Bellingham Hippie

United States Health Care Reform – Part 2 – What the White House Says

Missy — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 01:05:37 +0000

Before jumping in to what the actual laws say, I decided it was a good idea to see what the White House website said about the reform.
To find it in case you were wondering, go to Whitehouse.gov. Hover on the issues tab and look for Health Care. Click. You’ll be directed to the “At a Glance” page. Go from there to the “About the New Law” tab. There is a nice neat synopsis similar to many others I’ve run across online . The basic points are:

It will be put into practice over time
Life time limits are no longer allowed
Insurance companies will not be allowed to kick you off if you get sick or if there is a problem with your applicaiton
Young people will be able to stay on their parents insurance until 26 years old or until they are offered insurance by their employer
Nearly 600,000 who purchase coverage in the individual market could gain coverage.*
No discrimination againsts kids with pre-existing conditions. No denial of coverage for those under 19 years old.**
No annual limits
Certain preventative procedures are not subject to out of pocket fees like co-payments and deductibles
Appealing via third party coverage “decisions” – I think it means if you are denied something you can appeal the decision.
Allowing better access to contracted providers without a referral and out of network emergency care
By 2014 competative insurance market place***
Bring down costs and improving quality across the board including Medicare, private insurance providers – projections across decades
Resources to help “crack down” on rising insurance premiums and developing “health insurance exchanges where consumers will have the same health insurance choices as Members of Congress”
Create a program for retirees that is affordable for businesses to help their retired employees whom aren’t eligible for Medicare
Make it easier for small businesses to take advantage of the small business tax credit****
Try to maintain efficiency in the system

That’s 16 bullet points taken from The Affordable Care Act page. That’s not all though. There are four other sections including: “Relief for You”, “Myths and Facts”, “Health Care News”, and “Health Care Stories. I’ll touch on the “Relief” section here.
This section is subdivided into more sections: “Women and Families”, “Young Adults”, “Seniors”, “Employers”, “Providers”, and “Disabilities”.

For Women and Families – they mention things already discussed such as the lifetime cap. The only new thing listed is about 80/20 rule which according to them means that they have to spend $.80 of each dollar that you pay on your actual care or improvements to that care. I’m unsure what this means, but hey it sounds good. Also, if an insurance company wants to raise it’s premiums 10% or more they must provide public proof and the states can block it if they want. Finally certain preventative care won’t be subject to a co-pay – think children’s vaccines.
Seniors – Newly listed in this sections is mention about a 50% discount if you are in the donut hole. Closing of that hole by 2020. You can still choose your own doctor. There’s also reiteration of stuff listed before – think lifetime limits.
Employers – More reiteration. There’s reference to discounts to small employers. They route you to the IRS website to see if your business might qualify for said discounts. Also, there is a new tool for usage, HealthCare.gov, which I ran into when I was first looking for a starting point for this research. It’s basically a health insurance search engine/generator thing. Kinda cool considering it can be hard to figure out what all your options are. I know I’ll be looking @ my options as my business grows. There is also a claim that this health care law won’t add to the deficit.
Health Care Providers – There’s mention about how making health care coverage more affordable will cut down on losses due to under/uninsured patients. Also, there is a link to another page showing how red tape will be cut and it will be easier to spend more time with patients. The law created an “Innovation Center” which will apply to Medicare and Medicade and will “test new care and payment models”. From what I can gather the goal is to make it easier to get paid as a provider from Medicare or Medicade, both of which can be very difficult. Since the claim is that there aren’t enough doctors or nurses the law wants to support the growth of those work forces as well as to help create more health centers.
People with Disabilities – There is mention of those with pre-existing conditions whom have been without health coverage for 6 months. There is a “Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan” which will help these people find plans within their states. Also, the law is supposed to build upon services that disabled people may need in their community.

So there’s that bit of information. I know it’s a lot. Hopefully it’s not confusing. Stay tuned for my coverage of the rest of the White House info and for what I learn from the law itself!

*Don’t know what this means exactly, it’s rather vague.
**What about those over 19 years old. Do they get kicked off their parents insurance for pre-existing conditions after their 20th birthday? Not clear.
*** I believe this refers to what I understand as Health Care Kiosks, where you can go and compare plans and get help with questions. Though I might be remembering or understanding this incorrectly.
****Since smaller businesses have a rougher time providing health care, by making sure they know about the small business tax credit that would conceivably help them save a bit of money – or at least even out their expenditures a bit.

