Health concerns (not alarming, just maddening)

First, I received a warning message in a dream last night. Apparently, while I have been launching a near daily seek and destroy mission against post menopausal facial hair in my brow, lip and chin areas, there has been substantial enemy incursion in my cheek areas. In fact, I had an incipient Civil War style beard putting down roots. Happily, like nearly ALL my dire dream accounts, this is not (yet) true.

John alerted me to an OPB account of PBM's with the Orwellian official name of Pharmacy Benefit Manager. It is not really a manager of benefits so much as it is a manager of the profit portion allocated to the players*. Spoiler alert: less and less over the past decades as these entities have consolidated and grown like cancers (my words, OPB is less straightforward). This has become an existential threat to pharmacies across the nation, but especially in Oregon due to an unintended effect of the Corporate Gross Receipts Tax in combination with how PBMs have structured the payment and purchasing schemes for their captives.

After getting a bit into the weeds via that report I think I now understand what is at play in my choice of Medicare Part D plans for 2022. This year my best choice was a mail delivery option via CVS Caremark. I had decided that the grief I got during the later half of 2021 getting two of my quarterly deliveries of prescriptions might require either a change of carrier, or a change to a local pharmacy. I researched this weeks ago and to my surprise, the best plan for me was with the same carrier, but with a local preferred pharmacy (I chose Walgreens). The surprise was how much MORE it would now cost to have a mail service. But based on the info from OPB, all too predictable.

My Mood Today

The financial squeeze put on Pharmacies by the PBMs (more correctly standing for Profits Belong to Me) left them with no financial survival strategy but to cut back personnel. Thousands of pharmacists and assistants were let go, while there was not only no reduction of work (filling, billing, advising, etc.) but an increase as the remaining shops had to absorb the customers whose pharmacy had closed.You can get all the unhappy details in this report if you think I am exaggerating: https://www.opb.org

I expect that the degraded access to pharmacies, and the degraded service at overwhelmed pharmacies will result in lower Rx costs for the Part D provider due to unfilled and unfillable scripts than the costs of the easier to fill delivered Rx. As I have a one month surplus of my regular drugs I am going to take my chances with the likely delays at Walgreens over the predictable annoyance and higher cost of a home delivery plan.

* Named Drug Mfg, Generic Drug Mfg, PBM, Insurer with prescription drug benefit (including govt. insurance), and pharmacy (roughly in order of possible available profit).

Here I am AGAIN

By here, I mean April 28, 2019: my blog post conundrum. Well, not EXACTLY the same, as you will agree (but only if you re-read the related post herein referenced).

Blah Blah Blah.  Here we go.

As of April 2019 I was a fully paid up Register Guard delivered paper subscriber. I once again had financial scruple consonance. This state continued until  March 2021 when I decided that the paper version of the local "rag" was too sad to continue. So I cancelled it and awaited the remaining balance of the year I had paid for.

I then experienced a local news blackout as I haven't sought television news for perhaps a decade. John suggested I go to online local news sites. I didn't. He showed me the online version of the Guard, and I decided to give it a try ($1 a month for six months). So I signed up, but decided that to avoid any confusion at the RG billing dept. (Now Gannett) I created this account under my secondary email address. I believed I had succeeded at this task, as I was charged for my first month: July 2021. I accessed RG on line and kept up on local news, local deaths, and Wed. through Saturday NYT crosswords*. And then, darkness once again descended. About two months later I was suddenly unable to log in. I even tried logging in under my prior email address. And there I was, with a fully paid up account. But I could not get online access. I procrastinated about a month and then called the only phone number I could find. It had a diabolical " customer service" phone tree which prioritized wanting a new subscription (paper or online). There MAY have been a chance to discuss a current account at the end of the Desperate Offers of Free Gifts From A Dying Product options tree, but I only lasted through 1.5 of them before saving myself and hanging up**. 

