[Sethomas]

Barring fantastic coincidence, I have a 50/50 chance of having a genetic predisposition called Lynch's Syndrome. I think. What that means is that I'll probably get colon cancer before age 50, which certainly wouldn't be anything but an inconvenience if the availability of detection and treatment improves, or even just stay the same. When I first found this all out I knew myself to be the kind of person who would rather let my ass slowly and painfully kill me than get it checked out, but since I've changed a bit I'm not sure how I'm going to handle it when it becomes something to worry about. Apparently my cousin, who is more directly tied to the disease than I am, already had frequent polyps forming by age 28 or so. Eh.

Oh, and I mentioned before that my dad always clues me into the disgusting aspects of American healthcare. With insurance, most policies dictate a maximum pay-out for certain groupings of treatment, and as a result hospitals always charge this maximum with no regard for how commensurable it is with actual services rendered. This is done usually out of greed, but my dad's "non-profit" employer does it just to avoid the chance of getting called out for inconsistency or something. This becomes a huge problem when they argue that they can't possibly charge less for the uninsured because that would undermine the basis by which they base their prices for the insured.

In the end, the non-profit hospital ends up with a shit ton more money than they can justify on 15 April, and as a result they frantically find repulsively idiotic ways to spend money that won't compromise their non-profit status. Back when 20" CRT monitors were extremely expensive, they'd start putting dozens of them in warehouses rented just for that purpose so that the offices would have room for 24" ones, and my dad would bring home several and ask if I knew anyone who needed them when the warehouses were full. I think back in 1998 he told me that they spent $2 million every two years replacing the carpet in all their facilities, buying the best quality carpet designed to last at least half a decade under those conditions.