you never know how these things are gonna turn out

I’ve begun participating in a group foodblog, at lancelotsturgeon.wordpress.com

You never know — maybe this is exactly what I needed to jumpstart some writing, and I’ll reestablish this space too. Or maybe that blog will just be SO AWESOME and shiny and new, and I will have so many opinions about food that I’ll want to share with everyone, that this little blog will stay in its dusty corner of the interweb-attic. Maybe I need to take a class on when to use awful metaphors. Whatever, at any rate, I’m really excited about all of my collaborators’ participation, and at least one of them knows something about developing a personal brand online, so it might get some people-we-don’t-know traffic(!)
In any event, to all 14 of you who put this on your RSS reader ages ago and forgot it was there, thanks for not bothering to delete it. I hope that you will find reading Lancelot Sturgeon reward enough, but, uh, if it isn’t, I have some extra cookies I could send you.

still talking about health reform?

Yeah, me too. I don’t know whether it’s a gift or a curse, but I still have a rough idea of what’s in the bill on the table. That’s why when I see something like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/magazine/17FOB-ethicist-t.html
My son was dropped from our family’s employee-sponsored health insurance shortly after graduating from college in May. While filling out the application for a new policy, he asked me how to answer a question about his marijuana use in the past year. I said, “Honestly.” He checked a box indicating he smoked very occasionally and was denied coverage. Now he is uninsured while countless pot-smoking liars have coverage. My husband thinks I gave our son foolish advice. Do you agree?

[reply]

UPDATE: The son appealed the decision. The company remained adamant but said he could reapply in a year. [writer] says she believes it was giving him a nod and a wink, hinting that next year her son should simply lie. The parents were able to get him back on his father’s policy for $500 a month.

Let’s count the ways in which health reform would fix this situation:

1. kids get counted as dependents and can receive their parents’ insurance until 26, instead of now, when it’s 18-or-22-if-in-school

2. insurance companies can’t flat-out deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition, assuming that drug use was considered for its health, rather than legal, implications

3. they also can’t charge the kid astronomical premiums in lieu of denying coverage for said condition. The bill sets out the maximum allowable price differential between lowest- and highest-cost plans (based on factors like age, preexisting conditions, smoking, possibly gender (since women are more costly to insure)).

4. the hotly-debated insurance exchanges may not cover most Americans, but they would cover a recent college graduate who didn’t have insurance through an employer. And, because of changes to the actuarial risk-pooling in the individual policy market, it would be closer in line with what everyone else pays.

People of America (especially Scott Brown), these are all good things. Make it happen.

this is what work does to you

You read some puff piece in the NYT about aging and health-related anxiety:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/fashion/26genb.html

… and all you can think about is how *this* is exactly why our health care system is broken.
The guy doesn’t discuss any out-of-pocket costs, even as he receives a huge variety of often-speculative tests and treatments that no doubt generated thousands of dollars in bills (for his insurance company). When a doctor suggests an exploratory test, but there’s no associated additional out-of-pocket cost, any rational person would say yes — it feels like getting something beneficial for free. But those costs will be paid eventually, in the form of higher premiums or sick people getting cut from the insurance rolls or the lab refusing to take any more safety net patients (because your insurance company reimburses more money for the same procedure, so they get crowded out). The system as it is currently constituted allows people with insurance to pretend like basic economics (every decision has an opportunity cost) does not apply to health care. And it’s ironic that this piece appeared at the same time as strident Paul Krugman op-eds without recognition that it is compelling evidence for cost control.

Dear WMATA,

If I wanted a commute to consist of a lot of minutes not going anywhere because of congestion, I’d buy a car.
… and gas, and insurance. Because at least then when you’re sitting in the middle of nowhere, you get a little sunshine. And you can sing to yourself without people looking at you like you’re crazy.

food update

Earlier this week, I went to a friend’s dinner party. Intent on doing something at least somewhat impressive, I offered to bring from-scratch gnocchi. How did it turn out?

Remember Mother’s Day when you were eight years old? When you wanted to make your mom brunch in bed? And you got up all early to start and banged around the kitchen and although you told her to sleep in and she did, you took so long that she woke up so you had to send your sibling in to run interference and prevent her from leaving bed so you could serve the breakfast on a tray? And how you used basically every dish in the kitchen and got mess all over all the counters and it took several hours? And then the end product was, well, a lesson in how cooking breakfast requires some skill or practice…

It was almost exactly like that. Right down to the flour dusting my tshirt and caked onto my hands.

They turned out edible, if a little bit malformed and bland. A decent start, I suppose, to acquiring a new dish, but not exactly at dinner-party-impressing level.

All the way to the conference finals and we DON’T HAVE AN INBOUNDS PLAY? How much are we paying George Karl to not be able to draw up a set play during a key stretch of the 4th quarter THREE TIMES ALREADY this series? Aiyah, Denver.