Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted
2 hours ago, Armybrat said:

Well, my good time in this hospital is costing about $338/minute for a 6 hour stay.

 

IMG_4967.jpeg

That’s freaking smoke and mirrors. Completely made up numbers. Insurance won’t pay anything near $122,627. It’s a freaking racket and we’re all getting screwed. 

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Rage+1 2
Posted
1 hour ago, tbone_ said:

Totally agree those are bullshit numbers.

But how exactly is he getting screwed only paying a $250 copay?

He and everyone else are getting screwed because the premiums need to reflect the insurance payout be it $122k or $61k or $30k or whatever the true payment is. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, tbone_ said:

Totally agree those are bullshit numbers.

But how exactly is he getting screwed only paying a $250 copay?

He’s not getting screwed with the copay, but @52-80’s point above is the issue. 

  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Posted
14 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

How do you know the premiums don’t reflect the true payments?

if they do, then 122k is insane cost of service and hence the expensive family premium ($25k/yr for contribution from employee+employer)

if they dont, the insurance companies go out of business. 

  • Like 1
Posted

anyway, to get back on topic, ive been fighting the goddamn flu, and its the worst thing since covid, and the 2nd illest ive ever felt. 
 

also, michael jordan was hungover on game 5. cmon, aint nobody playing 44 minutes of ball with a flu. 

  • Like 1
Posted

Ordered me a pair of hearing aids, guess it’s better than not hearing. Getting old does suck. I ordered the Jabra Enhance 500’s, any feedback on performance?

Posted
27 minutes ago, RMac5 said:

Ordered me a pair of hearing aids, guess it’s better than not hearing. Getting old does suck. I ordered the Jabra Enhance 500’s, any feedback on performance?

What?

  • Like 2
  • Haha 3
Posted
3 hours ago, 52-80 said:

anyway, to get back on topic, ive been fighting the goddamn flu, and its the worst thing since covid, and the 2nd illest ive ever felt. 
 

also, michael jordan was hungover on game 5. cmon, aint nobody playing 44 minutes of ball with a flu. 

What I have found out on my own has been the years is that the flu is the worst I have ever felt while sick. The only way I helped to mitigate it the times I did have it was to go to the hospital and get an IV. I got better far quicker doing that than trying to ride it out in the bed at home.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
5 hours ago, 52-80 said:

He and everyone else are getting screwed because the premiums need to reflect the insurance payout be it $122k or $61k or $30k or whatever the true payment is. 

Correctomundo!

  • Like 1
Posted
9 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

What I have found out on my own has been the years is that the flu is the worst I have ever felt while sick. The only way I helped to mitigate it the times I did have it was to go to the hospital and get an IV. I got better far quicker doing that than trying to ride it out in the bed at home.

We had the flu vaccine in previous seasons but skipped the last one. Never again. Shit is torture. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

Life just isn't fair.

When my wife bought a Magic Wand vibrator, the family said she was just a sexy kitten wanting to have a little bit of naughty fun.

But they called me a fucking pervert when I bought a 240 Volt FuckMaster Pro 5000 latex doll with inflatable DDD cups, 6 speed self-lubricating pulsating vagina, elasticized anus with non-drip semen collection tray, together with optional built in realistic orgasmic moaning and screaming Bluetooth surround sound system.

I probably should have posted this in Lame Jokes, but I think it's technically more Limp than Lame.

  • Haha 2
Posted
6 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

Jfc, if I didn't have insurance my upcoming procedures would be around 25k. Still have to pay 1500 out of pocket tho.

As I said above, completely made up numbers. The whole health care system is smoke and mirrors when it comes to pricing. The results are real and good, best in the world, but the way we finance it is insane. 

  • Like 1
Posted
10 hours ago, nnm said:

As I said above, completely made up numbers. The whole health care system is smoke and mirrors when it comes to pricing. The results are real and good, best in the world, but the way we finance it is insane. 

I spent 3 hours yesterday arguing with United Health and our insurance rep about coverage. I turned 65 last year and signed up for Medicare Part A, even though I had insurance at work. I read about the 20 person rule for establishing primary coverage for payments. I called our boss and he said we had 21 people insured so we were good. Fast forward this year and United is not paying any claims because they say Medicare is primary because we have less than 20 people insured. Since I didn't sign up for part B, Medicare isn't paying doctors visits. When I called United and insisted that we had 22 people insured now, they said that they use a formula to determine the number of employees we have signed up and the formula says we only have 19. Never mind that we're paying premiums for 22 people.  

