The largest I’ve passed was about 4mm. It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever felt, and it took weeks to work its way through, even with the Flomax. Crying, moaning, writhing on the bed in pain, pissing blood. Malicious looking little thing. Looked like the ball on the end of a morning star. I passed two of those at once one time.
Because insurance pays for a portion of your treatment, rarely 100% of it, and the moment you start racking up bigger bills, insurance starts looking for ways to not pay your claims. They’ll put a hold on payment until you call them and broker a deal or they go back and forth with your doctor demanding that you receive some treatment other than what that doctor recommends.
I have Crohn’s Disease, an autoimmune disorder that is often treated with immunosuppressants. First, they did not want to pay for my initial “loading dose” because it has to be done by infusion. That’s a ~$25,000 procedure (3-4 hours on an IV). I talked them into it by telling them that only the first dose would be by infusion and the rest by self injection.
But when my company decided to pay for a less expensive insurance plan that started at the beginning of the year, they suddenly didn’t want to pay for the injections either. Now I owe 30% of the cost of my injections. That’s almost $4,000 a dose that I take every 8 weeks, about $25,000/year.
So now I use a coupon program through a separate company, and they bill the remainder of the balance to the company who produces the medicine who give me a $21,000 annual credit toward paying the remainder. So now to get my medicine I must coordinate between my doctor, a specialty pharmacy, my insurance provider, a company that runs the coupon program, and the company that produces the medicine… Just to get a syringe delivered to me on a schedule. And the credit probably won’t last until the end of the year; I’ll probably end up shelling out a few thousand for my meds around Christmas time this year.
If any of the complicated web of companies that collectively get me these meds doesn’t have everything lined up in their system, I don’t get my meds. My last dose was almost three weeks late to me because of all the calling around I had to do. Because we don’t have a central health care authority, that means each company maintains their own system of record. Each phone call involves working through a phone tree to get to a human agent, working through the same set of identity verification steps with them, explaining the situation over again to a different person every time…
It’s a real pain in the ass, and they do it on purpose to get you to give up. Having insurance doesn’t mean your health care is paid for, and you pay a premium (hundreds of dollars) on every paycheck to keep the insurance that still doesn’t pay for your medical costs. Having health insurance does not mean you don’t still pay through the teeth for your health care. Having health insurance does not mean that health care is accessible to you. Having insurance that makes health care accessible today does not mean they won’t change the rules behind your back, and that you will still have access to health care tomorrow.
It’s always a consideration, but the question is where would we move to (and how much am I willing to uproot my family)? Canada is a nice place with a better healthcare system, so maybe there? But that’s expensive all on its own, and I have to consider that I have two autistic kiddos who are currently receiving their education at the best school in the state for special ed kiddos. Is it worth it? Maybe not. For now, I think we should stay where we are. I love it here, except for the high cost of my own care. Think I’d rather stick it out and fight for a better system here. Maybe we can improve things for everyone instead of jumping ship.
Was just gonna say I’ve put an embarrassing amount of hours into Satisfactory, which is an “early access” game I paid like $20 for. Nothing wrong with it. It’s not an abandoned product, but even if it was I’d have a hard time complaining about it.
Yeah it’s alpha software. Even fully developed AAA titles ship with bugs. My point is they haven’t decreased my enjoyment of the game at all, and that’s a counterpoint to the meme.
Same. I’ve hired for a number of entry level DevOps type jobs, have read through hundreds of resumes, and have never once clicked on a LinkedIn profile. I don’t know what point it would serve, considering I expect it to be every bit the carefully manicured presentation that the resume itself already is. If you give me a GitHub link I might take a look, but I don’t hold it against anyone for not giving me that either.
Their economy would be fucked because they’d need to draw up an entire economy overnight. What is a US dollar to a non-American? What does a Texas bank look like, and how does it function differently from a US bank? Do the companies currently operating nationally across the US have the right or capability of operating in New Texas? What forms must they fill out to file their taxes? Where goes the money that was previously pouring into the Houston area due to NASA jobs that suddenly don’t exist there? What about the money in San Antonio, Waco, and other towns with military bases suddenly drying up? What about the fact that the federal government owns the land those military bases are built on? What do the private companies who operate phone lines and Internet backbones do with the physical media installed in the ground which they presumably own?
The people who are cheering on secession have no fucking clue about this stuff. They lack the ability to perform a reality check. They don’t even know how to question their ideas, and they don’t have any independent thoughts. Their minds are controlled entirely by their political and religious shepherds.
The politicians who lead them on with the idea they might get away with it don’t need to answer the questions. They say and do these things because the people who put them in power think of the argument for secession as the equivalent of a schoolyard fight. “Oh yeah, well if you won’t kick the transes out of the kickball game then I’m just gonna take the ball and go play kickball over there by myself.” It’s stupid and childish and completely unrealistic.
I hope I’m right that Abbott, et al, have thought of all this and are only grandstanding, allowing their collective lobotomy of a voter base to rabble rouse, and won’t actually go for this. It would be an absolute bloodbath when they all starve or get summarily executed as the full thrust of the most expensive military budget in the known universe blasts in to establish order.
