a clearer picture. I said no, since they were going to scope it anyway. It turned out to be a wise call. The surgery will cost me $800 dollars above what my insurance covers. An MRI would have set me back a bundle more. Medications are not covered by my plan, either. If they were, I'd be paying $600+/month premiums. As it is, they just hiked those by another $100 in January. That's about a 30% increase. The medicine itself, basic asthma maintenance, were I to buy it from my local pharmacy, would cost upwards of $350/month. (You should know that many drugs we're told do not have generic equivalents in the U.S. do everywhere else in the world. Advair is one example.) I'm all for supporting R&D at pharmaceutical companies. I realize it's expensive and without it, no new drug would be developed. But when I see the monthly price of Advair®, then learn that the generic is blocked from sale in this country and that even the brand name is half the price abroad, when I am bombarded by the plethora of expensive ads for this drug on TV, when I consider the exorbitant, multimillion dollar salaries collected by big pharma executives who have nothing to do with research and development, I get a little peeved. I'm a generally healthy person, yet staying that way is now close to prohibitive.
On a positive note, BC the black cat has become a total love junky. He's resting his chin on my arm as I type this. The other cats still hate him; he scares Harley-Dude terribly and can't resist terrorizing Mr. Sox, so I'd still love to place him with a soft-spoken, patient person who will love him as an only cat. He's needy and follows me around like a puppy, always underfoot. It's annoying, but sweet. The transition would be rough for him, but in the long run, it would be best for everyone. He's very good with the dogs, too. That said, the odds of me finding a kindly cat person in Hawaii who doesn't already have too many kitties are slim.
We've harvested a whopping forty pounds of coffee cherry from our trees this year! I'd guess we have another thirty more to ripen, too. Eighty pounds of coffee should process down to about sixteen pounds roasted. Not a ton, but not bad. Here's the bucket we took in for processing yesterday.
Time to get back to my thesis. I'm almost finished. The final minutia, getting the layout and mechanics just right, is a buggah.
A hui hou. Malama pono. Aloha!
"Shit. There's another two grand, just like that! What's next?" I said.
"I know what you mean. It's like you're afraid to move because something might break and you can't afford to fix it," she said. I laughed, but truer words were never spoken.
I recently had minor surgery, a nether-regionectomy and gynecological spelunking as I like to call it. The medical staff at North Hawaii Community Hospital liked my description of the procedure and seemed amenable to changing its official name to exactly that, an NRGS for short. Prior to the surgery, my primary care physician had wanted to schedule me for an MRI. The ultrasound looked fuzzy, to get a clearer picture. I said no, since they were going to scope it anyway. It turned out to be a wise call. The surgery will cost me $800 dollars above what my insurance covers. An MRI would have set me back a bundle more. Medications are not covered by my plan, either. If they were, I'd be paying $600+/month premiums. As it is, they just hiked those by another $100 in January. That's about a 30% increase. The medicine itself, basic asthma maintenance, were I to buy it from my local pharmacy, would cost upwards of $350/month. (You should know that many drugs we're told do not have generic equivalents in the U.S. do everywhere else in the world. Advair is one example.) I'm all for supporting R&D at pharmaceutical companies. I realize it's expensive and without it, no new drug would be developed. But when I see the monthly price of Advair®, then learn that the generic is blocked from sale in this country and that even the brand name is half the price abroad, when I am bombarded by the plethora of expensive ads for this drug on TV, when I consider the exorbitant, multimillion dollar salaries collected by big pharma executives who have nothing to do with research and development, I get a little peeved. I'm a generally healthy person, yet staying that way is now close to prohibitive.
On a positive note, BC the black cat has become a total love junky. He's resting his chin on my arm as I type this. The other cats still hate him; he scares Harley-Dude terribly and can't resist terrorizing Mr. Sox, so I'd still love to place him with a soft-spoken, patient person who will love him as an only cat. He's needy and follows me around like a puppy, always underfoot. It's annoying, but sweet. The transition would be rough for him, but in the long run, it would be best for everyone. He's very good with the dogs, too. That said, the odds of me finding a kindly cat person in Hawaii who doesn't already have too many kitties are slim.
We've harvested a whopping forty pounds of coffee cherry from our trees this year! I'd guess we have another thirty more to ripen, too. Eighty pounds of coffee should process down to about sixteen pounds roasted. Not a ton, but not bad. Here's the bucket we took in for processing yesterday.
Time to get back to my thesis. I'm almost finished. The final minutia, getting the layout and mechanics just right, is a buggah.
A hui hou. Malama pono. Aloha!
Comments
The waste and profiteering here is shocking.