The updated State Employees Health Plan has been announced, and as is a surprise to no one, everything is more expensive for the next fiscal year—higher premiums, higher co-pays, and less coverage. With that said, there was one announcement that I’m quite ambivalent about:
“Starting in 2011, you will be penalized for being the fat fuck that you are.”
Of course, that’s a paraphrasing, but that’s the message. Essentially, we will have to attest (by signature) that we are within an acceptable BMI, and if we’re not, we will only be able to elect the 70/30 health plan, as opposed to the 80/20 or the 90/10 plan, which I’m currently in. The 70/30 plan means that you have to cover 30% of any charges over your deductible. Also, your copay for primary care is $25, as opposed to $20 or $15 respectively for the 80/20 and 90/10 plan. And the co-pay for all of the other things, such as a specialists, urgent care, emergency room visits, and so on are proportionally more expensive than the other two plans.
The “acceptable BMI” is described as: “Enrollees with a body mass index–a weight-height ratio that determines whether a person is considered overweight–below 40 can stay in the more generous plan as of July 2011 and below 35 as of July 2012.”
Here’s are some of my conflicting thoughts on the subject:
- This is a brilliant move toward rewarding behavior that we want to encourage. (“We,” in this case, meaning “society.”)
- According to the AMA (or whomever sets them), I am considered obese for my height and weight.
- At least we have some time to “work on the situation.”
- I’ve “worked on this situation” so many times in my life—including two “big jobs,” in which I lost 65 pounds on Weight Watchers and 50 pounds on Nutri-System.
- Necessary, but ugh.
This morning’s buscapade revolved around a couple of things:
- The sudden breaking of the fare machine. About halfway between where I get on and where I get off, someone put in their dollar, and the machine just kept grinding and grinding and grinding and never did spit out the receipt card. The bus driver proceeded to futz with it the rest of the time I was on the bus, and watching her face in the rear view mirror, I tried to see how often—and how long at a time—her eyes were on that machine instead of on the road.
- There’s one lady on the bus, whom I haven’t mentioned before, who is a plus-sized girl (there are several, so not those other ones I might have mentioned), but this particular one is unusually short, too. She also has the biggest breasts on the planet. She is so short and heavy, though, that it is a real struggle for her to reach the cord to pull to indicate a desire to get off at the next stop. She gets off at my same stop, so whenever we’re on together, I always pull it before she can get to it. Not that it’s a contest.
Believe it or not, that’s all an aside. What I really wanted to say about her was that today, she had on this article of clothing that was all one piece, buttons all down the front, denim, and it went down to about mid-calf length. The buttons from her neckline down to her waistline were so at war with each other that there were openings in between every one of them—the ones in the area of her bra standing out like a white flag calling for a truce. Furthermore, the last button was right dab in the middle of her trench (to continue the war metaphor), and from that one on down, the dress was just pulled wide open. Just to complete the metaphor, I’m quite sure that the guy sitting directly across from her could attest to whether her canteen matched her tent. And he was being a sentry on duty to be sure he had the answer for the Captain when time to report in.
I had a phone affirmation today from my good friend Myra, who called to tell me that she’d caught up on my blog (which she reads in fits and spurts) and that she was thinking of me. Sweet! One of my very favorite peeps.
My office mate and my boss listened in on a teleconference with me today about how two universities are using Twitter and Facebook for IT Communications venues. Since we use Twitter, we thought it would be interesting to listen in, and it was free, to boot.
After listening to the hour-long presentation, it occurred to me that our use of Twitter is so much more mature than theirs, so I wrote up how we’re using it and made it available to the others who listened in. I posted it on our NCSU Web Developer Ning, and it’s called, “NCSU OIT’s Use of Twitter for IT Communication.”
I wore my:
t-shirt today, and walking back from lunch, a family came out of a restaurant as I was walking by, and a girl screamed pointing at me and looking at her sister, “Terri, that’s the shirt you need!” to which the whole family nodded.
On the way home on the bus, I took the first forward-facing seat on the left side of the bus. In front of me, sitting across from each other on the inward-facing seats (prioritized for the disabled and elderly), sat two guys whose teeth were absolutely atrocious, and the one on my side of the bus, in a ball cap, and just as country-sounding as he possibly could, said, “Grammar police!?! You’re going to be very busy here in North Carolina, especially with all these country boys.”
I told them about the two guys who were going all around the country marking up bad grammar and how they’d eventually gotten arrested for defacing government property in some national park, which proceeded to degenerate into stories, by the two of them, about how this country’s freedoms are dwindling, all the way to something about satellites watching our every move, including ones that are infrared so they won’t miss anything at night.
The story I mentioned is talked about in this article, “Grammar police punished for ‘fixing’ rare sign.”
I’d worked until 8:00PM, so that was the 8:13 bus, I’d caught, and once home, I had a most delicious Omaha hamburger on an English Muffin, with ketchup on one side and Bullseye BBQ Sauce on the other side. It was yum, yum, yum!
At first, I thought I’d drop by Flex for their First Friday Alternative Night, but it got late, and I said, “Maybe I’ll catch the 12:00 drag show at Legends.” To that end, I decided on a disco nap, lying down at 10:00, with my alarm set for 11:15.
When it went off, I turned it off and rolled over. And the rest is herstory.