Would help if they could back up their claims with any evidence of anything, too. It’s getting harder and harder to deny the reality that thousands of years have passed without the people who are most incentivized to prove their religious ideals showing any aspect of it to be true. At best, they have a failed apocalyptic preacher with a cult of personality. They look very silly at best when defending their invisible, non-corporeal, fire-breathing dragons to anyone with a basic capacity for observation, and fully destructive when attempting to overthrow democracy with symbols of iron age torture devices strapped to their necks and Christian nationalism flags waving over their heads.
What exactly is reasonable about supernatural beliefs? The reason they disagree is because religious ideas consist of made up nonsense. This naturally leads to fracturing because instead of following observable, repeatable facts to their logical conclusion, religions make up anything they want and then stand by it regardless of what observational evidence tells us. The Hubble space telescope didn’t exactly fail when it smashed into the firmament, you know.
Anything can be true when all you need to be convinced that it’s true is faith.
I guess my point is that faith is something you can have in anything. Faith never leads to correctness. Anytime it does, it does so completely by coincidence and has nothing to demonstrate why it’s correct. This is why religion leads people to hold factually incorrect ideas as truth, and why reality is arbitrary and unimportant to people who have been led to think that faith is valuable.
Right. Some people handle this well, others are not open to it. Willingness to adhere to monogamy is a thing that varies from person to person and must be discussed in any relationship. Ethical nonmonogamy is a thing, but it’s not for everyone, and it is a lot of communication and intimate work.
I think ethical nonmonogamy casts a wider net. I wouldn’t call myself a swinger. I don’t do parties or anything like that. But I’m still not monogamous and it’s still not cheating since my partner and I have an existing arrangement and regular check-ins.
This reminded me of myself age 8-9 when I would get stressed if I didn’t “undo” any rotations of my body, or rounds around a table. Quite to the annoyance of my teachers and parents. Did anyone else have a phase similar to this?
If I’m walking on a sidewalk and one foot falls on a crack, I have to step in a crack with the other foot, and the crack has to land at the same place on that foot. If it doesn’t, it creates additional imbalance that must be fixed by stepping on a different crack with the first foot in the position the other crack connected on the other foot. This is very silly, but it must be done. It also disproves the hypothesis that stepping on cracks breaks mothers’ backs because my mother has never broken her back and I’ve been doing this since childhood. I’m 39 years old. That’s a lot of cracks.
I just realized the theorem could be reworded slightly: Step on a crack, break a (not your) mother’s back. What if I’ve been inadvertently cracking spines on the other side of the planet this whole time?
Because he didn’t ask if he could go. He asked if the trial could be delayed. The judge is not telling him he can’t go. He’s saying the trial won’t be put off. And, as other posters have pointed out, this was a request that has already been made and denied a while back. Why would the judge’s answer change?
Hey everyone. After inheriting a bunch of old records, I started dipping my toes into this whole vinyl thing and… I think I’m hooked. I’d like to step a bit farther into this, but the deeper I get the more there seems to be to read up on. I’m beginning to get a little paralyzed by it, so I thought I’d ask for some...
What's the most evil hellish thing you've experienced firsthand in life?
Title.
King Charles III diagnosed with cancer, Buckingham Palace says (www.bbc.co.uk)
Oregon high court says 10 GOP state senators who staged long walkout can’t run for reelection (www.politico.com)
Can you muppets stop throwing away money on awful companies producing subpar games? (lemmy.world)
I propose 2024 is the year of early access games boycott....
My name is Guy Incognito (feddit.de)
Nothing is real rule (lemmy.ml)
[Moldy Monday] I Have Friends Rule (sh.itjust.works)
Some friends I just can’t shake...
That sure is a lot of guns you got there. lolol (i.imgur.com)
Joe Biden Faces Growing Calls to Federalize Texas National Guard (www.newsweek.com)
Religious 'Nones' are now the largest single group in the U.S. (www.npr.org)
When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.’...
Donald Trump has a big problem ahead (www.politico.com)
A whole swath of GOP voters appears firmly committed to not voting for Trump in November....
They wish (lemmy.ml)
Biden Stands To Gain Double-Digit Political Support If Marijuana Is Rescheduled, Poll Of Likely Voters Shows (www.marijuanamoment.net)
Net Rotations (xkcd.com)
This reminded me of myself age 8-9 when I would get stressed if I didn’t “undo” any rotations of my body, or rounds around a table. Quite to the annoyance of my teachers and parents. Did anyone else have a phase similar to this?
Legal experts: Trump lawyer’s “embarrassing” performance “making the jury dislike her intensely” (www.salon.com)
“Glaringly obvious” incompetence on display as judge tells jury to “disregard everything Ms. Habba just said”...
Blorbo rule (feddit.de)
Why Paramount Didn’t Market ‘Mean Girls’ as a Musical: ‘People Tend to Treat’ Them ‘Differently’ (variety.com)
Burgeoning vinyl enthusiast seeking guidance about next steps
Hey everyone. After inheriting a bunch of old records, I started dipping my toes into this whole vinyl thing and… I think I’m hooked. I’d like to step a bit farther into this, but the deeper I get the more there seems to be to read up on. I’m beginning to get a little paralyzed by it, so I thought I’d ask for some...