What the fuck is phentermine indicated for anyway? The sheer volume of spam I used to get in my unprotected Enetation comments box for it implies Americans must get through a lot of it.
It's an interesting question, though; your lack of a sensible healthcare system imposes a significant externality on the broader Internet through spam generation. Perhaps we should start bombing.
We'll still get the spam. They'll limit the number of viagra pills you can get a month, and there will still be men who will be embarassed to talk to their doctors about their sex lives.
Google says that they're diet pills.
Regarding healthcare, my local public radio affiliate has been running a series on prisons in Virginia. Part Two mentions that most prisoners pay a $5 co-pay for a doctor's visit. That bit completely floored me, and my second reaction was to wonder how far away we are from healthcare reform opponents mendaciously pointing to prison healthcare as what the public option would be like.
I think they're the diet pills that used to be sold as Fen-Fen (Phen-Phen?) that were removed from the market for savaging people's internal organs.
most prisoners pay a $5 co-pay for a doctor's visit. That bit completely floored me
Is that good or bad?
6: I was surprised they pay anything at all, considering their highly limited wage-earning status. Seems cruel.
Well, yes, but I wasn't sure what you compared it with.
7: I wasn't sure how you were responding either. Whenever I teach this issue, I get several students expressing extreme resentment that prisoners get "free health care." I am certain they would be floored in the opposite direction,* and rant on and on about why criminals should get it so easy. The phrase "three hots and a cot" might also be used.
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*Ceilinged?
8: Are you asking what a generic American co-pay is? I think mine is $20. My mother, who has one of those "Cadillac" plans that folks want to tax pays, I think, $10.
Between the "inexpensive diet pill" spam and the "enlarge your penis" spam I am wondering if the spambot is peeking on me in the shower.
9: I'd be tempted to ask those same students if they think that death-row inmates should pay for that Final Doctor's Visit (in states with lethal injection), but I suspect I already know the answer and wouldn't actually want to confirm it.
9, 12. Is that liking sending the bill for the bullets of the firing squad to the family of the condemned? Said to be done by both the Chicoms and the perfidious Persians, but methinks it is apochryphal.
10: Mine is $30 for a basic doctor's office visit, with up to $250 for emergency room care. That's under United Healthcare, easily the shittiest insurer I've dealt with. They are a running joke at my Physical Therapist's office, as they demand huge piles of paperwork in ever decreasing intervals, and reimburse at pitiful rates ($15 for a visit I would have paid $112 for out of pocket).
If the only result of Obama's health insurance reform push was that the CEO of UHC was tarred and feathered, I'd consider it a success.
I think they're the diet pills that used to be sold as Fen-Fen (Phen-Phen?) that were removed from the market for savaging people's internal organs.
It's the Phen half of that diet pill. The Fen half was fenfluramine.
Read more in this story that seems to have been written from a distant future universe in which Americans' obsession with weight loss is a historical curiosity.
13: I believe it was widely documented after Tiananmen.
Further to 16: Not exactly the same thing, of course, but it makes it plausible.
I believed that the retreating Iraqis stole the incubators, too. That was widely reported, at the time. First draft of history, and all that.
Just last month, the fen-phen story had a happy ending, at least as happy is defined in my workplace.
By itself phentermine is reputed to be both less dangerous and less effective, so we anticipate a somewhat less happy result in another decade or so. But until then, keep ordering it!
I pay $2 for my co-pay, and so can you: all you have to do is be desperately poor and live in MA.
So until recently I listened to the NPR Planet Money podcast at the gym. It started pissing me off a lot more often, so I quit. (#@!%&^!! Alex Blumberg.) But the last one I listened to saved me $50 a month. I take a prescription medication for which there's a generic, but my doctor has explicitly told me not to take the generic (for plausible reasons about the variability in dosage allowed by the FDA's generic guidelines). Unfortunately, since there's a generic for this drug, the name-brand is on the top tier of my insurance formulary, which means a $50 copay for 60 pills. However! Planet Money informed me of a nice scam the drug companies are running whereby they give consumers a coupon that covers their copay on the name-brand drug each month and then make enough money from the insurance companies to cover the copays and still come out ahead. And sure enough, Google found me a coupon for up to $50 off my copay on my particular drug, once a month in perpetuity. Capitalism!
