We need to do better. We need the equivalent of a Social worker or a Church worker who knows that hospital experience, knows insurance, knows the available choices for nursing home, home health care, knows how to communicate with doctors and nurses when there is a dispute on care. Todays Social workers spend all their time trying to get rationed care at home, and placements in overcrowded facilities. It takes many, many hours for each patient. Many work hours without pay because the need is there and if they don't bad things happen.

Everybody goes into this blind and the outcome is almost never a good experience because the choices are critical the information lacking and the perspective absent.

Mom died in Jan 2008 and died in July 2010. We thought we could do better but Dad and we really tried finally asking each time "if this were your parent or loved one what would you do" because they have to give all the choices even the horrible ones.

For example, my daughter-in-law's Dad went in for lung surgery to help a lung condition. He suffered a massive heart attack in recovery survived but had another two days later. The resuscitation further damaged his lungs and his heart was probably never going to be strong enough for him to be off of machines. He had gone into a coma and they watched him for 48 hours his vitals and tests indicating slow death so they used his living will and the best guess from the doctor to agree to shut the machines off and let nature take it's course. Tests indicated he probably would not come out of the coma. So no provision was made for a doctor to be standing by and guess what? They shut off the machine and a few minutes later he woke up alert and terrified, not knowing what is happening only knowing he was dying and everyone was there an nobody was doing anything to help him. This went on for almost one whole hour before he finally slipped back into a coma and died about 4 hours later. No provision to sedate him if that happened so legally they claimed they could do nothing. They could not get a hold of his doctor and his DNR orders signed prevented the hospital from doing anything despite what happened. Surely not enough time for a court order, just an hour of horror that did not need to happen. I am sure that it was awful for that staff that was on duty then but then forgotten. It should never happen again but it will because there is no automatic feedback loop on this in the system. I know I tried following through with my Mom and Dad.

Almost everyone in that family has had major problems that required therapy. That also cost a lot of money and possibly affected some members own health. There has to be a better way. We have to better.

The American negativity, selfishness, rigidity and lack of logic has to stop. Information about choices has to be available quickly and understandably for upset family members.

If I were a member of a Church like my daughter-in-laws I would start this as a "mission" and hopefully it will become mainstream have things better for everyone.

I want to shout them down, vote them out, send their hackable electronic voting machines and their non-thinking think tanks to the dump. I want government control of the media only to maintain free speech and balance as it was. Money and corporations need to be regulated, not 99%. I want separation of Church and State again and above all tolerance and humanity.

I'm still not over the anger at all the crap that attended my husband's terminal cancer treatment. Imagine arriving at the hospital three days after he had a 12-hour spinal surgery and being greeted by bouncy cheery little nurse who says, "Oh, I see they're kicking you out today!" Except no one told us, and we had half a day to find a nursing home. I could go on and on and on. But all I can do right now is .

Fortunately, I was able to be more hands-on in my mother's case.

And in the case of my ex-lifepartner, seems she's decided that's not my problem anymore (nor was I ever really going to be her's).

Cough, cough, think! smoke. Linda.

I was just talking about this issue with a couple guys in the local coffee shop yesterday morning. One of 'em I know is pretty far left, the other one I'd never seen before. But I kinda butted into their conversation, and as we were the only patrons at the time, we gave free rein to our comments.

Much of the conversation had to do with "socialized medicine" and how utterly impossible it is to explain this to those on the far right. And all three of us had experiences with the horrors of the wonderful UNSOCIALIZED U.S. healthcare (that's a misnomer) system.

But here's another example of how bad that system really is and part of why it costs so fucking much -- we did finally find a nursing home for my husband and the horrors of that beggar belief. He was in and out of there for about four of the last six weeks of his life. On the day I checked him out of the nursing home and into the hospital again, I received a phone call from the office asking me I would come down to sign some paperwork. Understand that I did not receive this phone call until after he had already been removed from the nursing home where he had been living and receiving care for almost a month. The paperwork, they explained, was for the insurance. No paperwork had ever been completed. No bills could be sent. No authorization had ever been given. In four fucking weeks not one person had ever walked through those pleasant halls from the front office to the back rooms to visit with us, to orient us to what the facility had to offer, nothing. They didn't even get anyone's signature or copies of insurance cards. All the meals, all the medications, all the physical therapy and transport and everything else -- the insurance company never paid a penny.

BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS COMPLETELY FUCKED UP.

And so few ever have much good to say about it. Families go bankrupt because of this horribly screwed up system.

She had several rounds of chemo during the previous decade of her life, so we didn't think the current round would be any different. However, the doctor came to us said this was very strong chemo and proceeded to lay out the various failures that could occur. And if something failed he wanted to know what the family wanted to do...basically resuscitate or to keep her comfortable with pain medicines until she passed away. There were five of us siblings discussing the options and we decided as a group to keep our mom comfortable and not do any heroic measures. Thankfully, our mom came thru the chemo just fine and we didn't have to deal with all that. But I've always wondered if there were complications and there was a different doctor in a different hospital, what could have happened differently because mom didn't have a living will.

edit
I live in a different state, so I really don't know what the rest of the family had to go thru with all the billing issues.

to, roughly, 30 million unemployed and underemployed Americans, 46 million in poverty, millions upon millions of working poor, and those whose homes are in foreclosure or in trouble, people who can't afford health care. Because all those things flow from the lack of decent jobs.

