Good god, y'all, we SO need universal health care.

Has anyone done the study on the millions of dollars of lost US productivity from wrestling with insurers? I bet someone has.

Zorro is very cute, Lee!

Zorro! You should totally get him a cape.

I think I will be getting him a new name first.

>The classic American small town with a main street filled with houses within walking or biking distance of stores is also outlawed.

What do you mean, outlawed? There are a million small towns like this on the East Coast, at least up here in the Northeast.

I should have said outlawed building new ones. If they already exist, they are allowed to stay, but it is quite literally illegal in most areas to build new neighborhoods like the ones in those - usually even in those towns. That is take one of those million small towns. if a developer wants to build a new tract, the developer can't build it on the same pattern as the existing town. If it is residential it probably, under local law, has to have more parking than existing parts of town, has to place the new house further back from the sidewalk than in existing neighborhoods, probably can't mix residential and shopping the way they are in existing neighborhoods, in most cases has to be much lower density than existing neighborhoods. Existing towns like that were not outlawed, but building new ones, or new neighborhoods like the existing neigborhoods - in most suburbs and small towns that is quite literally illegal. If a developer wanted to be responsible and build a development that is liveable in the same way existing neighborhoods are, that developer is not allowed.

Felix

Felix

I like it!

I also like Abed

Zorro has great eyes. I think whoever handed him Zorro saw a resemblance to the mask, but I don't think that's his true name.

When my mother was in hospital we wanted to get alcohol wipes to clean something up for her, and the nurses told me that, no, we didn't really want them, because they tracked every single one, and billed us some startlingly large amount for each one.

RRUCLAMC? Tosses the little shit around like nobody's business. I hate when they crack open an entire box of tissues for my crying jag, but then again, I don't want anyone else's. Cooties.

Let me go look at see how much I might have cost this past weekend. So far, it looks like the food I got in observation is cheaper than the food in the normal parts of the hospital. Which makes no sense, because it's only one menu, and you can have pretty much whatever you want.

....I can't find the meds I get (well, I can't find meds in general--I suspect I'm looking aimlessly, as I am kind of even paying attention to the meeting I'm in), but at last check, my ER visits were about $2K a pop. Last time, between the reluctant ER and the more accepting Gonda, I ended up ingesting 150mg of Benadryl IV, and at least 16MG of dilaudid. Which, apart from being a massive mindfuck of a trip, was also an incredible waste.

No capes!

He's cute enough without a cape.

The nurses wanted to get stroppy with me when I brought in a box of tissues--they were new and hadn't been opened--it's just the hospital ones were scratchy, and we like the ones we use at home. Turns out, theirs were like $20 per box. Maybe more. I pulled a tylenol out of my purse stash (for me, as a visitor, not the patient). The patient offered to ask a nurse, but I didn't want him to have those dollars on his bill. Ridiculous.