The Haphazard Blog

Health care has been something that has been of interest to me personally for a long time. Pretty much since I had my accident I’ve known a lot more about health care and insurance companies than I likely otherwise would. I’ve had multiple health insurance providers over the years and use more of the benefits than most people.  I have a lot of experiences, both good and bad, with insurance companies and providers. I try and follow this current mess as best I can.

Last night, Obama tried to make his pitch again. Just watching the speech, you can see why nothing gets done. People just dig in and that’s it. In the months before they were just working on a bill. Nothing was final. Instead of having discussions and debates about problems people have in the bill, they run to the media and just start accusing each other of trying to do something. The best example is Betsy McCaughey. She started the “death panels” mess. She isn’t in elected office, so she really has no responsibility to the people, but all the other people who jumped on her claims should be ashamed. On the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (part 1, part 2), she explained why she felt that way, and basically it was a combination of a couple paragraphs in the bill. I don’t agree with her interpretation, but instead of running to the media and declare that is what the bill does, why not have a discussion and change the language so you’re comfortable with it? Instead, it’s more important to put on a show than do something for the people. For most, it’s not about serving their constituents, it’s about getting re-elected and having a job that entitles you to so perks and freebies.

Another thing that drives me nuts is declaring we have the greatest health care system in the world. Saying it over and over does not make it true. It only serves to harden people into thinking any change to the system is going to be bad. Especially if the system exists elsewhere. The United States does have many of the most sought after specialists in the world. No one mentions these top specialists can’t see everyone for many reasons (simple time (X patients/day), lack of payment means, geographic barriers, etc.). There is also a lot of cutting edge research performed using private R&D budgets and government grants. However, many countries (Finland, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Sweden) have significantly increased R&D spending (as a % of GDP) over the years. Other countries are trying to close the gap on innovation. Not to mention the results of this research spreads more quickly.

We have countless systems to deliver health care now. A few of the bigger programs:

• Private Health Insurance – $775B
• Medicare (for the elderly primarily) – $431.2B
• Medicaid (for lower income people/families) – $329.3B
• Out of Pocket – $268.6B
• Veterans Affairs (for the Armed Services) – $33.8B
• CHIP (for children of lower income people/families) – $9B

It’s quite a mix of services provided to people. You’ve probably heard this before, but in 2007, the United States spent $2.2T (16% of GDP) on health care. No one even comes close to this (as a total amount or % of GDP). France was 2^nd in % of GDP at 11%. Norway was 2^nd in terms of amount spent per person ($4,763 vs. $7,290). Keep in mind that if everyone in the United States was insured, that number would be even higher.

Let’s just assume that every system in the world is inadequate. Canada is often criticized for long waits (there are waits here). They spend $3,895 per person. I’m confident that we could easily address that with the $1T difference in health care spending per year. How about England where they ration care (plenty of rationing here: insurance company denies coverage, AMA limits medical school seats, arbitrary caps on treatment/coverage) and spend $2,992. Do you think $1.3T per year would cover that flaw up?

There is no good reason that we lack a solution to insure everyone AND spend less than the $2.2T spent in 2007 on health care. Instead we will have no real movement and this guise that we can only reduce the insane growth and need to spend (tax) even more to cover everyone.

Last night, I went to the Zakir Hussain concert in Wichita. I thought it was OK. Zakir Hussain has amazing skills in playing the tabla. The music was good throughout the first part of the show. The thing that really hurt this part of the show was his wife, Antonia Minnecola. She was performing the dancing to the music, explaining some of the story to the dance and as best I can tell was trying to teach the audience about music. I think it was supposed to be the beat (“duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-dah”). To put it bluntly, she’s old. Her dancing movements were not fluid at all. I spent way too much time thinking this. Since she was the only person dancing and I’ve seen better at Diwali shows done by kids who practiced just for a few weeks it was a huge distraction and just dragged down the performance. They really need to get a better dancer, or what would be better is a group of dancers.

The second part of the show was Zakir Hussain and another person playing the harmonium. This was where his talent really showed. I was sitting about 40 feet away from him. I can’t explain how fast his hands/fingers were moving while playing the tabla except to say they were a blur. It was amazing and did not seem humanly possible.

