Things ain’t what they used to be- especially for baby boomers. There used to be special places to visit in Chicago back in the 1900’s- that sounds so quaint- that are no longer around.
Continue reading “Ice Cream, Ice Cream, We Don’t All Scream For Ice Cream”
Category: baby boomer
Let’s Get Fat
Let’s Face it- we live in a world where thin rules. No one wants to look at a fat person on television or in a movie. You know, what they say- the camera adds fifteen to twenty pounds. Hogwash! Fat is fat.
I’m not fat (hey!) nor am I thin. I’m somewhere in between. I look at pictures taken of me years ago, and yeah- I look thinner back then. You can see it in the face. I used to exercise like crazy, playing baseball, basketball, volleyball, tennis and jogging. Slowly, over the years, each one of the above went by the wayside and my weight edged up.
I used to be able to power walk a couple miles or so at a time; now, I take it as it comes with my bad left foot- the one with the swollen ankle that is here to stay. It’s come down to sitting on a stationary bike and pedaling away like a maniac while watching a live sports presentation or a show that has potential to keep my interest for at least an hour.
But then one day I discovered that too much extended session pedaling was putting too much pressure on my stomach muscles causing me undue pain and I ended up spending a couple of thousand dollars getting MRI scanned at the hospital. Lesson learned- next time ease up on the pedaling and don’t complain about the pain.
My brother Gary, the baby among the siblings, is in his mid 40’s and still thin. He likes to jog for several miles as long as his energy permits. But even he is now at that point in life where he wonders if all the knocking himself out is worth it. A favorite expression of Gary is- “let’s get fat.” There will come a time for him as I say to other younger people as well- don’t wish it on yourself. You’ll get there.
The other day I bumped into a lady friend in her mid to late 60’s, someone who lives in the condo building down the block. She looks positively anorexic. She is not proud of it. She says that her frequent chemotherapy treatments has caused her to loss of appetite. Her equally thin and drawn husband suffers from diabetes and pines for eating sweets which he cannot.
Then there was the fellow who made a living selling illegal tax shelters and ended up spending some time in federal prison. He went in chubby, came out nice and svelte. Our paths crossed a couple of months after he was released and he still looked fantastic. I asked him why he didn’t go back to binge eating. He replied that he had been disciplined to eat only when hungry. So, I took up that mantra. It didn’t help as I found out that I was always hungry.
This obsession with weight brings about mind games. After each successful visit to the bathroom I try to convince myself that it is okay to once again eat like a pig. Or on a day that I decide to take a water pill and spend the next four hours being drained of excess liquid, I am confident that half a bottle of pop will do no harm.
The worst thing you want to say to a tailor when you buy a new suit is “let it out” but then you remember that you are doing this because when you bent down the other day while wearing your one good suit, the pants split in such a way that it was best to just turn it into expensive rags.
I can look down and tell you the color of my belt but that’s only because I memorized it before putting it on and besides- who is going to wear a brown belt with black pants? Yes, I remember when my waist was a 34 and considered anyone who was a 38 just plain fat. Now, I don’t trust anyone under 38.
Dad couldn’t walk and let alone stand the last few years of his life cooped up in a long term care facility but he sure could eat. That was his pleasure. He had no restrictions- he was not diabetic. Well, he did have one eating problem as time went on. He couldn’t eat anything hard- it had to be ground up or otherwise he would choke. He suffered from aspiration pneumonia. He didn’t lose weight. He looked the same as ever until the last few months when he got cancer of the bladder. That was not on his diet plan but then he wasn’t given a right to make a choice.
I’m in the middle of this quandary. Do I want to look corpulent, to be obese or a moving, breathing piece of blubber? Heck no! Can I get back to that size 34 waistline? Fat chance.
Why I Hate Hospital Corporations
Why I Hate Hospitals
I have a modest proposal to reshape the health insurance system. It takes away some of the burden from the insurance companies and places it on the individual but also gives the policyholder a saving’s edge. It is based on the idea that the real culprit in all of this are hospitals.
First, here is the plan and then I’ll go into why I believe this is better than the current modus operandi:
| Category | Age Category | Insurance Premium | Deductible | How it works |
| Doctor Visits, Simple Tests, Emergency Room visits | 35-44
45-54 55-64 |
1000,00 Dollars
1500.00 2000.00 (Self-insurance in a Health Savings Account |
zero | Individual uses up to the value of his or her premium for all outpatient visits by paying out of the HSA approved checking account. Once the HSA is exhausted, the Major Medical policy kicks in. The individual is then obligated to spend up to deductible until it is used up and then only pays 20% up to one million for the year.
