The Right to Buy Pants

Today I should be in a better mood, after all, I have the day off from work. But alas, it's raining outside and I don't have anything planned besides babysitting the kids. My wife hates when I say I'm babysitting our kids. I guess I'm exerting direct parental control over my kids today.

I feel like I should write about health care. Well, I'm not not going to say much about it, except that it will hurt providers if more people sign up for some kind of "public option". The reason is the "public option" will likely pay Medicare rates, and who can live on that? Last year the Missouri Hospital Association was pushing this program where more Missourians could sign up and gain coverage through Medicaid. This was somehow supposed to be a boost to hospitals, who otherwise were seeing these patients as self pay. I opposed it, on principal. It's not worth dealing with all of Missouri's stupid Medicaid regulations to be paid 22 cents on the dollar (if you're lucky). Like right now...oh never mind. I was going to talk about the convoluted way you have to bill the drugs a Medicaid patient receives in the hospital, but this paragraph is too long already.

Let's talk about pants. I did buy some over the weekend-two pairs of jeans, dungarees. Why would I buy jeans? Well, I recognize that in this culture I live in there are many instances where jeans are quite appropriate, and I didn't have any that didn't have big holes in the knees.

The first pair I picked are Levis 501 button fly. I know, I didn't think I could wear those either, but I bought a size bigger than what I normally wear, and they actually fit. The second pair are made by Vans, the skateboarding shoe company. I thought they only made shoes. Who knew? At any rate, they were a size bigger also.

So, maybe I'm fatter now. Since I was 19 or 20 I've worn 32/32, but recently I've bumped the waist up to 34. But here's the thing, I'm pretty sure I'm not taller, yet I've also had to bump the inseam up to 34 as well. This is not just my jeans, is all the pants I buy. I feel like when my stats are recorded they'll have to put an asterisk beside my pants size earlier in my career. "*Pre modern era pants size."

This went a little long. Sorry. But that's how it is once I start talking about pants.

Medicare is My Fave

One of my favorite things that Medicare does is, if you're patient comes to you from a skilled nursing facility, you have to determine...oh, nevermind, it's too

Should we really shoot for living forever? Or even 100? It's damn expensive to live that long. And if you're living that long with Medicare, you're doing it on the tax payers' dime. That doesn't seem American to me (let's not talk about Medicaid right now).

Don't get me wrong, I love it when my tax dollars go toward opening up highway 13 to four lanes all the way to Springfield. I even enjoy paying for state dinners at the white house when the queen comes to visit. But should we subsidize dotage? I say no thanks.

Whoa, I think I just solved the healthcare crisis-stop providing healthcare to anyone that has a disease that could potentially be their last. (Doc, can we call it common cold and not pancreatic cancer?)

Seriously though, it costs a lot of money to stay alive when you're sick, and that money has to come from somewhere. I guess the queen will have to get used to picnics on the mall.