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Donald's Blog
March 15, 2015 How we live now A new issue of The New Republic appeared on the newsstand, so I grabbed it, because it had me in it. I had been tipped off by my high school buddy Fritz Plous that David Hajdu had written an article about popular songs, and quoted me:
The Billboard chart had only been launched in 1940, and in fact the song was the first number one Billboard hit. It was still number one on the day I was born a few weeks later, which Hajdu did not mention, perhaps not wanting to broadcast my age to the world, gentleman that he is. Fritz and I had subscribed to The New Republic for many years. It was a weekly for 85 or 90 years, then a bi-weekly, and the new issue is for March/April 2015. Hajdu is the only familiar name in this issue, almost everyone else having quit en masse late last year (see below, January 20). On the Internet I learn that Hajdu had been at TNR for 12 years, and that he joined The Nation in January. I wonder if his article is one that TNR had in the bank. The rest of the current issue is a general interest magazine, and not a very good one; I found nothing in it to read. Once billing itself as "A journal of politics and the arts", It has suddenly come down a long way. Coincidentally, the Baffler also hit the newsstand this week, and contains a depressing if hilarious article by Chris Lehmann about his short career as a news executive at Yahoo. Yahoo hasn't been of much importance for a long time, but it has a lot of money and a lot of readers; unfortunately it is run by the same sort of Silicon Valley whiz kids who purchased The New Republic a few years ago, and who don't even know what journalism is. Lehmann describes what is happening to American journalism as "a slow-motion train wreck." The Baffler is what The New Republic once was, but funnier and more acerbic. The Washington Post said about it, "The writers possess a contagious enthusiasm for showing how today's profiteers have caked so much lipstick on the pig that you can hardly see its face." March 15, 2015 Bang Bang Thriller novelist Stephen King was quoted on Facebook:
A Dave Einhorn commented, "Simple, Buy a lockbox. Duh." His comment was accompanied by a picture of a small metal box big enough for a single pistol. He doesn't get it. He thinks that when the home is invaded, the miscreants will stand around patiently while he finds the key and unlocks the box. He just isn't paranoid enough. March 15, 2015 They're coming to get us Domino's is a successful national pizza chain. It offers so many toppings that Patrick Doyle, the CEO, calculates that there are 34 million possible combinations. Now the Food and Drug Administration is insisting that Domino's posts in every one of its 5,000 stores a menu board with calorie counts. Even if this would be of any help to customers, most of them are having the pizza delivered and will never see the signs, which will cost about $2,000 at each store and will have to be replaced every time there's a menu change. Somewhere else, it was reported, a Chinese takeaway was closed down, because among other things the authorities want the busy owner to check the temperature of each ingredient every two hours. Jim Duncan, our favorite food writer, reports that local authorities in Des Moines are undecided whether to allow food trucks around the city. Somebody commented that she would never buy from them: "How could you trust them?" she wrote. My comment was, "This year I shall reach the age of 75 without ever wearing a skidlid, using a hand sanitizer, or being afraid to patronize a hot-dog cart." Which I did yesterday in front of a Home Depot: I had a quarter-pound jumbo weenie slathered with raw chopped onions, ketchup and mustard, served to me in the warm sunshine, and very good it was too. But we cannot know how much longer such freedoms will last. This has nothing to do with "liberal" or "conservative", by the way. What we lack more and more is simple competence. March 15, 2015 The problems increase as you get older Most of my adult life I have been covered by group health insurance plans (except while I lived in England, where they are unnecessary). Since coming back to the USA in 1998, Ethne and I have been covered by employer plans at Barnes & Noble, The Texas State Senate, Meredith Publishing in Iowa, Barnes & Noble again when Meredith decided to double the employees' contribution, and then at Rodale Inc. in Pennsylvania. When Ethne's employment at Rodale came to an end she had been wanting to go freelance again anyway, and I was only working part time, so we signed up for Medicare, since we were more than old enough. We had to prove that we had been covered by adequate health care plans since becoming eligible for Medicare, otherwise we would have had to pay more for it. I don't quite understand that, since we had been saving Medicare money by not signing up, but okay, we obtained forms for each of us from four different past employers to the effect that we had been covered. This was a pain in the neck but an interesting experience: some of the people we had to deal with in the various human resources departments knew what they were doing while others were not firing on all cylinders. But when we turned up at the Social Security office in Colorado Springs on December 12 last, we had all our paperwork and everything was hunky-dory. Until we tried to get prescriptions filled. One of Ethne's prescriptions that normally cost $20 suddenly cost more than $300. Obviously we needed to get some supplementary insurance that covered prescriptions. I get that; Medicare has to pay for itself somehow, and you can't expect, at least not in this country, the kind of decent coverage you hope for after working and paying in all your life. So Ethne did the research (she's better at that than I am) and we signed up with Humana. We got cards from Humana, and the next time Ethne wanted that prescription filled, it cost $13. Now, there's obviously a scam going on here: if the drug company can lower its price that much for an insurance company that's charging us $10 a month or so, then somebody is being bribed or paid off, or the drug is grossly overpriced to begin with. But that's not our department; we know the score, but you get tired of the struggle. We were just glad to be with Humana, and have the problem solved. But now Humana is sending me letters saying that I am going to have to pay a penalty.
I do not believe any of this. I take a thyroid pill every day, and the co-pay has always been nominal; the Social Security Administration (and Medicare) have had all the documentary evidence they need, but Humana wants to screw me out of another ten bucks a month for the rest of my life! And since we have both had exactly the same coverage all these years, why am I alone being penalised? I have been on the phone twice with Humana (and I suspect I am talking not to Humana but to a call center), and the second letter still started "Thank you for choosing a Humana Medicare plan. We appreciate your business and your trust." I don't trust them at all. I cannot run and jump like I used to. There are a lot of things I cannot do too well anymore; we will not go into any detail. But must I also be punished with this bureaucratic incompetence for the sin of outliving my father? Don't they have computers?
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