If during the course of the year, the person does not use any or all of the HSA money, he or she may apply it to the next year, thereby saving them the need to again put aside extra money each year. They are rewarded for being fortunate enough to stay healthy. Insurance companies lose out but also gain with not having to deal with the paperwork on the majority of medical visits. |
| Major Medical- Surgery, Expensive Tests, Procedures | 35-49
50-64 |
2000.00 (paid to an Insurance Company)
3000,00 |
1000.00
1500.00 |
Individual is obligated to pay up to the major medical deductible and 20% afterward for all bills up to one million dollar cap for the year. At cap, insurance company pays 100%. |
Hospital organizations must also be required to drastically lower billing amounts. It is outrageous and way out of line. They do a lot of unneeded extra testing and then charge an outrageous amount for little time spent taking the tests.
Not too long ago my doctor insisted that I take a CAT scan. Correction- two cat scans, because the area of the body being scanned required two passes. I spent a total of twenty minutes going through the doughnut . The insurance company was billed over six thousand dollars for these twenty minutes of service.
The dye that they made me drink to prep for the test cost five hundred dollars! The insurance company thought that this was fair. Each scan was billed at $2800. The insurance company responded to the bill with, “not so fast! We have a network (translated, a wink and a nod) agreement where you accept our negotiated rate. This brought the price down to $1400 each. Big deal! After using up my $1000 deductible for the year, I was still stuck with paying over one thousand four hundred dollars for an outpatient visit that took less than a half hour.
I called the hospital and asked to get the price reduced. They said that at best they could do was to lower it by ten percent or ask to fill out a financial aid form. I wasn’t about to be insulted by filling out such a form, so I took the discount but then asked for the right to pay it off in three installments. The customer service agent told me that she would not allow it- either pay the full amount in twelve monthly installments, or take the discount. I told her that the hospital already received a more than thousand dollar check from the insurance company on my behalf. It was not as if they were relying only on my payment to make a profit on the deal. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She transferred me into the voice mail for a higher echelon person. He returned my call on the next business day and was equally hesitant to offer compromise. He finally told me he was doing me a great personal favor to allow me to pay the bill off in three installments while also taking the ten percent discount.
There should be only one price for a procedure regardless if a person has insurance or not or whether they are in the insurance network. Period. And the price should be regulated by an impartial group that is not beholden to the hospitals.
I recognize that some of the dollar figures listed above may need to be adjusted for practicality. Paramount, though, is that we need to put intelligence and incentive back into health care decision-making for all parties involved- the patient, doctors, insurance companies and hospitals. Otherwise, we mind as well close down the hospitals and let the healthiest survive to the next generation. It will cut down on the price of gas as there will be less people who own cars.
Nothing But a Hound Dog
By Larry Teren
Hound Dog was written in 1952 for a much-forgotten female singer. It was reworked in 1956 to the more up-tempo hell-bent rhythm barked by the legendary King of Rock, Elvis Presley. It sold more than five million records and made an instant national star out of Elvis Presley when he sang it on the Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan television shows.
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Baby Boomer Power
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) indicated that baby boomers seem to be watching television more than other age groups. This is creating havoc on Madison Avenue, home to the world famous ad agencies. The corporate thinking men want to believe that it is better to cater to a younger crowd because they are more willing to spend money. But, what are you going to do if they aren’t watching the shows broadcast on prime time?
American Idol has been around since 2002. It has been a bellwether for ratings supremacy. According to WSJ, The median viewer age for this current season is 43.8 years. This is less than two years short of the official starting age of baby boomers.
NCIS, the number one hit of last year, had a median viewing age of 57.4! Twenty years ago, the top shows had a median age of the mid thirties. What’s a network to do? How do they cajole baby boomers who already have bought most of the toys they want into spending excess dollars? Especially when Boomers are worried about having enough to last them once they retire.
That’s enough about that. They pay the network and advertising executives way too much money so let them have sleepless nights. I’m content with YouTube.com and Hulu.com. What I really wanted to talk about is how I got to reading the Wall Street Journal.
It was by accident, I promise you. You see, my mother gets it delivered to her house every day. She didn’t subscribe- my brother did. He gave it to her as a present. Why? Because he thinks it is the best newspaper in America. So, now she gets it along with the Chicago Tribune. It’s what you call a safety valve because who knows how long the Tribune will still put out a printed edition.