Roughly -

"The unemployed just got the best news in a long time from Ben Bernanke" who, he said, resembles a college professor

(is that supposed to give the Bernanke more credibility?)

when he announced that they were going to spend taxpayer money for the following:

*FED TO KEEP POLICY STIMULATIVE FOR CONSIDERABLE TIME'
*FED WILL ADD TO PURCHASES IF LABOR MARKET DOESN'T IMPROVE
*FED DOES NOT SAY WHEN MBS PURCHASE PROGRAM TO END
*FED TO BUY $40B MBS MONTHLY, CONTINUE OPERATION TWIST'
*FED TO BUY MBS, EXTENDS ZERO-RATE POLICY INTO 2015

This, he says, is great news, because this will cause business to hire.

Do you think Ezra gets thank you notes from Mi$$ Rmoney and his "Friends of Mi$$ Because We Are Rich" club?

Because every single penny of this goes to inflate the assets of really rich people. That's what QE1 did, and some coffee servers got hired while we lost mid-wage jobs. QE2 came along, we hired people in the hotel-motel industry and home health care aides, and got rid of more mid-wage jobs. And all this time low-wage job hiring became the norm, poverty increased, the number of working poor increased,

Is that what he means by hiring?

No longer QE, now they call it a Large Scale Asset Purchase. Do YOU own any large scale assets, say along the line of hundreds of millions or perhaps a block of mortgage-backed securities with a face value of $1 billion? Or have a million, or two hundred million invested? If you do, CONGRATULATIONS, you are most likely taken care of.

If not, are you in foreclosure? over 50? Among the near-half of graduating college students who can't find a job that will pay your student loan debt? Among the other 300 million or so Americans who aren't in that first category.

Well, this may trickle down on you.

I don't really mean to dis Ezra. I suspect he just announces for whoever pays him. But he reminds me of the newspaper owner in the South who sided with the plantation owners who thought slaves better off when the owner made a lot of money.

Do they think we are just friggin' stupid? Once, maybe. Twice, we begin to look a little slow. Now a third time?

I have heard all the excuses, but I suspect these folks are lucky the ghost of Huey Long hasn't been channeled by anyone. They will have a bus caravan of 5 million people sitting in D.C.'s face until they decide to focus on the need, not the greed.
Then again, he cared more about hungry kids than making sure the wealthy weren't losing any money...

It's time to put the money in the pockets of everyone else.

NOT!
What a joke. With the government no longer publishing M3 data, we have no way of knowing just how worthless our greenbacks are anymore. How fast and for how long can they keep their printing presses running?

QE is designed for the 1% so they can get even more wealthy

See you tonight, if I'm still alive, before or after euchre....

* U.S. consumer prices climb 0.6% in August
* Consumer prices advance 1.7% in past 12 months
* Food prices move up 0.2% in August
* Consumer prices minus food, energy rise 0.1%
* Gas prices spike 9.0% in August to drive increase

* Retail sales jump 0.9% in August
* Retail sales minus autos up 0.8%
* Retail sales minus gas rise slower 0.3% pace
* Retail sales boosted by autos, gas
* Retail-sales gain revised down to 0.6% in July



Soooo...gas and autos make up 2/3 of that gain? That'll spread the wealth...NOT!

U.S. AUG CAPACITY USE RATE 78.2 PCT (CONS 79.2 PCT) VS JULY 79.2 PCT (PREV 79.3 PCT)

U.S. AUG MANUFACTURING OUTPUT -0.7 PCT VS JULY +0.4 PCT, CAP USE 77.0 PCT VS JULY 77.7 PCT

U.S. AUG INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT -1.2 PCT (CONSENSUS 0.0 PCT) VS JULY +0.5 PCT (PREV +0.6 PCT); AUGUST DROP BIGGEST SINCE MARCH 2009

FED SAYS HURRICANE ISAAC CUT AUGUST INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT BY 0.3 PCT POINT

U. OF MICH US CONSUMER SENTIMENT INDEX PRELIMINARY SEPTEMBER 79.2 (CONSENSUS 74.0) VS FINAL AUGUST 74.3

U. OF MICH CONSUMER EXPECTATIONS INDEX PRELIMINARY SEPTEMBER 73.4 (CONSENSUS 65.0) VS FINAL AUGUST 65.1

U. OF MICH CURRENT CONDITIONS INDEX PRELIMINARY SEPTEMBER 88.3 (CONSENSUS 86.3) VS FINAL AUGUST 88.7

U. OF MICH CONSUMER SENTIMENT, CONSUMER EXPECTATIONS, 12-MONTH OUTLOOK ALL HIGHEST SINCE MAY



10-yr Treasuries taking a big hit off that news, so are FNMA MBSes

10yr yield pushing 1.85% right now.

Dow 13,604 +65 0.48%
Nasdaq 3,178 +21 0.67%
S&P 500 1,467 +7 0.48%
GlobalDow 1,989 +35 1.78%
Gold 1,776 +4 0.22%
Oil 99.65 +1.37 1.39%
[font color="red"]U.S. 10yr 1.82 +0.09 5.47%
Euro 1.31 +0.01 0.86%
DXY Index 78.80 -0.50 0.63% [/font]

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

It ought to be a spectacular crash.

But I would've killed that fucking asshole.

So many men, so little time....

yet.

Stands an even greater oligarch-tress. Goose, Gander, sauce.

And what have they done with xchrome?

Vacationing? New stage production? Painting the bathroom? Extensions? What? No, not that what. What?

X is around. It may be the subject is getting him down. God knows, it does nothing for MY digestion!