I haven't written here since October 21, according to my blogger dashboard. Yikes! I guess I don't think the day to day tedium is all that interesting, either to write about or for you to read about ;)
I've been working hard on my WIP, tentatively titled Iron and Rust. Since I've been basically unemployed since early October (I have a job, but my agency hasn't had any placements for me since then), I've decided to stop futzing around and get serious on this. I've got a daily target of 1500 words now, and when I sit down to write, I quit Firefox. It's been working fairly well. I've written 5000 words since Monday.
I'm vaguely concerned that I'm at 22,000 words and have reached the approximate midpoint of the story, since it should really be closer to 90,000 when I finish. But scenes seem to take up more space when I write them down than I think they will, and there's still the upcoming major battle. I also have a lot of places where I should go back and fix wording, add more detail and description, than sort of thing, and plenty of places where I could easily add another scene or even another chapter. I'll get through this draft and see where I need to add things in, do that, then go back and edit the details and repetition and suchlike. After that, it'll go off to betas.
In awesome news, I sold my 840-word short "U8: Alexanderplatz" to a historical speculative fiction anthology. I'm pretty stoked about that. Publication date is not yet announced, so I'll let everyone know as soon as I do.
I'm planning to go up to Mom's for Thanksgiving, and there's an exhibit of Safavid Persian and Ottoman Turkish art at the Sackler & Freer galleries, which I definitely want to see. Then Ben's folks are taking us to Disney World the week(ish) before Christmas. I haven't been since college, and none of them have ever been. Should be fun.
Less fun will be the crown I'm getting next month, with 2 or 3 more teeth my dentist is watching. This will be my fourth crown, and my second this year. If Blue Cross didn't have such stingy payments for bite guards, I could have gotten one six years ago and saved myself (and them, don't forget) several thousand dollars. Six years ago, there wasn't overwhelming proof that I grind my teeth, so they refused to pay. Bastards.
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
18 November 2009
03 May 2009
H1N1, space opera, and alternate history
These things are not all related, except inasmuch as I'm interested in all of them.
I'm a pharmacist, if soon to be unemployed, and I've done a certificate in Field Epidemiology through UNC School of Public Health. I'm fascinated by infectious diseases. So of course I'm following this new influenza strain.
Key thing to remember right now is that it's not any more lethal than a seasonal flu, at least not in the US, but that viruses mutate readily, so there's potential for it to be more lethal. Something like H1N1/1918 (Spanish flu) is most likely not going to be the case; there were a lot of extenuating circumstances in 1918 (World War I and troop movements, taking the virus along with them, for example.) We've got better drugs and better technology now, and we've got people working on preparedness stuff.
If public health works, nothing happens. Which is to say, if public health authorities are on the ball, encouraging social distancing, hand hygiene, and cough etiquette, then the outbreak will be contained. Unfortunately, the public perception will too often be, "Oh, they were exaggerating! Next time, I'll just ignore them." BAD PLAN.
I saw a call for submissions from Samhain Press (on The Galaxy Express SF/romance blog) for space opera romance novellas. I'm all over that! In my soon-to-be copious free time. Those are due 8/1.
I'm working on (sort of) an alternate history short story (5-10K) for June submission to Crossed Genres. I have an idea, and I'm researching stuff, hoping that the seed will grow into something usable.
Those two things are related, since the alternate history is the basis for the space opera. (Imperialism in space. Can't exactly grow from current history. Or could, but I like alt.hist stuff.)
If the weather stops going back and forth between sunny and cloudy and looking like it's gonna rain, I can go take a walk. (Added bonus of not working: more time to exercise.)
I'm a pharmacist, if soon to be unemployed, and I've done a certificate in Field Epidemiology through UNC School of Public Health. I'm fascinated by infectious diseases. So of course I'm following this new influenza strain.
Key thing to remember right now is that it's not any more lethal than a seasonal flu, at least not in the US, but that viruses mutate readily, so there's potential for it to be more lethal. Something like H1N1/1918 (Spanish flu) is most likely not going to be the case; there were a lot of extenuating circumstances in 1918 (World War I and troop movements, taking the virus along with them, for example.) We've got better drugs and better technology now, and we've got people working on preparedness stuff.