It’s a reality that will come into being within five years or less. You want to have the newspaper sitting in front of you while you eat or whatever, you’ll need to print it out from your computer. Online is where it’s at, baby. This fact is changing the scope of news production. The Linotype guys are going the way of the dinosaur being replaced by people who know how to use Adobe Photoshop and it’s clones in laying out web generated screens full of news and advertisements. This is also wreaking havoc on the printing unions who are scrambling to redefine membership requirements and the new job descriptions.
When I was a young adult back in the 1970’s, I took a certain elitist pride in having a magazine such as The Atlantic Monthly and others like it mailed to me. My brother even convinced me in the following decade to subscribe to The New Republic. Back then, a person would patiently wait to get a hold of intelligent thoughts put in writing on various subjects even if it meant that by the time you read it the subject was old news.
Today, there is no such luxury. We are dialed into the heartbeat of the world instantaneously. We no longer want to receive in the mail articles of information on events that happened a week earlier. Three more crises would have already happened in the meantime that would have usurped all our attention. Andy Warhol once famously spoke about everyone getting their fifteen minutes of fame. Today, fifteen minutes is about it with little recall.
As Baby Boomers, though, we want a piece of the world we used to live in and all the modern improvements that become available. We’ll decide what to watch on television and the network executives be damned! After all, the doggone home entertainment box was invented on our watch.
Lowered Expectations
Baby boomers are getting to that age where we expect to get the short end of the stick. Many who have lost jobs during the most recent economic downturn have found there to be an unspoken prejudice against anyone over the age of fifty who are seeking employment. After all, a younger person can be hired at a lower salary, less expensive health insurance premiums and tends to not need to take off as much time as an older person. A younger person also seems to have more energy in doing his or her work. Experience, thus, doesn’t seem to count as much as the pocketbook.
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Games People Play
Baby Boomers well remember three big games shows that were broadcast in prime time during the 1950 and 1960’s. They were What’s My Line, I’ve Got a Secret and To Tell The Truth. For sure, there were others but these were unique in that they matched up four celebrity panelists against guests whose job it was to keep them finding out something about them. Most often the give-and-take led to embarrassing moments. The panelists would dress up in their finest clothes and try to act dignified and with a sense of propriety. This made any red faced discoveries that much more dramatic and fun to observe.
I’d like to see a new game show called It’s Embarrassing. A contestant would let the viewing audience in on an incident that left them with egg on their face. I’d volunteer to be on the show at least twice. Each one had to do with events that happened around a work situation but not exactly because of it.
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Eager To Agree
Are baby boomers the last generation to latch onto crossword puzzles? If I were in charge of education, I’d make it so that once kids learned basic reading and writing skills, they’d be obligated to take a course in word puzzles. The class would be geared toward teaching them how to recognize word and sentence construction by doing all the different type of puzzles. For example, When they’d see a four letter word that began with a t and ended with a t, they would know instinctively that more than ninety percent of the time, it would be ‘that’. They would learn the rhythm of word flow and usage. They would also appreciate being able to complete the puzzle and feel a sense of accomplishment. This makes more sense than forcing them to read a novel and try to get them to explain what the author meant. Who cares what the author meant!
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Cheap Thrills
By Larry Teren
When we were baby boomer kids in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Dad would find the least expensive way to provide us entertainment and get us some fresh air at the same time. Usually this meant going to a handful of choices. Continue reading “Cheap Thrills”
Changing Times
Kids growing up nowadays marvel at the thought that there was a time when a person had to use a rotary dial to make a phone call. It sounds so quaint yet archaic. This is not that much different when we baby boomers looked in amazement during the early 1960’s watching The Andy Griffith Show. Sheriff Taylor would click a receiver to get Sarah’s (the operator) attention in order to put a call through
Today’s kids cannot believe that we could only choose among five or six channels to watch on television and that the tv set needed an aerial or sometimes a wire hanger to get half decent picture reception. Or that cars didn’t come with air-conditioning and a rear defogger or an on-board computer screen that helps you navigate where you were going. Part of the fun of going on a vacation trip used to be waiting for the motor club to send a map with the route laid out highlighted by a colored magic marker. In our family, one of us- usually me- would have the responsibility to hold onto the map and tell Dad ever so often how we were doing on course. (It was usually a ruse. He knew where he was going- it was just to keep me preoccupied)
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