I called our insurance rep to complain about getting screwed because I was paying premiums but they were refusing to pay the bills and I was stuck paying for the entire amount. He kept telling me that they were paying bills, just not mine.  He said it a dozen times. He didn't seem to care that I didn't give a rats ass about anyone else's payments, just mine. "Your just stuck in an unfortunate situation". Screw them all........

 

  • Rage+1 6
Posted
On 2/13/2025 at 4:44 PM, RMac5 said:

Ordered me a pair of hearing aids, guess it’s better than not hearing. Getting old does suck. I ordered the Jabra Enhance 500’s, any feedback on performance?

I’ve been wearing those for about 6 months (age 71).  Love ‘em.  Far from perfect in a loud, clattery restaurant environment, but still gamechangers.  I even had to adopt a hand signal for my long-suffering wife (no photos) to turn her damned volume down when I have my ears in.  You won’t regret the purchase; comfortable enough I wore ‘em to bed last night (again) and had to roll out and take them to the charger in the kitchen.  Got mine at Costco.  I’m saying, don’t wait!  I waited at least 3 years too long-huge quality of life issue

  • Like 1
Posted
11 hours ago, nnm said:

As I said above, completely made up numbers. The whole health care system is smoke and mirrors when it comes to pricing. The results are real and good, best in the world, but the way we finance it is insane. 

I spent 50 years working in health care in the US; the only part of this I question is “best in the world.”  Look up some real world comparisons and see how mediocre we can be.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 2
Posted

I stood up from my desk and my back gave out. Had a shooting pain that went all the way down into my ass cheek. I cried out like a bitch, luckily no one heard me. I staggered to where I needed to go without too much trouble. 

20 mins later, had to get up again. I got up with no problems. WTF?

  • Rage+1 3
Posted
1 minute ago, Sandman said:

I stood up from my desk and my back gave out. Had a shooting pain that went all the way down into my ass cheek. I cried out like a bitch, luckily no one heard me. I staggered to where I needed to go without too much trouble. 

20 mins later, had to get up again. I got up with no problems. WTF?

I have a ruptured disk that intermittently does this to me.  Sometimes it's like your case, temporary and low duration, and sometimes it lasts a week or more.  Sucks, but nothing I can do about it.

Posted
11 minutes ago, Scheiss Meister said:

I have a ruptured disk that intermittently does this to me.  Sometimes it's like your case, temporary and low duration, and sometimes it lasts a week or more.  Sucks, but nothing I can do about it.

Yeah, I have had 2 bad discs for over 25 years. It just got the jump on me today, dirty bastards.

  • Rage+1 2
Posted (edited)
22 minutes ago, Sandman said:

Yeah, I have had 2 bad discs for over 25 years. It just got the jump on me today, dirty bastards.


Same here. Wait til it happens when you lean over to fart. 

Edited by thunderlounge
  • Rage+1 1
  • Fuck Around and Find Out 2
Posted
19 hours ago, Scheiss Meister said:

I have a ruptured disk that intermittently does this to me.  Sometimes it's like your case, temporary and low duration, and sometimes it lasts a week or more.  Sucks, but nothing I can do about it.

I drove trucks and ran construction equipment for years. Sometimes I can just lean over to grab something and the walls come tumbling down. Getting up from a chair is interesting, too.

  • Rage+1 3
Posted

I had two teeth pulled Thursday morning.  At age 65 & 10 months, I am now down to 23 of my original 32 teeth, but those 23 seem to be in good shape for now.  I'll be getting another partial to fill the gap in a few weeks.  I'm still paying for all the sweets I consumed as a teenager.

Posted
I had two teeth pulled Thursday morning.  At age 65 & 10 months, I am now down to 23 of my original 32 teeth, but those 23 seem to be in good shape for now.  I'll be getting another partial to fill the gap in a few weeks.  I'm still paying for all the sweets I consumed as a teenager.

61f4888e55cd8d1a7b7b10fb24b6b0d9.gif
  • Like 2
  • Haha 3
Posted
On 2/21/2025 at 2:30 PM, nnm said:

Everyone should read this book.  It is NOT CR nonsense.  Outstanding discussion of the broken state of affairs of our health care system, top to bottom, by a Johns Hopkins doc.

https://a.co/d/eulwIZ9

71FLm6JXLdL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg

 

There’s nothing truly political about capitalism’s impact on our health system. Pharma, insurance, hospital systems, and their impact. When profit is first in an industry that should be about caring for people first there’s going to be a problem. Add everyone wants an easy fix and you’ve got a health system failing us at every turn. 

fact is doing the right things is a hard road to take - truly eat well - veggie/fruit lead diet, exercise correctly and often, sleep well, destress, have quality relationships you nurture, and I now add cultivate and care for your brain health. That’s almost a full time job, but it’s the only true path to wellness. 

