THE PRICE OF A MEDICAL DEVICE GOING DOWN?????? WHA???

What's that ya say??

News story says, "For the first time, hearing aids are available for purchase over the counter at retailers across the United States."

That is correct.  In a stunning move, the government actually may have fixed a problem. The people who make hearing aids have been raping the public by pretending these things needed to be issued by prescription at great cost to taxpayers and consumers through higher insurance premiums and reimbursements that basically were in place for far too many years for the purpose of enriching scumbags. 

Now if we will be smart enough to realize that the current entire health insurance industry is the problem and not the solution, we might fix every other problem in that area. 

The big problem...

All transactions are best done directly between the provider of the service and the receiver of the service. I buy a MacBook, the only people involved are me and Apple. Or me and Best Buy. They tell me exactly how much it is, I decide if I want to pay that amount, if I do, exchange is made, no surprises.

In healthcare, between me and the doctor are: 1) the insurance company 2) drug companies and of course 3) The government -- as a provider of its own insurance and through regulation of those previous two things. Three levels of obfuscation, which means that no one working in this model can tell me how much something is going to cost. And that translates to costing many multiples of what it should cost.

When the Obama administration set to dealing with healthcare, they chose, right from the onset, deliberately NOT to deal with the artificially high cost. 

Um what?  Yeah they decided NOT to deal with the ONLY PROBLEM, which was that it costs way more than it should.

Ultimately Obamacare just spread the misery around and solved nothing and created more problems. Some poor people benefitted short term but now the costs have continued to rise to a macabre and comical level. One thing Obamacare completely screwed the pooch on is limiting the insurance companies' profit margin. They were capped at a certain percentage, which any economist who is not a moron will tell you will lead to that company not caring if costs go UP. 

Matter of fact it is BETTER that costs shoot up because, for an insurance company, 10 percent of 10 billion is way better than 10 percent of 2 billion. 

They had NO incentive to keep costs down, and every incentive to let them rise. This is all of course part of the plan to make everything so horrifyingly complex and expensive that everyone involved will just agree to throw the whole thing over to the government to handle. 

Which might be, while horrific and stupid for a country this large, better than the dysfunctional hybrid system we have now.

But that is only a "might be."

Let's face it, we are doomed.

MONKEYS "MAY BE EVOLVING INTO NEW HUMAN-LIKE RACE" STUDY FINDS PRIMATES LEAVING TREES

“Monkeys may be evolving to be human — and it looks like they might get there first.” 

Welly welly well…. Planet of the Apes  may not be so far fetched after all.... 

And it’s all due, naturally, to global warming…

Those of us in the know are aware that the earth has an expiration date, a built-in one that involves our sun and a rather annoying tendency toward exploding in a massive supernova after about 9 billion years of life. That resulting massive blast will be large enough to engulf Mercury, then Venus, then Earth, then the massive bunker that the robot version of Elon Musk will still be living in on Mars. 

All gone.

That is depressing enough but now it looks like humans have paved the way for monkeys to make a giant evolutionary step toward humanity …as a matter of fact they may get there before we do! As the temperatures seem to be rising in their natural habitats, the treetops are providing less and less protection and the monkeys are spending more time walking around on the ground. This warming, we are assured, is a direct result of this climate change business — but don’t feel bad if YOU have used your air conditioning and driven your gas-powered car everywhere or flown on jets, it’s only those OTHER mean anti-science folks doing all the same things you are doing who are the cause.

Since we seem to be the agents of this change for our simian sidekicks, I wonder if the they will ever thank us.  Will they have gratitude for us starting their journey toward affordable but high-quality footwear, back pain, home ownership and complex passwords with letters, numbers and a special character?

This notion set me to some day-dreaming....

Living in a world where the new family that moves in on my block may turn out to be a shrieking clan of howler monkeys. Or maybe a pack of gorillas—great, my self esteem is already lacking due to my less than stellar upper body strength. 

Monkeys in the workplace, having to learn about their culture. Warning: chimps often attack by chewing off the lips of their opponent. It is customary for male chimpanzees to just latch on to the nearest female and start humping her right where they are standing— it’s like Leonardo DiCaprio’s yacht parties, although I hear he does not allow face-chewing ever since the Armie Hammer incident. 

