Book review
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt
Book Review:
So I got to spend most of Saturday evening and Sunday morning in the emergency department of the local hospital, once again proving to my wife that men are stupid.
Not to waste time I took Alan Blinder’s new book with me.
After the Music Stopped is a terrific book on the causes of and reactions to the financial crisis and recommendations for the future. There is enough data for the geekiest geek, but plenty of plain English commentary.
I’ve read just about every book written on the financial crisis and this one, written after some time has passed, is really excellent.
STR:
Did Dickens a “Tale of Two Cities” while I was supposedly dying 30+ years ago in the hospital. This last go around, I did Kennedy’s “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” My one-dayer I started rereading Gilligan’s “Violence: National Epedemic . . . ”
It passes the time lying around.
Saturday night in ED is entertaining, what with the bar fights and drunk drivers hitting lamp posts.
“…once again proving to my wife that men are stupid.”
Was that because you spent so much time in the ER? Or was the assessment based upon the cause of you’re having to go to the ER? You’ve left out the best bits of information.
Last time I had to go to an ER I was too wired with anxiety to read anythiing, but it became an illuminating experience once the billing started.
I was feeling a bit out of sorts and thinking that I was about to experience a heart attack. Called my cardio guy whose number I carry because…. Too much to get into here. He says go to the ER of the hospital he works out of. Very well respected place in the community.
So there I am with my wife. We have Dr. Head of Cardio to give them and they process pretty quickly. I’m seen by two residents. Very nice young pair. After a short while of checking this and that they assure me that it is not what I thought. Maybe just the anxiety multiplied by a history.
I go homje with the wife none the worse.
Now the good part. Maybe two weeks later I get a bill, not for the hospital charges for the ER, but for the physician’s fee, about $1,500. But the Dr’s. name is not one of those I had seen in the ER. Maybe some mistake. I call billing dept. “Say”, I say, “what’s with this bill from Dr. I Don’t Know Who?” He was the Chief ER man that night and all the residents that see the patients work under his supervision. But $1,500? I do a little simple math recollecting that the ER was pretty well full up that evening. And this Dr. Head Of ER is billing $1,500 a pop. Nice work.
I point out that my insurance covers the visit. The billing dept. apologizes after I’ve written a long and detailed account of the experience, and agrees that my insurance does indeed cover the physician’s fee. So I leave it alone, but I’m still wondering who it is that’s collectiing $1,500 per patient out of a very busy ER. They had to process a couple of hundred patients in just a ten hour period. That’s medical business in the US.
Because of my younger years and various injuries and accidents I have some nasty varicose veins in my left leg. Mrs. Rustbelt RN has told me repeatedly to see a specialist.
A few years ago my family doc told me that unless I was going to wear a skirt just leave them alone. Doing nothing worked for me.
Lately, during our disaster relief work in Moore Oklahoma and outdoor work at home I have bumped and scraped my left leg several times.
Saturday night my left lower leg starting turning a lovely shade of blue.
Apparently one of my varicosities is seeping. Or gushing.
Mrs. Rustbelt RN is now in the “I told you so” mode. I suppose I deserve that.
Don’t you just hate when the wives continually prove to be smarter than we are.
A friend of mine was extremely well read. He had spent three years in a German POW camp catching up on what the Red Cross could send through, mainly the classics. He could have done without the near starvation, but he had a real leg up when the GI Bill let him go to college after the war.
Is this forced reading? Limited option reading? It’s often a chance to branch out and read stuff you wouldn’t normally choose, and it often leads to real serendipity.
For example, some years back I had a nasty corneal lesion and couldn’t see for most of a week, so I got some books on tape at the local library. The collection was heavy on the classics, so it was Northanger Abbey, Two Heroines of Plumplington and Journal of a Plague Year.
Jack: it does prove I made one good choice in my life
Kale: hope the eye is better, two days of doing nothing after cataract surgery drove me crazy