$608?

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So I got a call from my wife letting me know that my daughter's routine wellness visit to the doctor was going to cost someone $608.  I say someone is going to pay it because it won't be just us.  Our insurer will be picking up a healthy chunk of the bill, as they should since that's why we pay them ransom premiums every month, but the interesting thing to me is that the only reason we actually know the cost is because the doctor's office still has us in their system as an "out of pocket" patient and they send the bills directly to our house.  The reason for this is we used to have an HSA plan so all the bills were paid directly by us, but we've been on our current "regular" insurance plan for over a year so we shouldn't be getting these bills. Can we say inefficiency? 

You have to wonder how we've gotten to the point that a simple wellness visit that takes 15 minutes and involves a routine vaccination can cost north of $600.  Sheesh.

But wait, there's more.  It ends up that the doctor's office billed for something they didn't do.  When my wife called they said that the thing they billed for was a standard part of a wellness check, which is why they billed it even though they didn't provide the service.  They assured her that it would be removed from the bill that the insurer receives. Riiiight.

Here's my questions: What would have happened if we'd never seen the bill?  How often does this kind of thing happen and what is it costing on a state or nationwide basis? When did practice managers start going to the same management school as car dealership repair shop managers?

What a cluster.

Men Who Iron Are More Attractive? I’m Gonna Call BS on That

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A survey commissioned by an appliance manufacturer says that men who iron are more attractive to women than men who send them chocolates.  Ignoring for a moment the inherent bias of the survey's sponsor I'm going to call BS based on the following anecdotal evidence: I couldn't repair a cardboard box, much less a car, but I can rock some laundry and I've never once in my life had a woman, particularly my wife, say, "Baby, seeing you do that ironing is soooo sexy."

Oh wait.  I think Hollywood disagrees with me:

Local Pastor vs. NC Legislature

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A local Baptist pastor was invited to offer the NC legislature prayer for a week.  He was told what the approved method of prayer was (in a nutshell, non-sectarian) and that if he didn't adhere to those standards he would be uninvited to pray.  He refused to adhere to those terms, which is his right, and the legislature uninvited him, which is its right.  Now the pastor wants an apology and the opportunity to open a legislative session with a prayer in the manner he sees fit. A quote from the story:

"I was made to feel like a second-class North Carolinian when I was told that my services would no longer be needed if I could not offer the opening prayer in the manner prescribed by the House of Representatives, rather that in the manner my biblical faith requires," Baity said.

I guaran-damn-tee you that he's on the side of the sectarian prayer advocates in the case being fought here in Forsyth County.  To refresh your memory the pro-sectarian prayer folks are saying that they should be able to pray in whatever manner they wish, much like the pastor is arguing here.  The anti-sectarian prayer folks are saying, no, you can't because then the government is put in the position of endorsing a specific religion.  

Here's the irony to me: what the pastor is saying, that he's being made to feel like a second class citizen, is exactly how people who don't want to be forced to hear sectarian prayer at a government meeting feel when a clergyman is invited to give a sectarian prayer to open the meeting.  

Walk a mile…

The Things I Do for Work

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Some days at work you just gotta do what you gotta do, like reading this sentence:

While cap-rate centric institutional buyers mindful of market fundamentals are balking at cap rate compression, opportunistic private investors and opportunity funds with aggressive yield expectations and the underwriting to match are standing 20 and 30 bidders deep to pay what the market demands on a price-per-unit and price-per-square-foot basis. 

I think I sprained my brain.

BP Bustin’ Up?

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Things in BP-land ain't looking too good:

THE British government is drawing up contingency plans for a possible collapse of BP.

This is amid mounting fears that the oil giant could be broken up or taken over in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

The talks, which are being led by officials at the Department for Business and the Treasury, reflect growing concern within Whitehall about the implications that a corporate failure of BP, formerly Britain's biggest company, would have on British interests domestically and around the world.

Oo-la-la. Is it possible that a corporation behaving badly could actually be held accountable for its bad behavior?  Well, duh:

Prime Minister David Cameron and Energy Secretary Chris Huhne are set to discuss BP's future with US officials during a trip to Washington on July 20.

Speaking in Toronto at the G20 on June 25, Mr Cameron warned that BP faced potential destruction unless US authorities stepped in to prevent its compensation costs escalating out of control.

Government supplication to petroleum purveyors begins in 10, 9, 8…

Inadvertent Economic Advice

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I love it when columnists try to make one point and unwittingly make another.  Case in point, this columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times in her column titled There is no 'free' lemonade argues that these kids, who are giving away lemonade that their parents paid for, are doomed because we can't even teach them the basics of running a lemonade stand.  From her column:

"No!" I exclaimed from the back seat. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give."

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

"You must charge something for the lemonade," I explained. "That's the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money."

The folks at BoingBoing point out why the columnist is inadvertently making out a point other than what she intended:

Get that, kids? The correct thing to do with the stuff you appropriate from others is sell it, not give it away! Sounds about right — companies take over our public aquifers and sell us the water they pump out of them; telcos get our rights of way for their infrastructure, then insist that they be able to tier their pricing without regard to the public interest. Corporatism in a nutshell, really.

Armed

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Guns make me nervous, always have and always will.  In particular I'm not a big fan of handguns because it just seems like it would be too easy to make a catastrophic error with one.  That's why seeing people walking around with handguns makes me jumpier than a mouse in a room full of cats.  It's not that I think they'll gun me down for looking at them cross-eyed, rather it's that I can think of 100 ways that someone could inadvertently pop off a round and I can just as easily imagine myself catching that round somewhere on my body.  That explains why you won't catch me within ten miles of the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park on August 14 when some pro-gun people hold their Restore the Constitution Rally.

Obviously I'm not a gun guy, but I'm also not someone who gets real worked up about gun control.  I am a guy that's been known to sit in rush hour traffic and marvel that so few accidents occur on a daily basis rather than how many.  Seriously, given what we know about the human condition how is it possible that thousands of cars driven by people who watch American Idol on a regular basis can weave from lane to lane at 75 mph and only a tiny minority actually wreck?  Take that thought process and apply it to guns and you'll know where I'm coming from.

So Kid, You Don’t Think Education Is Important?

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An interesting article in the New York Times about the lack of skilled workers available for manufacturing jobs in the U.S.:

Here in this suburb of Cleveland, supervisors at Ben Venue Laboratories, a contract drug maker for pharmaceutical companies, have reviewed 3,600 job applications this year and found only 47 people to hire at $13 to $15 an hour, or about $31,000 a year.

The going rate for entry-level manufacturing workers in the area, according to Cleveland State University, is $10 to $12 an hour, but more skilled workers earn $15 to $20 an hour.

All candidates at Ben Venue must pass a basic skills test showing they can read and understand math at a ninth-grade level. A significant portion of recent applicants failed, and the company has been disappointed by the quality of graduates from local training programs. It is now struggling to fill 100 positions.

I’m, Like, Gonna Be Famous

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Esbee asked me to write about my experience test driving the Cheerwine Kreme filled Krispy Kreme so that she could post it on Life in Forsyth.  For my friends from out of town that's about as big-time as it gets around here.  

My thanks to Esbee for treating my treatise with a gentle editing pen.