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Showing posts from February, 2009
Things I'm going to say (or do) when I get old and take a trip to the pharmacy: "Excuse me, but I don't talk to technicians. Where's the pharmacist!" (Puff out chest here.) Throw credit card at cashier, preferably landing on the floor necessitating said cashier to bow to me, stating, "I'm sorry, I believe you dropped this." "How long will this take?" "Half an hour? All you have to do is put some pills in a bottle!" "OH MY GOODNESS … WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG!?" "So how much is this with my insurance?" "And for 30?" "Huh. How about 10?" What if I use my discount card instead?" "And for 30?" "Huh. How about 10?" "Now what do I do? Sign my name? Then what? Press clear? Whoops. There, I've signed again! Press clear?" "Why does this cost more every time I come here???" "Why do they pay $10 and I have to pay $50? Huh? Huh?" Wait until the pr
"You one of them ... Reds ?" Now let me say from the getgo that the only Red I've loved is of the shrimp variety, especially those found along the gulf. Sweet ! I'm no com-you-nist. I belong to the Republican Party, albeit the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt (Teddy) and Taft, not Bush. But I fear I've been labeled one of them Commie lovers on my insistence on a national health care plan. I will set the generalized scene: Sitting around the living room or at the dinner table, surrounded by fellow church-going folk, I will inevitably bring up my disgust with the current state of health care in this nation. Someone will, in a near whisper, ask me, "But do you think we should have national health care???" The question posed is of course spoken rhetorically. As if no one at the table would dare suppose that this great country of ours would ever, ever stoop to such a low point. Socialized health care? Raising the flag of our fathers they plant firm their feet and
And I thought pharmacies had problems ... In yesterday's New York Times Michael Kinsley had an article ("You Can't Sell News by the Slice," Tue, Feb 10, 2009) detailing the woes that prevail amongst the newspaper crowd. Seems they lose money on every paper due to paper and ink costs (not to mention employment, rents, health care, etc), and advertising dollars, normally their sweet spot, are spiraling down the toilet. In a previous issue, Walter Isaacson , former managing editor of Time, had advocated " micropayments " on the Web issues of newspapers, allowing a paper to accrue a nickle or dime for a "click" on an article. Kinsley says even that income wouldn't amount to enough to save the papers. Seems they are dinosaurs awaiting extinction where a few will inevitably survive as evolved journalistic forms on the Web. So why does this concern me? It just strikes me as being parallel to what pharmacy went through a few decades ago, when it allowe