My Stream of Consciousness

            It’s finally October. It’s finally autumn.

My days are pretty much the same every day—wake up, go to work, come home, nap, boxing/kickboxing training, shower, sleep. With certain days having less boxing and more sleeping in them, and then of course there’s Auxiliary Patrols on Thursdays. It’s not a bad life. It’s pretty good actually. I would like to see my friends more often but we’re all grown-ups now and work so I guess that’s how life goes.

Yesterday was when the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “ObamaCare”) went into effective—well parts of it. The “Marketplace” for all 50 states opened up… and then promptly crashed due to server overload. These plans go into effect Jan. 1, 2014. Pretty much everyone at my job hates the ACA. Or at least aspects of it. I can’t tell if it’s just because they’re Republican, or they don’t like change, or if ACA really isn’t that great of a law. I think some aspects of it are good. While mandating everyone to have health insurance maybe sounds a bit harsh and crazy, it actually makes sense. Too often, people who don’t have health insurance go to the emergency room either because they are in serious need of care (i.e.: acute appendicitis, cholecystitis, ectopic pregnancy), or because they simply don’t have a PCP due to no insurance.

By law (and I guess Hippocratic oath), ER’s cannot turn a person away. They must treat them. But I would say about 85% of the ER visits I code and bill for and audit are people who have vague “Abdominal pain & Nausea” type symptoms who get prescribed Antibiotics or some cold medicine and they’re on their way. They are wasting valuable time and resources. ER’s are the money pits of hospitals. They cost the most to operate since they’re 24/7, must accommodate ambulances, have a certain number of staff on at all times, and deal with walk-ins. They go through supplies like nobody’s business. And people often don’t pay their bills at all or only pay a fraction of the cost. Forcing this people to have some sort of minimum amount of health insurance would make it so that hospitals don’t close, especially in low-income neighborhoods because they’d actually be able to afford to stay open. From what I’ve seen, there are several low-cost insurance plans (I’ve been calculating to see if I can afford my own benefits or if it’s more cost-effective to stay on my mother’s plan), and if you meet a certain income level, or some other sort of criteria, you actually get approximately half of your premium cost back. As far as I can tell they’re not getting rid of Medicare or Medicaid and their associated programs so there are always those as well.

From what I’ve heard, some people have received notification that their insurance premiums have increased—keep in mind that all these people have insurance through their employer, so it doesn’t say anything about independent health plans such as COBRA. We haven’t received any notification from our employer yet about our insurance or the plans our company will make available. I think a January 1^st implementation date is a bit ambitious, especially since many hospitals, providers, and companies such as mine who credential, code, bill, and audit, have next to no information. But we’ll see.

Government shutdown means my recent application to Customs & Border Protection won’t be reviewed for a long time. Which is OK by me because now I have more time to prepare for the physical fitness exam. ^_^ I’ve been trying to not let myself get overwhelmed at boxing & kickboxing training. I felt a little embarrassed because I totally cried in the locker room Monday night. One of the other girls told me not to get upset and that everyone started out where I am and that Christian, my trainer, only pushes me because he sees a lot of potential in me and he wants me to do well. It made me feel a lot better. Now I don’t dread going. Much. I honestly just dread the whole “being really sweaty then driving home, showering, and being in pain the next day” part. But I know all this hard work is going to pay off. “I never said it would be easy, just that it would be worth it.”

In other news, I think I'm juuuust about halfway saved up for LASIK! I can't wait! I'm going to hold off on getting it until after February because supposedly at academy, they spray us with mace.