If public health works, nothing happens. Which is to say, if public health authorities are on the ball, encouraging social distancing, hand hygiene, and cough etiquette, then the outbreak will be contained. Unfortunately, the public perception will too often be, "Oh, they were exaggerating! Next time, I'll just ignore them." BAD PLAN.
I saw a call for submissions from Samhain Press (on The Galaxy Express SF/romance blog) for space opera romance novellas. I'm all over that! In my soon-to-be copious free time. Those are due 8/1.
I'm working on (sort of) an alternate history short story (5-10K) for June submission to Crossed Genres. I have an idea, and I'm researching stuff, hoping that the seed will grow into something usable.
Those two things are related, since the alternate history is the basis for the space opera. (Imperialism in space. Can't exactly grow from current history. Or could, but I like alt.hist stuff.)
If the weather stops going back and forth between sunny and cloudy and looking like it's gonna rain, I can go take a walk. (Added bonus of not working: more time to exercise.)
24 October 2008
Profit motive: leading cause of being uninsured.
From November 2007: One of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved.
Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.
This is the dream of free-market fundamentalists, y'all. Profit, profit, profit! Informed consumer choice! But in the reality-based community, informed consumers have no choice, when insurers won't cover them because the consumer will cost them money.
This all profit, all the time motivation has screwed up health care in this country so incredibly horribly. It's the reason state governments have had to mandate that insurers cover certain diagnoses, procedures, and medications. It's the reason the population of the uninsured is partly full of the uninsurable - people whose pre-existing conditions make premiums on the individual market impossibly expensive, if they can even find an insurer willing to give them a rate quote.
How many of you have time to read all the medical literature to be a fully-informed consumer of health care? How many of you can understand medical literature - the jargon, the stats, the pathophysiology? I work in health care, and I don't keep up with all the literature. It isn't possible.
Yet fans of consumer-driven health care (another product of the free market fantasy) believe that informed consumer choice is the ultimate in rational care. It's bullshit. It isn't. Patients rely on their physicians to be up to date on the best practices in their fields and to give them advice. It's not like buying a washing machine.
Is the insurance system in the US fundamentally fucked up? Hell yes. Would scrapping it and starting over be any better? Hell no. So we work with the shit we have to make it less shitty all around - for the patients. The consumers, if you will. I advocate single-payer plans like in France, Germany, and Taiwan. Getting there from the cobbled-together nonsense we have, let alone overcoming the modern American "fuck you, I got mine" ideal, is going to be really hard.
Some days I honestly think it would be easier to pack off to Berlin and be done with the heartless, selfish compatriots in this country.
Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.
This is the dream of free-market fundamentalists, y'all. Profit, profit, profit! Informed consumer choice! But in the reality-based community, informed consumers have no choice, when insurers won't cover them because the consumer will cost them money.
This all profit, all the time motivation has screwed up health care in this country so incredibly horribly. It's the reason state governments have had to mandate that insurers cover certain diagnoses, procedures, and medications. It's the reason the population of the uninsured is partly full of the uninsurable - people whose pre-existing conditions make premiums on the individual market impossibly expensive, if they can even find an insurer willing to give them a rate quote.
How many of you have time to read all the medical literature to be a fully-informed consumer of health care? How many of you can understand medical literature - the jargon, the stats, the pathophysiology? I work in health care, and I don't keep up with all the literature. It isn't possible.
Yet fans of consumer-driven health care (another product of the free market fantasy) believe that informed consumer choice is the ultimate in rational care. It's bullshit. It isn't. Patients rely on their physicians to be up to date on the best practices in their fields and to give them advice. It's not like buying a washing machine.
Is the insurance system in the US fundamentally fucked up? Hell yes. Would scrapping it and starting over be any better? Hell no. So we work with the shit we have to make it less shitty all around - for the patients. The consumers, if you will. I advocate single-payer plans like in France, Germany, and Taiwan. Getting there from the cobbled-together nonsense we have, let alone overcoming the modern American "fuck you, I got mine" ideal, is going to be really hard.
Some days I honestly think it would be easier to pack off to Berlin and be done with the heartless, selfish compatriots in this country.
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