We will have to attend classes at work…phrases like "Monkey See Monkey Do" are now a no-no and might be punishable by suspension, termination — or being promoted to head of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion team at your company.  

Actually I do have a family of chimps on the next block, their kids go to my daughter’s school. I am pretty sure they are conservatives because they were objecting to one of the books in the school library called Bicurious George.

Right-wing monkeys are not the norm, as they are natural Democrats: most of them are non-white and low-income, they are unsheltered with high unemployment and most are vegetarians who experience food insecurity on a daily basis. They also have trouble procuring ID to vote which is why the the Biden Administration as set up thousands of new voter registration sites in the rainforests of Asia and Africa. 

Republicans better take steps now to peel off some of that new demo. I would suggest lobbying gun makers and designers of pickup trucks to start retooling everything to be non opposable-thumb friendly. 

Share this story if you got a chuckle out of it would ya? Thanks.

and check out the original story if you want to, at this link…

NEWS ITEM THAT CANNOT BE PROVEN FOR A FEW BILLION YEARS BUT HEY

GAVIN AND THE HOMELESS FACTORY

California Politicians thinking the homeless are just multiplying faster and faster like the chocolates in this classic Lucy episode - but THEY ARE THE ONES MAKING THEM COME OUT FASTER!

I just read an article on how bad the "homeless" problem is in California. I use quotes around that word because it seems most of the people we call homeless are addicts in some form other another. Either they are addicted to a drug, alcohol, or simply addicted to street camping.  And if those people prefer living there, why would we call them homeless.  

They have a home and they like it, and they don’t have to pay any rent or follow any particular rules.

The homeless population has increased greatly each year in California.

The California officials are still making the problem worse without even knowing it. 

First of all they keep saying it is "their" problem, as in government's problem.

This takes away responsibility from the actual street campers. If you are mentally ill, that is the government's problem. 

You're addicted? You just like to party under the stars? That's your problem. And you are making it my problem.

They need to be in jail or we need to have some other incentive to stop that behavior. We used to do it by jailing vagrants and generally frowning on that behavior. 

But Leftists seem to DESPISE making anyone in their victim constituency (which is how they identify now) feel uncomfortable in any way. You have to pay back loans? That's terrible! You have to work at a job you don't love? That's terrible! You have to pay for healthcare or birth control? That's terrible! Someone has a different opinion than you do on some controversial issue? That's terrible!

Look, have you folks running California considered that this attitude of "don't ever blame anyone for anything that has a bad impact on their lives" is actually INCREASING street campers? (only exception is straight white males who are quite literally blamed for every ill of society including this one) 

Yeah. I know. You will never admit it.

Just keep doing what you been doing. Just do it harder....

Speed up that conveyor belt and keep jamming stuff into your shirt and under your hat...

Nice one, California.

STOP YOUR BACK PAIN - LIKE RIGHT NOW - SERIOUSLY...PROMISE

I have plumbed the depths of despair with chronic shooting leg pains, back pains, watching the clock all day and all night counting the hours till the next pain pill. 

I am 55 now, it started when I was about 25. Maybe a racquetball mishap. I walked with my spine twisted for a few weeks after that but it slowly went away.

Years later it came back, a little worse and would last a little longer each time it came back.

A few years ago it hung around for about six months. I paid 4k out of pocket for non surgical spinal decompression, which seemed to do the trick. I was pain free after about 15 sessions. Strange thing is the guy told me it would be about 15 sessions...and then exactly 15 sessions later, I felt great.  I now think there is a very good chance that that was a placebo cure. I will get to that,

A few things you must know about pain in general, and the spine, and doctors, and the brain.

1) The spine is very strong and resilient and heals quickly.

2) The brain is in charge of all pain the body feels.

3) Bulging discs among people over the age of 30 are almost a given. Everyone has them, yet most people do not have back pain.

4) The Placebo effect is very real and well known to science: you can give someone a tic-tac and tell them it is a powerful pain killer and their pain will go away.

