Friday and the Doctor's Bill Cometh

No coffee, no tea, no nothing, grumble, grumble, grumble. It's not that the spouse wouldn't have made me something before he left to take the Sprout to camp, but I didn't think to ask. In case your response might be, "What? You got a broken leg? Get it yourself!", the answer would be, "Well yes, I do!". And I just got the hospital bill for the surgery last week on said broken leg. I read all the line items and just kept saying to Dave, this can't be right! His reply was that yes, it is right. I am being billed for me, for all the uninsured and for all the under-insured on Medicare.

I still think $290 for each screw in my leg is a bit extreme--even if they do have to be reviewed by the FDA! And why do I have to pay (at almost $600 a pop) for the three drill bits they used? Can't they reuse them? Don't they pro-rate? And, finally, please, $1,275 for the standard recovery room fee and then $474 per half hour thereafter (for an additional hour and a half) just to lie in a bed in a room with a bunch of other people (in their own beds) and a few nurses cycling between us?! I wouldn't have been there that long if they had STARTED with morphine instead of dilaudid! Good thing we have insurance. I can't wait to see what they pay. This bill is more than the 20% down payment on the house next door to the studio.

I would normally say at the beginning of this paragraph, "But let's get back to glass", but this IS back to glass. I am a small business owner. I could not afford to insure myself and my family on my own. Period. No question about it. I am fortunate to have a spouse who works for a slightly larger company with many more employees so that we only have to pay about $600 a month to be insured, i.e., to be able to break our legs and have them properly fixed as opposed to just hobbling around on crutches, letting them heal however they might, and dealing with the consequences--as many of my neighbors would have had to do. What if I had fallen in love with another artist instead of a computer geek? I go on record here and now to say, Go Obama. We elected a very smart, very decisive man to be in charge of health care reform. Let's stop the politics of fear (Oh Canada) and, well, *politics* and get on with it!

Yesterday I looked at my plane reservations for the trip to Portland, and I don't leave till 5:00 in the afternoon. I thought I left at 8:00 in the morning. I have a whole 'nother day! Good thing too, I didn't get yesterday's second big kiln load in even though I worked in the studio (with Becky) till 7:45. So tomorrow I can hang with my family, have brunch out, do a little shopping, get 1/2 of one leg waxed... what a great day!

This morning the missed kiln load from yesterday will go in, the last health care award piece (maybe I should charge THEM $5,000 an hour!) will be etched, the photos of the hotshop for my Instructor workshop presentation will be shot, and (moving out of the passive voice) I will have a little breathing room to organize what will happen in the studio while I'm gone. (Two assistants and a gaffer/carpenter will be busy little little mice)--and then there's the whole property-next-door thing...

Have a great weekend all

PS--Pics are of Gaffers Lee and Dominick running a test of the roll-up process with my glass. We're definitely onto something here.