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Posting and Replies

Missy — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:11:08 +0000

I wanted to add a quick note about posting to my blog and my replies.
Feel free to post! But I have to approve everything to avoid massive pointless spam comments. Sometimes it does take me awhile to approve your posts. It totally depends on what’s going on with my life. For instance, I just approved two comments that were submitted on 3.2.12. Took me two weeks to get to it. Don’t think I don’t care, but sometimes I have to take care of other things first – you know work so I can pay my bills. Self-employment takes a lot of time and energy and sometimes that means I don’t get to what I want to do right away.

Anyway, comment if you wish and be patient. Also, please keep your comments legitimate. Anything that looks like spam that makes it through my anti-spam plug it will be denied. Sorry.

Beyond that, I will reply to you. But have patience again. I’m busy and sometimes sitting at the computer makes my head want to explode. I’ll chat with you when I can.

Thanks for understanding!

~ B’ham Hippie

United States Health Care Reform – Part 1

Missy — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:27:20 +0000

I woke up Monday morning, sun beaming down on Bellingham and decided to get insane. What I mean is that I decided to learn more about health care in the US. As a massage therapist who bills insurance I know a little – mostly how frustrating things can be for people to get care. I also know as a patient how surprising things can get when you or a loved one tries to use their insurance, think waiting periods for pre-existing conditions.
However, what the recent health care bills say are a total mystery. I’ve read synopsis’ of them (yes there are two, one setting precedents and one fixing problems with the first as I understand it). But does one really know the health care bills if they don’t read the actual pages of the bills?

So here is day one: searching the internet for the reform bills or whatever they are called.

… searching…
… searching…
…still searching…

I didn’t know where to start so I put in longer strings of search info into google. “US health care reform” and a few others. I searched for a site specifically for the health care reform, I pulled up official sites for the White House and the government as a whole thinking I might be able to find links…

…searching…

Remember I don’t know what they are called exactly. “The Affordable Health Care Act”….This is what the White House website calls it. Wikipedia called it “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”. I chose to use this name to search in google again. Just pasting it in I was given options to choose from, I chose “patient protection and affordable care act pdf” because the other bills I’ve read have been uploaded as pdfs as well. Made sense to me.

In total I think it took me 10 minutes or less to find it. As far as I know the link I found is the correct one. I’ll let you know if I got it wrong. It wasn’t too bad. In the past I’ve searched for it before and felt like I could never find it. Now, I see that unless you know how to look for the law, it’s possible to be looking for awhile before you stumble across it. But whatever.

Stay tuned for my piece on what the White House says about it and how helpful that site was for understanding it.

Catch up in Bellingham Hippie Land

Missy — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:52:25 +0000

So here I am again. It’s been a long, long time. Almost five months actually. That didn’t happen on purpose, but it did and I have no regrets. Sometimes when things get real something has to give.

So here it is in case you were curious. September included the Whatcom Farm Tour which was awesome. It’s my Christmas actually. LOVE it! A week or so after that I sprained my ankle and my car was wrecked within 8 days of each other. Total crap. I’m not going to sugar coat it. It sucked super badly. What happened was on a Thursday night after work I tripped off the last stair in my building while carrying my customary pile of crazy work stuff – sheets, oils, my bag – and I landed on the top of my foot. Seriously. The top of my foot was upside down. I learned later that with a bad sprain you can actually dislocate your foot in the process. That’s exactly what happened. I had to put my foot back and not vomit all over the street. I think I earned some serious cool injury points for that one, if not cool than toughness points.

About a week later and I was rearended and my car, my beautifully bright red car was totaled. *big frowny face* It caused ouchies all over my body. Thank goodness for PIP coverage. For any of you whom don’t have it, put it back on as soon as you can! It will take all the complication out of getting treatment for your injuries. It’s the best thing you will hopefully never have to use.

Anyway, these two things threw a monkey wrench in my life so I didn’t do anything unless I had to, including blogging, making kombucha, doing laundry, dishes, winterizing my porch or riding my bike to work. But instead of this being a bad thing it allowed me to prioritize my life a bit better. I stopped all non essential activities. I healed and worked and slept – the most important things.

Between pity parties some great things made themselves apparent. Firstly, I have a sweet loving Rick. Second, I have no car payment now. Thirdly, I had to become more organized. Fourth, I learned to take and ask for help. I don’t like it but I learned to ask a bit more. Good things from bad happenings.