21: I think that sort of thing must be fairly for new-ish and top-tier medicines. I got a similar coupon from my doctor for a new-ish drug, $50 off, effectively elimintating my co-pay. The insurance company initially declined the prescription (mistakenly, as it turned out), so I got to see the full price: something like $480. So basically the prescription company was willing to sell it at a $50 discount and still gross $430, presumably making up the difference in volume.
You gotta accentuate the positive, elimintate the negative.
11: Between the "inexpensive diet pill" spam and the "enlarge your penis" spam I am wondering if the spambot is peeking on me in the shower.
My wife was kidding me about getting those in our joint account one day, and then next message in was a breast augmentation spam.
Not drugs, but I was kind of tickled to get this engagingly direct Nigerian spam variant the other day.
Subject: MY THIRD AND LAST MAIL TO YOU...
I wish to notify you that late Jurgen Krugger made you a beneficiary in his WILL. He left the sum of Thirty Million, One Hundred Thousand Dollars(US$30, 100,000.00) to you in the Codicil and last testament to his WILL.Copy and email me through this email: browne/jacobson/esq@yahoo/com/hk
Yours in Service, Browne Jacobson Esq.
(Must of been that old guy I picked up hitchhiking in the desert.)
I keep getting spam offering Canadian drugs. Guess they haven't updated my address.
That's a rad idea. In other news, Ogged is just a big teddy bear.
22: It's extremely unlikely that the insurance company is picking up the full difference. The $112 I paid up front for Physical Therapy before sorting things out with my insurance becomes $15 from United Healthcare and $60 from me, the difference being the eaten by my physical therapist. Only the uninsured pay full price.
...and while I was typing this comment my PT office called to let me know they have not yet received authorization for my next visit. In sorting this out UHC informed me that *each* individual visit from now on will require independent supporting documentation, to be evaluated by one of UHC's death panels patient support specialists.
Just now:
I have gone through your payment file as directed by the Presidency/Holding Bank, and seen that it is 100% impossible for your money to be released due to some irregularities detected in your file. During our investigation, we found out that you have spent so much in trying to realize your payment, which did not even reflect in your file, but I have an offer, which will at least help you recover your financial stand loses. This offer is an amount from Federal Government left over. It is a total sum of US$65,000,000.00 (Sixty-five Million United States Dollars), which will be shared between you and I in the ratio of 50% - 50%. This amount is not from your payment or have any thing related to your payment rather it is a left over from the amount used in paying local contractors and it is directly under my custody. I am offering you this because I have seen that your payment file has been cancelled due to the anomalies associated with it and revocation of the Central Bank !Hrmm. I believe 'There will be no bureaucracy or misfortune' was the younger Bush's operating slogan.
of Nigeria's foreign exchange deal[...]
For your information, this is not a contract payment. Therefore there will be no bureaucracy or misfortune. Please note that if you are willing to make this deal with me, you should contact me immediately on the above telephone and email furnishing me with your account co-ordinates.
max
['So they've gone back to Nigeria and gotten more insistent. Short of suckers, I guess.']
29: with your account co-ordinates.
Never give out your lat-long over the internet.
Ok, somehow I put this in a thread from months ago. Too many tabs open. So I'm moving it here:
"Accused Ponzi scheme mastermind may have fallen for overseas scam"
Given that a Nigerian e-mail scam turned up in the Madoff case, I wonder if ponzi schemes will turn out to be the root cause of financial spam.
Therefore there will be no bureaucracy or misfortune.
Concise description of paradise. Not recognizably human, though.
Re prison wages
The guy I visit gets like 35 cents an hour, because he does skilled computer work. He tells me that more typical rates are about 20 cents an hour. In MA you don't have to pay when it's for something required like certain shots, but otherwise you do.
