It just started pouring down rain.

This part of August has been chillier & wetter this year, even tho' we've also had a few days with smoke & a heat advisory. It's really weird: a day or two of hellaciously hot smoky air, & then a few days of clouds & rain & coolness.

@MidnightRider Take a gander when you have a sec. He's an ophthalmologist who does vids about life in the medical field. https://www.youtube.com/@DGlaucomflecken

@MidnightRider Are you familiar w/Dr. Glaucomflecken at all?

@MidnightRider It's really interesting to work with surgeons, because they are SO confident, & so willing to push for what they want. Which is often great! & then fortunately there are administrative folks that will push back if needed. Man, it's a balance tho', staying on the cutting edge w/o burning needlessly thru revenue.

@MidnightRider Oh sweet. Yeah that's one of the awesome things about working for a teaching hospital, so many of the providers I work with are doing amazing research as well as their clinical work. It's one of the reasons I love working there too.

@MidnightRider Knowing how much surgeons want to be in the OR I have to wonder if the neurosurgeons weren't at least partly OK with it!

Source: work w/surgeons, some of them neurosurgeons

@MidnightRider UGH kickbacks are a fucking scam. We don't even let vendors on campus at all without either an actual need, or if a particular provider is interested in a specific product & wants to make the case to bring it in. Oh, & prescription salespeople? HELL NO, they aren't allowed on campus AT ALL.

FYI, we get about half of our revenue from Medicaid patients.

That's not uncommon at all, throughout the US healthcare industry.

Frankly, the dept. that deals with insurance companies is full of steel-boned saints. I don't know how they put up with the bullshit.

The hospitals in the uni system here are all NPOs, so there's no profit in the sense of having shareholders & stock & that sort of thing. There's just revenue, & then that gets folded back into the hospital in a bunch of ways.

I work in a large teaching hospital affiliated with a big fat public research university with a solid medical school. I love my job & I love what I do, I love the school & the hospital & the folks I work with, & I get to see at least some of the inner workings of how all this shit goes down.

@MidnightRider Right?? & on the flip side, a lot of people have gotten used to having lots of diagnostics & will flat-out demand it. Overuse of medical resources is just one complicated part of the whole puzzle.

We love bragging about how we have some of the best health care & providers in the world, & we do - we're not the only ones, but yeah we do - & we mostly ignore the fact that there's an abyssal gulf between said top-notch healthcare & the ability for most of us to *access* it without going bankrupt.

Healthcare for profit is one of the things I utterly loathe about the United States.

Folks who enjoy some sort of socialized medicine? Don't move here. Not because most of us wouldn't welcome you, but because this nation is fucking inhumane.

@TetsuKaba Excellent advice. In my youth I'd happily go head to head with an insurance co. & raise hell; it's definitely harder now that I'm older & more decrepit - as you say, they want you to give up.

@ChristopherNoyesRoberts It is! Thanks, I found GoodRX but couldn't remember what Cuban's site was.

So I got a manufacturer's discount card & am on the hunt for a new online pharmacy. I think I found one. God damn it's a pain in the ass tho'.

Sometimes I wish I believed in a Hell so that insurance adjusters - or whoever's responsible for setting Rx prices, anyway - would have an extra special place there.

My health insurance co. suddenly decided that the name-brand Rx I've taken & they've covered for the last 6 years to manage my depression is too expensive & they aren't going to cover it anymore. They want me to switch to another med I've already taken & know doesn't work well for me, before they'll consider covering the usual one anymore. Capitalistic motherfuckers.

Dad is already in a better mood. He was listening to music & looked bright & upbeat. Mom was a mixed bag: she did great when I first got there, & then she wore out. Today she understands that dad can't move with her & she's a bit sad but OK with it. No clue how tomorrow will go, we'll see.

Just got back from my parents' house. I spent the afternoon packing up mom's stuff to get ready for the movers. Clothes, pictures, shoes, a bit of costume jewelry (nothing too fancy, as stuff in memory care can go missing).