Somewhere I found a link to send an email inquiry. I bit. It warned it would be a delayed response, and it surely was. In addition it was completely unhelpful, except it gave me the phone number to call for assistance. As per above, I had been there, done that and remained help-free. But I decided to try one more desperate call, and this time I would immediately begin answering "No" to all desperate offers. This time, for unfathomable reasons, my THIRD choice was to connect to a PERSON🎆. He was patient, tried things, stayed on the line while I tried things, and then did something to activate my account. I was back with access! But billing is still not happening. I think I will just let the $5 I owe for 5 months, and whatever they may want after that just go the way of errant electrons. I believe that I have tried to assist their revenue flow to a reasonable, prudent, and sincere standard. I am OK will failing my strict financial honesty standard in this case. I have been beaten, but not broken.

* Mon and Tues not worth printing out and Sunday cannot be printed out.

** First desperate offer for anyone over 65 was a free emergency call button. Second desperate offer for anyone........I no longer recall. But it left me wondering if instead of extreme discounting the cost of a new subscription and offers of a gift they simply made it worth purchasing. They might survive a few more years as the value continues to devalue.

Breaking news: breaking dam in Northern Idaho

 

This map was in the Register Guard today without adequate explanation. Apparently the heavy rainfall (depicted in green) in the NW has breached dams in northern Idaho, spilling southeast. This is a visual depiction of Nature's system of planet balancing (GAIA). 

Perhaps, like you, I am wondering why THIS particular imbalance was the first modern example of Nature "balancing forces" to achieve conditions favorable to life.

I agree with Nature that the concentration of hostile, armed and pathologically misguided citizens in such a small area was a strange anomaly. And no Google search to date has explained WHY there? and WTF?

But we must applaud any attempt by Nature to re-balance this suffering planet and it's still extant life forms .

Here is an explanation of the Gaia hypothesis, which does not mean that it is WRONG. It may be bad, or not science. It may even qualify as a religion. If so, I am going to see if it is a 501c3 under US Tax Laws, and if so, I am going to ramp up my climate related contributions dramatically. Also, in light of THIS intervention, I will redirect my political contributions to a force which appreciates our threatened democracy and has proven it's determination to ACT NOW.  

Much can be "learned" on line

The scare quotes in the title are shorthand for when learned information is actually DIS. Yeah, you learned something alright. Now you are effed.

 A few paragraphs down in a WaPo article about China vowing to discontinue building coal fired plants for developing economy countries. I found these two paragraphs:

"Even as richer nations look to drive down carbon emissions to net zero, many low- and middle-income nations remain hesitant to set similarly stringent targets, in part because doing so would mean often abandoning the most readily available source of electricity: coal.

That reluctance is a problem for any hopes of a global solution to the climate crisis in Glasgow."

I had to reread that final sentence, as I was unaware of a climate crisis in Glasgow. I think the "in Glasgow" should have come following hopes.

Of course this awkward wording was unlikely to reinforce a prior belief in Glasgow's imminent tornado, flooding from a dying glacier, or other climate crisis looming over the gloaming (geographical fusion humor).

No, today I am turning my serious concerns (wrapped in my self described wit) to activate your alerts to the more subtle and hence more embedded  misinformation we absorb on line while intending to learn something.

1. This is everywhere: in photos of people, famous and not, wearing some form of a covid inspired face covering either a) not actually a useful mask (bandit bandana) or b) a potentially useful mask worn so as to fail. Notable examples of that include 1) tucked under the nose and 2) with obvious gaping gaps at the cheek level. Every one of these photos should include the disclaimer: VERY FEW COVID DROPLETS WERE PREVENTED FROM DOING THEIR WORST BY THE PICTURED "MASK".

2. Tilt-a-Whirl nutrition information. Photos of recommended healthy servings are thick on the ground and often oddly deficient nutritionally for the aesthetics of the photo. This annoyance in addition to the yoyo recommendations such as coffee good/not good/excellent, tea better, red wine good, but doesn't grape juice have the same anti-oxidants? Oatmeal with blueberries is an excellent breakfast. But will FOUR berries do it?

Petty nit picks? I suggest not. I suggest these seemingly harmless visuals imprint in minds and lead us astray. I also read that Dr. Fauci is trying to kill puppies. A photo of this atrocity being performed would lend that seemingly unlikely accusation much more weight for those difficult to delude.

