OT. Not a Herd

[gfretwell]

People don't understand the insurance company is us. They will pass on that judgement to everyone who buys insurance and tack on a profit. It is like people suing their own HOA.

[rbowman]

Look at the House leadership. Pelosi, Steyner, Clyburn, McCarthy, and Scalise are professional politicians. The Senate is just as bad.

[invalid unparseable]

I had heard that Chinese communist party leadership was dominated by scientists but now find it is no longer true:

[invalid unparseable]

And, whoop de do, we get about a $90/month SS increase. That will be eaten by my first few oil delivery bill increases

[rbowman]

Suzuki is very careful not to mention 'oh, by the way, we had to limit the top speed to 186 mph because of those pansies in Europe.'

[The Real Bev]

My cheap medicare drug plan (Express Script $25/month) goes up to $75/month next year because it was bought out by Cigna. Needless to say I'm switching to a Wellcare plan for $10.50/month. With almost no prescriptions/year, cheap is the way to go.

Cheaper is to go to a Mexican pharmacy (we did that, along with dentistry), but that seems undesirable since The Plague hit.

[The Real Bev]

Bone is nifty stuff. It adds itself where needed and deletes itself where it isn't. This is why it's good to lift weights, especially for us wrinklies.

[rbowman]

Nixon wanted a 50 mph limit on passenger cars and 55 mph for trucks and buses.

The Feds tried to blackmail Montana so the state instituted a ticket for wasting natural resources. It was $5 and didn't count as a moving violation.

Most of I90, I15, and I94 is 80 mph except when passing by a city, city being defined as Missoula, Butte, Helena, Bozeman, abd Billings. I drive

80 and seldom get passed or pass other vehicles other than trucks or RVs. I do see my mileage drop from around 35 mpg to 28 or 29 depending on the headwinds. Rural non-divided roads are 70 and I seldom see people exceeding the limit on them either. That's quite a bit different that back east where you might get run over driving the posted limit.

There are a couple of 45 mph roads I travel where the Highway Patrol sets up often enough to keep me honest but I don't remember ever seeing them with a speed trap on the interstates. They generally have better things to do with their time.

[rbowman]

I never did but quite a few people at Why and Ajo would go down to Sonoita for dental work since it was only about 25 miles. There were no complaints.

There is a moral to that story too. There were two dentists in town and only one of them had an x-ray machine. If the other one wanted an x-ray he sent you down the street. My dentist has a machine in every room and a shiny new panoramic machine in a former closet. I'm helping to pay for all of them.

[The Real Bev]

I wasn't watching the clock, just the road, but I loved the acceleration. Scared the shit out of my grandson! Wouldn't buy one, of course.

Depends on what you sue for. Stopping the officers from siphoning outrageous amounts of money to friends or relatives for poorly-done repairs -- and a lot of other stuff -- saves everyone money.

Yes, a friend is doing exactly that even as we speak.

[invalid unparseable]

I saved one of the ribs and just photographed it. It was a small buck bagged in January after it lost its rack. You can see the knot is pretty big:

The piece of bone beneath it is part of a leg bone found on the road after a car I was riding in had hit a doe that ran in front of it.

This wrinkly tries to keep his bones intact.

[gfretwell]

At my wife's place they had someone suing them because they got drunk and tripped over a curb. The curb was painted yellow and well lit. I never heard what grounds she was suing over. They settled for an undisclosed amount of money just to make it go away.

[Jim Joyce]

I hope you meant to say 'less likely', considering the relatively low number of breakthrough infections. Less deadly is a nice secondary benefit.

A patient who is unvaccinated, of course.

[trader_4]

That's false too. The vaccines reduce infections too.

As for breeding

Ones that are unvaccinated. There is also growing evidence that those vaccinated who get infected are far less capable of transmitting the virus.

Great, enjoy paying it.

Too bad the Democrats don't understand that. And we have a severe crisis on the supply side, ie getting goods from ports to customers. I don't see the Dems doing anything about that. Pete B is too busy off taking care of his new adopted baby. If I was president and some ahole pulled that stunt, I'd fire them and get a full time cabinet member. That's about as disrespectful to the country and to the president as you can possibly get.

[trader_4]

Medicare will take the first $21. I wonder how much of that is Covid because of dummies refusing to get vaccinated?

[gfretwell]

Since vaccines make the breakthrough infection milder and maybe asymptomatic, I stand by all I said. We really don't have a clue how many there are. Why would a vaccinated person with no real symptoms bother to pay for a test?

They aren't necessarily free and you still have to want to do it.

[gfretwell]

Where is that science? We don't even know how many breakthroughs there are. BTW if all of that rosy shit about how wonderful the vaccine is, really is true. Why the mask? You folks want it both ways.

"Take the vaccine, it is a game changer"

"No the game didn't change, wear your mask, social distance and be very afraid"

It is chump change and the 5.7% COLA will more than cover it.

Welcome back, we missed you ;-)

[gfretwell]

Real inflation is cruising in the low double digits and you are obsessing about a 13% increase in a medicare premium when they have been upside down for a decade and only raised the premium about $35 since 2011. If I was really interested in fiscal responsibility I would raise it a couple hundred bucks. The average medicare patient costs the taxpayer $13,220 a year. I am helping you a little because my Advantage plan only costs you $9,886. It costs me $148.50 a month for a pretty good PPO. $169.50 won't put me in poverty.

If you look at the hike in medical costs even before Covid you see how silly your comment is. At least around here, the senior vaccination rate is very high. I doubt covid even makes a ripple in the medicare costs. These folks are at end of life and even if they are not "sick", they are getting new hips, taking expensive drugs and buying a lot of medical equipment on the federal dime.

[The Real Bev]

When we drove down below Mazatlan to see the eclipse in 1991 we had to drive back maybe 100 miles to/through Sonoita to buy a wheel bearing.

For a while we went to Algodones (just south of Yuma), which is a town entirely located to cheap dentistry for snowbirds. Long drive, though. SIL recommended a place in Tecate (shorter drive), but the timing didn't work out. Tijuana is the easiest drive (discounting traffic, of course), and the walk from the parking lot on the US side across the border could be worse (and used to be before they opened up the new crossing) -- especially since our chosen dentist would pick us up at the first place he could bring his car.

Interesting factoid: You can buy some cheap "tequila" to use as mouthwash with the same alcohol concentration as Listerine and which is much cheaper than Listerine. Tastes better too. Comes in a plastic bottle with a belt clip :-)

It's really fun driving in Tijuana with young Mexican drivers. I'd never have that much courage!

The ones we went to had digital x-rays, those magic drills, etc. just like the locals. The dentists didn't seem to have diplomas on their walls, just certificates for courses in various specialties granted by US dental schools like USC and UCLA. I think a lot of what happens is on-the-job training of the junior people, but Tijuana Spanish is so fast and abbreviated that I couldn't understand more than 1/20th of what they were saying, if that. Several of the staff were fluent in English.

[Jim Joyce]

You really don't see that you've got it completely backwards? This is one of those things that I thought would be obvious.