Some other entertaining parts of the show was the head of the Cultural Association of India in Wichita, Ashok Aurora. He was in full-on mini-tyrant mode from the beginning. Some highlights:

• Before the concert started he told those who were seated that no one can get up for the next 45 minutes. He left out the part that he meant once the show started that Zakir Hussain does not want people to move around that are in his eye line because he finds it distracting.
• As the show was starting, someone took a picture and he flipped out. First he tried to find the person and then after having no luck made an announcement that no photography was allowed and the next person would be removed. (May want to make that announcement before hand or put up a sign.)
• Right before the intermission, Zakhir Hussain said he would be starting again in 9.5 minutes. Then Ashok told the audience we’d have a 15 minute break. So a lot of people left to get what was basically a light dinner. As you might guess, no food or drinks were allowed inside the theater so people had to eat outside the the theater. Zakir Hussain was ready to start at 9.5 minutes (in the meantime, someone outside was announcing “X minutes left” using a 15 minute count down) and people were constantly coming in while he was trying to talk. He’d wait (and you could tell he was getting real mad), then continue, then stop again. Every time someone would come in a flood of noise from people talking outside would come into the theater. Finally he asked Ashok directly what he wants him to do. Ashok went outside and yelled at everyone that they were closing the doors and no one would be allowed back in the theater. He caused the whole problem!

Here are a couple YouTube clips of Zakir Hussain:
Zakir Hussain’s Master of Percussion – Video has  slow frame rate, but you can hear how fast the beats are.
Longer Concert Clip

Updated 9/10/2009: Another person who went to the show told us she had seen him before and he (not his wife, she agreed she stunk) put on a much better performance. It looks like he took his anger out on us during the second part of the performance.

My brother told me the Patriots traded Richard Seymour this morning. I was definitely shocked. Once I found out the compensation from the Raiders (2011 #1), I started to really think about it. My feeling was that’s it? Using the system from past drafts, that’s either a low 2010 #1 or 2010 #2.

I thought of other Patriots trades. They traded Matt Cassel and Mike Vrabel for a #2. Cassel signed a new contract worth Tony Romo money. Matt Schaub netted two #2s for Atlanta and he signed a smaller deal. Richard Seymour is an All-Pro and constantly mentioned as a top 5 lineman. They traded Deion Branch for a #1 before the 2006 season and he isn’t a #1 WR. Dallas traded a #1, #3 and #6 AND paid Roy Williams the same as Randy Moss ($9M/yr). Why did they trade him for so little?

I can see why they traded him in general. They can’t franchise him and Vince Wilfork at the end of the season. One of them would be able to walk. If either walked, the most they could get is a 3rd round compensatory pick in the 2011 draft. Seymour is older. The defensive line was shutting down the run well all preseason using a lot of groupings including rookies like Ron Brace and Myron Pryor. Not sure how this affects the pass rush. There’s also potential to have a very high pick in a draft that may have a rookie wage scale. The team isn’t better, but hopefully they aren’t noticeably worse. I guess we’ll see as the season goes on. The defense is supposed to be the weak link with a returning Tom Brady.

Every year it’s the same song and dance with DirecTV. They raise prices on NFL Sunday Ticket (or they break up the existing package and add some new features to charge you more to get what you had before). It’s up to $370 for auto-renenwal customers. However, after they “added” the SuperFan package (they took what was included (HD Games) and added a RedZone Channel (awesome) and some other features) for an additional $100 a lot of people weren’t happy. Primarily because they only wanted the HD games and already paid a $10/month HD Access fee.

So word travels fast when they start to offer a customer free SuperFan. Then last year for people who signed up as early birds (same discount as auto-renenwal) would get SuperFan free. That didn’t thrill customers who auto-renewed. So word traveled fast again on how to get it for free like everyone else. So it’s that time of the year again. If you read over at DBSTalk.com or FatWallet people were getting free SuperFan plus $120 off ($20/mo for 6 months) for a net cost of $150.

This is where the fun begins. You have to call and get them to do it. Sometimes a CSR will do it. Sometimes it has to be someone in the customer retention department. All kinds of stories work. The economy, the wife says it’s too much, thinking about switching, my friend/neighbor/co-worker got such and such or even just coming out and asking for it. Plenty of people get shot down and have no luck. Some call right back and get the deal. Some try a bit later and get the deal. Some just give up and are mad. Some cancel their service.

It drives me nuts. It’s all a game. All I want is SuperFan free. It really bothers me that they took something that was included in the price out of the package. They not only bundled it up with other stuff, but they also raised the price of the base package. So to get the same thing you had the year before, the price jumped $120. For every person like Bill Simmons who would pay $2,000 for it, there are people like me who just get it to watch their favorite team all season. DirecTV is smart to bump the price only $10-$20 a season so it’s easier to swallow, but they are pricing people out slowly. This is why they have an amazing new customer offer that includes the Sunday Ticket. They also started to offer this to existing customers who don’t auto-renew this summer.