 

 

Truth in geography

I believe it is seriously past time when we step up and call it like it is when we name anything on planet earth. Erudite people have long grasped the transience of our planet's crust, aka, where we all live. For example, the proper designation for an ocean beach is: temporary depositional feature. This is one of the few facts I retain from my college geology course (also, that going west into the foothills from Ft. Collins, you can identify the oldest formations easily as they are the grayest - but this is not universal).

This idea of being truthful popped into my head when I checked the NOAA weather site as I do daily. Often, in addition to asking for the Eugene SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) I also check out Florence as my dream of where to be during hot spells (aka, coming climate).

I was interested in the details underlying the Sunday-Tuesday high wind and coastal flooding alerts. This caught my eye under PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

"In southwest Washington similar conditions in the past have resulted in 

significant flooding in Raymond, erosion to homes and roads near Washaway

Beach along Highway 105 near North Cove, and/or erosion to campsites near 

Cape Disappointment."

NOW that's an honest, unadorned, and reassurance-free name for a beach! And likely a Cape.

We need a more honest name for Eugene such as:

Allergy Central, Hippie Dale, Gluten Gap, or Ungovernable?

But don’t worry about your address labels, we cannot agree to much of anything.

Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves

See how much disappointment can occur with dishonest or poorly researched place names?
 

 

 

Losing another touchstone to my youth.

But first, think about the recent task force created by President Biden: "Supply Chain Disruption Task Force". Maybe it is just me, but it sounds as if their task is to further disrupt the beleaguered supply chain. Apparently clarity of intent is not only of little concern, it may well be deliberately ambiguous in case it's outcomes tilt toward a worsening of the identified problem. Actually, a necessary and convenient fall-back interpretation of what the task force was indeed tasked with. Much like tasking Jared (of the untroubled mind) with sorting out that pesky Middle East. It has, in some way, been maximally sorted; as women of Afghanistan will confirm.

Now to the larger scale problem at hand: my sole remaining college electronic device has reached an untimely end. Yes, perhaps, a stereo component having a problem-free useful-life of over 55 years may seem remarkable. And I bet it is. Will the more au courant versions of this component have even a quarter of this long and faultless life span? Probably not, as we now expect electronic thingies to prematurely age, become unsightly, and embarrass us in the company of Early Adopters (common name: Beta Testers).

But I am this to my very core: a lazy, frugal Luddite. I already have much more technology than I know how to operate. WHY would I speed up my relentless slide toward technological incompetence and penury? NO!  This girl just wants to be able to play her CD's. I despise streamed music as I don't have complete control of what I will hear. I want to hear my favorite albums in their published form without interruption, or worse, scrambled with some algorithm-identified tunes. ENOUGH! If I want an anarchy of undesired audibles, I will tune in a radio channel. 

The electronic old war horse I mourn today is my Marantz Model 1030 Console Stereo Amplifier

I tried to disconnect it entirely, but was unable to trace back to the wall plug. Here is a photo of it "in situ" but askew. I just googled that silly description and got this:

Scholarly articles for askew in situ

The distribution of estrogen receptor-β mRNA in … - ‎Shughrue - Cited by 237 In situ localization of sodium-potassium ATPase mRNA … - ‎Crump - Cited by 30 In situ monitoring of the effect of ionic strength and pH … - ‎Knobloch - Cited by 7

An old concern put to rest

In a blog post on February 9, 2019 I expressed some concern that the traditional Presidential Library might be a poor fit for the then occupant of the presidency. But I think this political cartoon from the WaPo has the answer: 

Cartoonist Mike Smith 10/2/2021

In addition to the rich trove of tweets, videos of incoherent repetitive  rallies of misguided fans, and combative reality-free press "conferences" from the White House,

THERE WILL ACTUALLY

          BE BOOKS

Perhaps not books that informed the Former Occupant, but absolutely on his favorite topic:   

 🎆🎉🎈HIMSELF 🎇🎆🎊