  • Like 2
Posted
On 2/20/2025 at 3:30 PM, Scheiss Meister said:

I have a ruptured disk that intermittently does this to me.  Sometimes it's like your case, temporary and low duration, and sometimes it lasts a week or more.  Sucks, but nothing I can do about it.

A diskectomy (discectomy) is a surgery to remove part or all of a disk in your spine. It's for herniated disks that don't respond to nonsurgical treatment. There are a few types of diskectomies, including open surgery and minimally invasive surgeries.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
On 2/22/2025 at 11:12 AM, CatManDo said:

I'll be getting another partial to fill the gap in a few weeks. 

You should really go implants. Partials/bridges suck.

Posted
5 hours ago, Vegas64 said:

A diskectomy (discectomy) is a surgery to remove part or all of a disk in your spine. It's for herniated disks that don't respond to nonsurgical treatment. There are a few types of diskectomies, including open surgery and minimally invasive surgeries.

I've discussed that with my doctor.  He doesn't recommend it now, but may in the future.  One of my brothers had it done and got very mixed results, so I'll just wait.

Posted
1 minute ago, Scheiss Meister said:

I've discussed that with my doctor.  He doesn't recommend it now, but may in the future.  One of my brothers had it done and got very mixed results, so I'll just wait.

Can you explain further for those of us who are looking into this?

What do you mean mixed results? Pain and Issue relief but then created some other issues?

Why does your doctor not recommend it?

Posted

Make sure you do quite a bit of due diligence before letting anyone cut on your spine.  This podcast scared the hell out of me:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-death/id1421573955

According to Wikipedia:  33 incidents of gross neurosurgical malpractice while working at hospitals in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, which maimed 31 patients and caused 2 deaths.  He was accused of injuring 33 out of 38 patients in less than two years – a track record so unlikely that hospital administrators and district attorneys simply felt that it was too unbelievable to be true, allowing Duntsch to continue to practice before his license was revoked by the Texas Medical Board, and to avoid prosecution for years. In 2017, Duntsch was convicted of maiming one of his patients and sentenced to life imprisonment.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Duntsch

TLDR:  Grossly unqualified spinal surgeon in Dallas butchered his patients because he quite literally had no idea what he was doing.  Dallas hospitals allowed him to hop from hospital to hospital with no warning, and the Texas Medical Board did not act in anything like a timely manner to keep people from being maimed.  In other words, there's nothing other than word of mouth by which patients can tell if their doc is competent.  

Posted
Just now, Vegas64 said:

Can you explain further for those of us who are looking into this?

What do you mean mixed results? Pain and Issue relief but then created some other issues?

Why does your doctor not recommend it?

According to my GP and others whom I've seen about my back, back surgeries are tricky, and more frequently than I'm comfortable with result in no improvement or even further degradation.  Right now it hurts infrequently enough and I have enough range of motion that I don't want to risk surgery that may or may not give me relief and full range of motion.  As things progress, that may change.

The brother who had the diskectomy had about the same amount of pain for a while after the surgery, and got a little better range of motion.  As I understand it, the pain is still low, but he doesn't have the same range of motion.  He also still gets back pain at about the same frequency that I do.  That's less frequent than before, but still uncomfortable.

Unless you have an injury, back pain is largely caused by carrying too much weight in the front.  And too much weight in the front often causes back injury, or makes one more prone to back injury.  My brother and I both (he more successfully than I) have greatly improved our back problems by losing weight, stretching, and working our cores.  I think that it has helped us both more than surgery would.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

Unless you are losing strength as a result of nerve impingement, surgery should almost always be your absolute last resort treatment for spinal issues.  If you cut early you may (may) have fantastic results.  You may (may) end up way, way worse post-op than you were pre-op.  The most likely result is you may end up in about the same state post-op as pre-op.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

Purely anecdotal. FWIW, out of five or six different folks I know, all but one wound up worse off following spinal surgery. Maybe relief at first, but increased problems in terms of pain and/or mobility in year or two.

The one with good results suffered a broken neck - bad c4 injury - in a vehicle accident and according to quacks likely would have died if a survivor hadn't kept him breathing until EMT arrived and took over. He spent weeks in ICU and months in a halo. No problems later that I know of.

Posted

I've shared this before, but I fucked my back up in 2000. Finally got an MRI in 2004. Bottom disk has degenerative disk disease. Basically it's  a hollow shell of a disk. It makes a picture, but that's it. It's toast. The disk above that is (or was) fine, but the one above that was hanging half out. They called it bulged, but half-slipped seems a better description.

