Sunday, Halloween 2010

Today is Sunday... a day of worship and we are thanking the Lord for his guidance and support...  I slept very deeply with the aid of a new sleeping pill...man did I need that!  Tracy slept well too... we awoke to the dawn of a new wondrous day... my man is coming home!!!... So many questions for the doctors....and they’ll be here soon...

Victorious T, Dr. Johnson, Wen Jeng, Bruno

Tracy is to use common sense.  Avoid lots of visitors. Rest... Riley will be ok ... T may even make it to Tuscany and the beach.  Slowly, carefully with 2 weekly visits to Stanford for chemo and bone marrow tests... we shall overcome.  They will monitor him carefully and Tracy understands the consequences....

Tracy wants me to get back to our health care story which is the story of many.... We are both self employed.  We pay our taxes.  We pay for a family Blue Shield plan and have been covered continuously for 17 years.  We were healthy at the start of the policy so, we elected a major medical plan with a high deductible so, we’d pay low premiums and pay for all medical visits... it was an emergency insurance policy.  Over the years, our premiums continually increased due to our aging...not for use or abuse.  Until the first incident of Tracy’s strange illness.  Then, after a 25 day stay in 2 different hospitals; our premiums grew by leaps and bounds... until we experienced what most people find insurmountable.... the premiums became larger than most mortgages along with a huge deductible.  At that point, most people give up... I believe that’s what the insurance companies want.  When the cost of insurance coverage competes with food on the table or the roof over your head or gas for your car to stay employed... that’s when you know this country is in trouble.  So, I played the game as best I could.  When our insurance premiums were increased by 40% last year ( in a year where we didn’t use the insurance and never hit our deductible)  to be clear... we paid for all treatment without hitting our deductible AND paid the exorbitant premiums... Now since Tracy is one and a half months younger, we made him the subscriber which delayed the dreaded increase 1.5 months and we increased our deductible to $8000.  This arrangement allowed that once the deductible was met;  our coverage was now 100%.  Thank God for intuition and just blind luck... Had we not elected to pay the higher deductible... we’d be in a world of hurt right now.  With a $4000 deductible, we had been responsible for 30% of charges after meeting said deductible.  We’ve been told that just T’s Stanford hospital room costs $35,000 per day.  OMG!!!  Talk about a world of hurt!!!!

It’s a sad state of affairs that in this our great nation people are forced to make unreal choices... some go without medical insurance because they simply can’t afford it and then, our nation suffers as a whole... wreaking havoc on emergency services, mental health and the prosperity of the masses....  We as a nation must find our way to health care for all... other nations do... and we must!!!


GO GIANTS!!!!  We let the Rangers save face last night... NOW FINISH 'EM OFF!!!!  


GO NINERS!!!  We need this one!!!