In the end I went with the loyal customer and it’s unfair that some customers get these deals and others don’t. They offered me $10/mo for 6 months, I asked for $20 and they said yes. It only took 3 or 4 calls.  I think they are all trained to negotiate with customers. You have to push for it. They are perfectly OK saying no and sorry to see if you’ll just say OK. Uncomfortable silences work well too.

I recently was given some code written in C# and was unable to get the solution to build. I was getting the following error using Visual C# 2008 Express SP1:

The type or namespace name ‘Reporting’ does not exist in the namespace ‘Microsoft’ (are you missing an assembly reference?)

I tried a lot of things recommended by MSFT experts on the MSDN forums to no avail. I installed the Microsoft Report Viewer 2008 SP1 Redistributable. Still couldn’t build. I couldn’t locate the library through the toolbox either. Later I found that the necessary DLLs never were installed. I tried other report viewer redistributables. I even tried getting the files from another developer and placing them in the correct location. I still could not add them through the toolbox. Some people said that I need to install Visual Web Developer. I had it installed so that did not matter. Everything I tried would not allow me to use the Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms or Microsoft.Reporting.WinForms libraries.

This is the solution I found to work and it makes sense. You need to install the SQL Server Express 2008 Runtime with Advanced Services. If you just installed any of the Visual Studio Express editions, then it automatically installed SQL Server Express 2008 Compact Edition. That is missing the reporting services and you had no option to install anything. You can install the whole thing from Microsoft’s SQL Server Express download site. Note that this will install another instance of SQL Server Express in addition to Compact (if you have it installed). It won’t upgrade it.

I found the cleanest way to do it is to install SQL Server Express 2008 Runtime with Advanced Services first and then install the VS Express editions. They will recognize that SQL Server is installed and skip SQL Server Express Compact Edition.

I’ve had a lot of good experience with Amazon’s free super saver shipping in the past. My online shopping purchases have dropped over the years and if I couple it with Amazon charging sales tax in Kansas (yet nothing ever ships from Kansas) I don’t shop at Amazon that much. But, as I said I’ve had good experiences when I do. Things would ship out fast and arrive within a week or so. This last time, it did not go so well.

My Dad was going to India and my cousin asked him to bring her a stethoscope. Normally I bargain hunt and research sellers to get the best deal. Since he was leaving in a couple weeks and I wanted to be sure to avoid any problems I paid a little more and went with Amazon. So I placed the order August 24th. The stethoscope was in stock, so I was literally shown these options:

• FREE Super Saver Shipping (5-9 business days)
• Standard Shipping (3-5 business days)
• Two-Day Shipping (2 business days) –get it Wednesday, August 26!
• One-Day Shipping (1 business day) –get it Tuesday, August 25!

I’ll also point out that I had the wrong date for when my Dad was leaving and never should’ve chosen the free super saver shipping option to begin with. But I learned something valuable about what Amazon does when you choose that option. A week goes by and the order hasn’t shipped. I’m a little concerned, but I figure even if it ships today (August 31), I’ll get it in time.

I get the e-mail it ships, and it has an estimated delivery date of September 5-11, 2009. Unbelievable. The item was in stock, 5-9 days. What in the world? I contact Amazon and they tell me that the 5-9 is transit time. There is also an up to 5 day processing time. And for good measure, unprompted, the CSR tells me they can’t explain everything on the web site. Really? They can’t change it to say 5-14 business days? Add an asterisk and note that is only transit time and there is a processing time as well? If people are worried about off-shoring call centers because of accents, don’t worry, they’re getting a lot better. This guy was just as rude as anyone with a less noticeable accent. Same terrible experience for less cost (to Amazon).

In the end I signed up for the Amazon Prime trial and had it shipped second day. It showed up second day. My original order showed up on Saturday the 5th. I refused the package and sent it back to Amazon. I dropped the package off at the post office and got a refund on the 16th. I learned to only use the free super saver shipping if you don’t care when it shows up. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it isn’t. And when it isn’t, it can be 5 days longer than you’re led to believe.

It only took forever, but I’m blogging again. I’ll see over time if this blog develops a purpose, so for now it’s the Haphazard Blog. I’ll try to make a post a day. So let’s see how it goes. Thanks for reading my blog. I hope I can keep you coming back.