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imperfect capitalism
Monday, April 9 2018
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York, USA
Still on Budapest time, I awoke at 4:00am and puttered away at my computer for hours before anyone else was up. Our housesitters had stayed in the basement master bedroom [though they'd apparently been confused about how to heat it and had turned up the thermostat in Gretchen's library, which only affects that room]. They walked the dogs one final time this morning, though the dogs were a little confused. I watched from the upstairs bathroom and saw it all play out. Neville thought it appropriate to go on the walk, but Ramona kept playfully challenging him (and interrupting him from starting the walk). Eventually they did the walk, but only (to our housesitters) grudgingly. The air might've been crisp and cold, but at least it was sunny, and a geat day for running around in the forest.
At around 10:00am our housesitters loaded up their tiny car and headed to their next destination: Cooperstown, where R could delight his inner 8-year-old baseball enthusiast.
[REDACTED]
This afternoon Gretchen had a regularly scheduled doctor's appointment, which she went to in her current state, which was sick. (She was still ill with whatever communicable disease she'd contracted on the Danube). When she got to her doctor, they told her they couldn't do a proper physical if she was sick but still wanted to respond to the state she presented in. At that point she asked what were the price implications of just being there in her existing state, which is to say sick. The medical professionals were reluctant to say and Gretchen's request had to be passed up the chain. Hearing about it later, it seemed like exhibit A in the case for why American healthcare is not subject to capitalist forces. If you have to go out of your way to know the price of things, chances are you will often end up with insufficient information about the price of things to make the sort of decisions that guide the invisible hand to do the good it is supposed to do. You'll end up doing whatever the doctors tell you is a good idea, which is what the doctors were expecting of Gretchen today. But she knew she wasn't all that sick, certainly not sick enough to see a doctor, and she had recently been burned by the process. Gretchen is a hard bargainer, but I think the doctor still managed to get something billable out of Gretchen for today's non-exam. As always in a situation like this, the doctor had a power advantage to exploit; Gretchen needed prescriptions renewed, one for celexa and another for ambien, and only a doctor can do that. The price of telling her doctor to fuck off might've literally been insanity and sleeplessness.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180409 feedback
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