At that time, my doc said I was a perfect candidate for disk replacement. However, he told me without sugar-coating it that if I could hold off and "make due" at least one cycle (they were 10yr replacement cycles then, no idea what they are now) then I should. As that was one less cycle to go through, one less chance for something to happen, etc.

So after that, he gave me some core stretches to do, and guided me on finding triggers, and trying to avoid them as best I could, knowing there would be times it couldn't be helped.

Since then I've done those stretches every morning before getting out of bed. I also see a chiropractor, and a massage therapist. I also try to avoid triggers as best I can. If I need to do a task that I know can trigger it, I side with the moderation route. Work a few minutes, rest twice as long. Rinse and repeat until it's done.

For me it's worked well enough. Is it perfect? Oh hell no. And it can be a tad inconvenient from time to time. However, it's worked, and if you did the math, I've been able to hold off at least 2 cycles, and working through the third. As things stand now, without significant changes to the situation, I don't see it ever being worth it in my current condition.

And just so we're clear, I went about 6 years without being able to play golf. Those stretches caught up eventually, and I've been back to playing regularly for over 15 years. Granted I did make a minor swing change, and did lose a tick of distance, but that's ok. I can still go play, whenever I want, and not worry about if I'll be on the couch for 2 days.

My wife on the other hand, had a foraminotomy done on hers in 2007. It helped a little bit initially, but within 3 years she was back to where she was before, and was never off the pain pills afterwards. Looking back, it wasn't worth it. She got lucky to only be back to about the same, instead of worse off than she was.

 

Posted
4 hours ago, thunderlounge said:

I've shared this before, but I fucked my back up in 2000. Finally got an MRI in 2004. Bottom disk has degenerative disk disease. Basically it's  a hollow shell of a disk. It makes a picture, but that's it. It's toast. The disk above that is (or was) fine, but the one above that was hanging half out. They called it bulged, but half-slipped seems a better description.

At that time, my doc said I was a perfect candidate for disk replacement. However, he told me without sugar-coating it that if I could hold off and "make due" at least one cycle (they were 10yr replacement cycles then, no idea what they are now) then I should. As that was one less cycle to go through, one less chance for something to happen, etc.

So after that, he gave me some core stretches to do, and guided me on finding triggers, and trying to avoid them as best I could, knowing there would be times it couldn't be helped.

Since then I've done those stretches every morning before getting out of bed. I also see a chiropractor, and a massage therapist. I also try to avoid triggers as best I can. If I need to do a task that I know can trigger it, I side with the moderation route. Work a few minutes, rest twice as long. Rinse and repeat until it's done.

For me it's worked well enough. Is it perfect? Oh hell no. And it can be a tad inconvenient from time to time. However, it's worked, and if you did the math, I've been able to hold off at least 2 cycles, and working through the third. As things stand now, without significant changes to the situation, I don't see it ever being worth it in my current condition.

And just so we're clear, I went about 6 years without being able to play golf. Those stretches caught up eventually, and I've been back to playing regularly for over 15 years. Granted I did make a minor swing change, and did lose a tick of distance, but that's ok. I can still go play, whenever I want, and not worry about if I'll be on the couch for 2 days.

My wife on the other hand, had a foraminotomy done on hers in 2007. It helped a little bit initially, but within 3 years she was back to where she was before, and was never off the pain pills afterwards. Looking back, it wasn't worth it. She got lucky to only be back to about the same, instead of worse off than she was.

 

That's crazy.

Anyone got any hip stories now? Was talking to my old boss who got a hip done. We are getting really old, man.

Posted

Today would be my Dad's 100th birthday. Everybody thought it was last year but I know he lied to get in the Coast Guard in WWII. Lets just say homebirth birth certificates were easy to manipulate.

He served on a sub chaser out of Norfolk and they had 1 probable sinking of a German sub. He got transferred to the Pacific theater assigned to an LST and was Coxswain of a Higgins boat at Iwo Jima. After the war he married my Mom and lived in California for a while working as a Line Crew chief for SoCal Edison. In the late 50's they moved back to Archer City where Dad owned the Texaco station on the corner of the square for a few years. It's in The Last Picture Show. He sold that, moved back home to Chico and went into trucking for the next 20 years. In the early 80's built a small bar/bbq joint in that did decent business for a few years before he retired.

Of course while all this is going on there was the ranch to run, cattle to mess with, all the day to day stuff. He smoked 2 packs of Camels and drank a fifth of WL Weller every day. They weren't all good times, they weren't all bad times. He was a force of nature, bigger than life and I swear Mike Judge used him as inspiration for Cotton Hill. 

  • Like 7

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...