I am such a procrastinator. The last blog entry was in January of this year. Up until then, I had made a good effort at posting entries at least every couple of weeks. So here it is, my mid-year update. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

On the personal front, a lot has gone on and there have been some significant changes made. Beth has finally had enough and has tendered her resignation from Albuquerque Health Partners. The state of medical care and the sheer greediness of both the individuals and the corporate overseers have forced one of the best doctors in Alb. to stand down. The workload imposed on her while with AHP has been impossible to meet with the resources she has been given. Doctors are expected to not only provide their own dictations, but to also prepare and submit all patient billing. This would probably be workable if the actual number of patients scheduled during a day allowed for a doctor to complete the paperwork on an ongoing basis instead of having to wait until the end of a day filled with 15 – 20 minute appointments, including new patient visits. The end result is Beth regularly puts in 50 to 60 hour weeks, with some work being done at home on the weekends. Any bonuses that may be offered are only based on the number of patients she sees with no consideration of medical outcome. The system as it exists now does nothing to promote health care or health education and only responds to the number of warm bodies that can be billed against at the end of the day. Hence the 15 minute appointments. Every time a patient has to come back to the office for an appointment, AHP can bill some insurance company for an office visit as well as collect a co-pay. Never mind that the issues leading to the return visit could have been addressed in the original visit, if the appointment would have allowed for an actual 20 – 30 minute appointment. Beth was seeing new patients during a scheduled 15 minute appointment. How can a new history be established in that short a time frame? Of course it can’t, but that doesn’t really matter as long as the billing is completed and the co-pay is collected. The system is run on greed, and will never change until the profit motive is removed from the health care system.

Is there a chance an actual change can be forced onto the health care system? I’m beginning to have my doubts. Unless a strong public option is created that eliminates the profit motive from health care, I don’t think anything will change.

Why can’t the right-wing noise machine get their minds around the simple facts that the private market health care industry is not particularly concerned with the overall public health? Why bother with health education when all that means is that people might not require medical attention because of bad health practices?

So even with all this happening, Beth is actually doing fairly well. I’m still concerned about her drinking, but she has been mostly successful with avoiding depression. I can take some credit, I think, for this, since I’ve really tried to avoid whining and complaining about my perceived problems while focusing on more positive thoughts.

After all of the above, Beth is going to stop working and could possibly be moving into retirement. I’m overjoyed that I’m getting Beth back into my life on a full time basis. If the money holds up, we will soon have the opportunity to travel again and to address some of the things at home that have been put on hold. Things like clothes glaciers and dying landscaping to name just two. Beth has also been very excited about the opportunity to enroll both of the pits in obedience and agility training classes. That would be awesome!!

I’ve also made some changes in my employment. As of this week, I have taken a job with the local Water Utility and am no longer involved in private engineering consulting. I realize that working my way into a new job is going to take some time, but damn, the public sector pace is, at best, leisurely. To be honest, my first instinct is to run away screaming “I f******d this up, let me out of here”. But c’mon, its been all of three days, with the first day dedicated to an orientation session. Patience is.

I took up scuba diving again at the urging of Joseph. Diving is such a blast, but I forgot how incredibly gear intensive a sport it is. This is especially true since I need a fair amount of help with getting all of the gear on in preparation for a dive. Once I’m in the water, it’s not so bad, but my disability does create buoyancy and basic gear use issues that complicate my diving experience. I’m pretty sure that more practice will make it easier for me and my dive buddies, but it’s certainly a challenge. I love using the stuff, and its fun getting all dressed out to dive. I’ve always wanted to get good enough at diving to go on some exotic dive trips, so I’m sticking with this until that happens.

Finally, I want to start linking up to sites that address the current issues of the day. I’m going to feature primarily liberal viewpoints; however I want to be fair. If the crackpot right-wing noise machine can present a fair & balanced analysis of the issues, I will make an effort to acknowledge that. I will, however, never stoop to the bilge-like self aggrandizing drivel that I have happened on through chance. Who would’ve thought that I would stumble on a climate change denier, right wing bigot’s blog by looking up links for the Chaiten volcano?

So I’m back. Hopefully more often, but I’ve certainly said all of that before.

Peace.