5) The Nocebo effect is also real and well known to science: you can give someone a heavy duty pain killing pill and tell someone that it it is a tic-tac and their pain will NOT go away.

6) Back specialists can take a look at 1000 spinal X-rays and MRIs with all sorts of horrible things in them--bone on bone vertebrae, bulging discs, ruptured discs, lesions -- and these back doctors cannot reliably predict which patients will have pain and which will not. Some with crazy damage have no pain, and someone with a slightly bulging disc has been in a wheelchair for 6 years.

7) Back surgery has a very low success rate. Often people will be fine for a while, then the pain comes back in some other part of their back.

The last time I had back pain it was taking the normal trajectory. I felt I was in for another few months of agony, but when my pain was at its apogee, the highest point in the arc and I knew I had many months to go, I sat in my kitchen, talking to myself, and the pain drained from a 9 down to a zero in perhaps seven seconds. And it did not come back.

Is this to say that back pain is all in your head?  Sort of, the pain is real, it is just a matter of what is causing it.  Your brain may indeed detect that something is off, or there has been some injury and the other knowledge surrounding spinal stuff kicks in and your brain gives you this very real pain.

So now I am gonna ask you to watch this video that John Stossel did on Dr. a John Sarno, who is a back pain specialist with probably the best record of actually curing people of their chronic pain JUST BY TALKING TI THEM.  

Here it is. Go. And continue on down the rabbit hole until your pain just goes away…it really really can happen.  

https://youtu.be/8jQtmSZetJM

SHE WAS ASKED NOT TO USE HER NATURAL BODY!

Bryce Dallas Howard Says She Was Asked to Lose Weight Before Filming Jurassic World Dominion The actress said director Colin Trevorrow “protected” her after she was asked to “not use my natural body in cinema” 

Howard "How do I say this . . . [I've] been asked to not use my natural body in cinema," Howard admitted to the outlet. "And on the third movie, it was actually because there were so many women cast, it was something that Colin felt very strongly about in terms of protecting me . . . because the conversation came up again, 'We need to ask Bryce to lose weight.' "

Good grief is this one of these new STRONG women of the current era? I remember when the Phoenix Suns asked Charles Barkley -- hm, how should I say this... he was asked not to use his natural body to play basketball. Yes they had the audacity to tell him to drop some weight in order to compete with players who would tear him up if he was fatter and slower.  I believe simply complied.

What is the big deal exactly about some company paying you many millions of dollars and wanting you to look a little more ripped? So work out, get a trainer, lay off the junk food. Or let someone else do the job. The woman pictured below is a college softball player. There is zero doubt in my mind that she would play better if she was quite a bit leaner. Did the coach mention this to her? My money is on NO.

Here is the problem. Dallas Bryce Howard is not very out of shape if at all, but everyone today, especially women, are told that they have a natural body. And that it is beautiful. This is a lie. Humans are naturally lean and it is only through eating fun yummy processed foods that it gets flabby and fat. It's just very hard to stop eating those things as they are pushed on everybody by billboards, at parties, all day every day. Modern-day "food" is created with the express purpose of getting you addicted to it and it has worked. Our government, and indeed dietitians and doctors are telling people the wrong way to keep your body lean. They have been telling us the wrong things since about 1980 and it made everyone in America fatter. And when people are told to lose weight and they try this advice and it does not work, the answer must be, "Well my body just wants to look this way." 

This is wrong. Knock it off.

As a fellow human, you do not have a "natural" body if you are eating things that are not natural foods -- natural foods are meat, fruits, vegetables or nuts and seeds. No, "heart-healthy" grains are NOT heart-healthy, nor are they foods that keep your weight down. They raise your insulin which makes your body store fat. 

My recommendation to females who want to drop a few pounds is simply eat foods that do not raise insulin, like our human ancestors did. And stop being a puss about it. Good grief.

You Know JAWS was Shot at Martha's Vineyard right?

 

Posted without comment.

Corpse found in home confirmed to be ex mayor of Rhode Island

Authorities knew immediately that the badly decomposed body was that of a politician because of the way it was lying.

I’ll wait….