Weekend Musings--

Saturday, Mar. 11--

Found this Scientific American article almost first off.  CNBC also carried a story on the bill which would allow employers to require, as part of their "wellness" programs, employee undergo genetic testing or pay much higher premiums for health insurance--and that the company have access to the results. We haven't had any good experiences with the "wellness" provisions of the ACA to date. Most of that comes through Mom's insurance which she gets as the widow of a deceased employee covered by a union contract. Her doctors spent more time asking the questions on the "wellness" questionnaire than actually talking to her. The insurance program included as a benefit membership in the Y but the program never worked for us. Mom injured herself on one of the machines and had to rest for a couple of weeks to recover and another program was supposedly low impact but was too much for her (and for me as well though I lasted a bit longer.) We tried hard to see the benefit from the programs--so hard I think we "saw" benefit that wasn't really there. I have almost never had health insurance through an employer and the rare times I did I never needed it. James Clapper recently came out and proclaimed in an interview that we don't really have privacy any more given the government's ability to snoop into our lives. If the Repthuglicans (and it was they who voted by party line for the bill) our rights to medical privacy will also disappear.

Sunday--

Well, here it is again--the time to switch our clocks. Although I am now retired and now longer have to live by the clock, the change still disrupts my system. I will take at least a week for my sleep rhythms to get back in sync with the clock.

Check out this from The Nation.