Yeah, state health care is better for a lot of stuff. It sucks for dental cause nobody will take it.
My generic drug co-pay is $2, and it would be $3 for brand, but their formulary is limited. Luckily everything I take is now generic. Birth control has no co pay at all.
I'm switching to Cigna/ Tufts in January, so I'll gave Delta dental and some eye care benefits that will cover contacts.
The company is really pushing the in network only plan which costs half the price. They've made the co pay for visits to in-network doctors lower for people in the in network only plan than for people who have the option to go out of network. I don't want to go with that one, because I worry about getting a bill from an out of network anesthesiologist or for labs.
I just got a bill for an ultra sound, because they didn't have my insurance on file. The regular practices at this hospital don't have this problem, but radiology has its own billing. Maddening.
Togolosh, United definitely sucks. I do know from them what some drugs cost though. I took a drug that cost me $289 to fill fir cash with a AAA discount. When I got the same drug w/ my card before I hit my deductible, I paid $150.
Further on healthcare stuff: more Alan Grayson. The guy's great.
ugh, in this case we need drug legalization and/or de-'prescriptionisation' not UHC. i think its harder for brits (other nationalities i have little experience with, other than a few italians, for who the situation seems worse) have trouble getting doctors to prescribe older/*ier meds
*= drugs that are DRUGs, the kind that bad people take. such as phentermine, or other stimulants
"The insurance company initially declined the prescription (mistakenly, as it turned out), so I got to see the full price: something like $480. So basically the prescription company was willing to sell it at a $50 discount and still gross $430, presumably making up the difference in volume."
I could be wrong, but I don't think it's a question of "making up the difference". The marginal cost of a prescription drug is negligible, so it would probably be worth it for them to sell it at a $200 discount, except for the fact that the insurance company is willing and able to pay more. Most of the costs of a drug are front loaded (research, late stage trials, marketing). Obviously they want a high price to recoup their investment as soon as possible, but they're not like most other manufacturers where the cost of production is a significant factor in the retail price.
"i think its harder for brits (other nationalities i have little experience with, other than a few italians, for who the situation seems worse) have trouble getting doctors to prescribe older/*ier meds"
Not quite sure what your argument is here. Brits pay a flat rate for prescription drugs (with exemptions for the elderly, people on benefits, the Welsh and some others), so there's not point in asking for cheaper drugs (unless they have different side effects, of course).
Brits pay a flat rate for prescription drugs (with exemptions for the elderly, people on benefits, the Welsh and some others)
Others including anyone who has to take some medicine or other long-term. So I don't pay for any prescriptions, nor [afaik] do diabetics, etc.
This co-pay coupon thing was on this weekend's This American Life. The woman who worked for the small insurer really hated them, because the pay out difference was considerable.
The example they gave was of someone with a Soladine access card which made his co-pay $10, but they've now gone down to 0. The stuff is a brand-name time release that you can get in twice a day formulations for $50/mo. The small insurer had to pay like $600 for the brand stuff. The doctor didn't care and was handing the stuff out like candy. In fact, as a dermatologist, she worried that she shouldn't have to think about whether she should consider cost at all.
I highly recommend the episodes. They did a comparison with pet insurance, and there was a hilarious story about somebody's hedgehog experience.
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http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/if-i-cannot-live-with-you-i-will-live.html
Another nice 'letter of note' [Keats], with more 19th century hand-writing.
>
I've been very happy with my shady overseas internet supplier of asthma meds. Not much more than what a co-pay would cost, and I don't need to schlep to the doctor for a prescription. Woo albuterol without the hassle!
I meant that Ogged was "soft as fuck", but that would be the sort of thing I would *mean*. Off to a Nation-Knopf "face-off".
with exemptions for the elderly, people on benefits, the Welsh and some others
Like, all the Welsh, or is this a joke? And if it's true, how Welsh do you have to be? Actually named Daffyd, or just resident in Wales?
Yeah, all the Welsh. And, I believe, in a few years the Scots and the Norn Irish. That's devolution for you.