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Health regime
Because I’m reading TMM now, the regular taking and recording of one's temperature reminds me of something personal. Last November my doctor thought my blood pressure was too high (high blood pressure: “the silent killer” -- are there any loud diseases?) so I started taking my blood pressure on a regular basis. Now I’m down to taking it every other day, it’s really quite low since I’ve altered my diet, but at first I was taking it multiple times a day -- once you buy the damn machine you may as well get some use out of it.
It actually took me a couple months to determine the best way and best time to take my pressure. The pages of early results are pretty pointless because I was unaware, at the time, of all the factors that can affect your pressure. As with body temperature, there is a circadian pattern, a high point is in the morning and a low at midday, so now I always take my pressure in the morning. The pressure is also influenced by eating and the state of your bowels, and how long you’ve been upright from bed, and sitting down. Now my readings take all this into account so that we are always comparing apples.
But what I still don’t know, and I’ve done a fair amount of online research, is if there’s a blood pressure equivalent to a stress EKG. In other words, is there a situation that particularly indicates and reveals a problem? Everything I’ve read has been silent on this subject.
American Health care
(Sung to the tune "American Woman" by The Guess Who)
Everyone knows American Health care is a mess, but I've always thought Kaiser Permanente was different. The concept behind Kaiser makes sense: instead of paying insurance premiums to a company that simply pays (what it thinks is fair) to the health providers you deal with, Kaiser is itself your health care provider, so it has an incentive to keep you health. (There are always standard "copays" but Kaiser is on the hook for the bulk of whatever health related costs you incur.) Kaiser even has its own pharmacies, so they can purchase in volume and get the best prices while eliminating contributing to the profits of third party pharmacies. All this works reasonably well. But the situation is different with the Medicare side of their operation.
I was never able to afford regular Kaiser coverage, but because Medicare requires that I cough up money for what is known as Part A (hospitalization) and Part B (other doctors and labs) and Part D (drugs), I thought it was maybe worthwhile paying a bit more and getting Part C, which is what Kaiser provides. They become my one-stop health shop.
But Medicare continues to pay a percentage of all costs, so the more office visits and more pharmaceuticals I'm on, the more money Kaiser receives from the government. Everything they do -- or prescribe -- is now a potential source of profit, which isn't the case with a non-Medicare client/patient. And they're not subtle about this. You get a free "Welcome to Medicare" exam when you join and at that exam I asked about two skin issues. My new doctor dragged in their "roving dermatologist" (which is a brilliant idea) who confirmed they just needed to be zapped off with liquid nitrogen. Only neither of them did that. Instead my doctor scheduled another appointment for me. So I had to return, pay a $35 copay on top of the much larger amount Medicare paid, so that my doctor, not the specialist, could zap me. And to add injury to insult, she didn't know what she was doing so the problem wasn't resolved. To be fair, one problem was resolved while the other wasn't.
So now I'm involved in what is basically Medicare fraud on a massive scale. But only for this year. I now plan to find a new doctor and go back to just Parts A, B, and D next year. Assuming President Fredo doesn't screw this up too.
The reason for this, strange, health issue of Regieren, is that I'm way ahead of schedule on blogging TMM. I really don't want to start reading Chapter 5 until near the end of July. There may be some filler posts, like this, but we won't revisit Hans for almost a month. Just wanted to give you a warning.
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