The holidays came around and I made my second turkey ever at my parents house. It was delicious. We took some time away just before Christmas. Rick got all creative for the holidays.

Then came January. Sweet January. Oh thank the Universe for January. Decompression month. We ended the month with a trip to Capitol Hill (Seattle not D.C., though that would be cool as well), a free haircut, and some outings that included gluten free and grass fed beef.

Now it is the middle of February. It’s lovely outside. It rains but it doesn’t crush my soul. It’s grey right now, but it’s okay because it’s warmish. I’m just puttering through the month, continually prioritizing, putting myself back together still. My business is growing. I’m getting out and enjoying my sweet Bellingham. Life is great.

So excuse my absence. It was needed. I was living more in my community than I ever had before. That doesn’t mean that everyone knows my name. But it does mean that at Brandywine Kitchen two of the chicks recognize us now. Xiann and I walk the Railroad Trail often. Rick and I just do stuff. It’s amazing. It’s wonderful. I still can’t believe how wonderful a life we lead. Sure it’s not perfect, but it shouldn’t be or we wouldn’t notice how great everything can be.

So anyway, that’s what’s happened. I hope that the last few months have been great for the handful of my readers.

Cheers

Detoxing – The “Gory” Details – Part Two

Missy — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:08:59 +0000

To catch up if you haven’t already read it check out part one of my 2011 detoxing saga. It was very oniony with a little bit of bacon. I’m not kidding.

For part two I want to focus a bit more on the excretory system. It’s the waste system. Your body has a few ways at its disposal to get rid of waste. (No pun intended, well not exactly.) To put it not-so-delicately, you poop it out, pee it out, or sweat it out. All that yucky stuff must come out!

Well, the former I have had some trouble with. You see my colon is very emotional. Stress me out and she freezes up which makes me kind ill. Miss Colon was in need of some help.

I chose to juice for lunch – no solids. Beets were the main ingredients. My dad knows them as a blood cleanser. Amongst my hippie friends they are known to be detoxing. And after doing a bit of online research after I started juice it appeared as if they are also laxatives as well. Had no idea, but it made sense when one afternoon I had to rush a bit to the baño.

The beets and her buddies in juicing, sometimes apples, carrots, lettuce, oranges and always ginger, cleaned me out well. Each morning. In fact, I had no choice in the matter. Usually, if I get distracted I can put off el baño time*. As I said in part one, I was feeling un-full, or empty. It was the strangest feeling ever. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I hadn’t felt like stones lived in my abdomen.

Aside from stuff coming out of the regular places crazy things most definitely came out of strange places. Stuff came out of my skin. I tried really had to avoid wearing clothes that would soak up too much crazy sweat. Thank goodness it was summer so sleeves weren’t needed all day long.

The strangest thing was I would shower whenever I felt like it then I was fine until the my body started to sweat a bit or just create it’s own oils again. As soon as that happened I became the worst walking potpourri human combo. Near the end I did feel like what was coming out was staining my skin a bit. While there was no crazy blue color it became harder to wash away the crazy smells. In fact, it took a month or so for the bacon or onion fragrance to stop happening on a daily basis. Pretty gross and frustrating. But that’s okay, it was doing something which is better than nothing.

Anywho, while I was having only juice for lunch – about a quart daily – I never felt hungry. True I ate two regular meals a day. A fluid lunch didn’t leave me hungrier around dinner time really. Thank goodness because I was working quite a lot and hunger pangs or sugar crashes were unacceptable to me.

In part one I explained that after a bit over a week I started to feel overly emotional and actually felt like I had to stop. Certainly I’m not a doctor, so do take what I say next as experience not fact… I didn’t feel like I was dying and not getting enough nutrients. I did however feel like the detoxing effects were too much to handle while working. Perhaps if I had a couple weeks off work I could handle it fairly well, as I could rest and not worry about taking care of other people. Unfortunately, in that respect it will probably be awhile before that’s possible. The only down side to self-employment is no vacation or sick pay.

As far as whether or not I’ll be doing this again in the future, I’d say yes, but the timing needs to be right and I need to be highly organized to cut down on any unnecessary stressors while detoxing. I’m excited and nervous for my next detox and I’m sure I’ll make some alterations to improve my experience. I hope that was interesting and even helpful for those of you reading!

*Note: For me that was part of the problem. I’d get distracted and then it would be too late, the waste would be stuck. Yuck.

After note: I’m finishing this post several months after I stopped my juicing. It was a highly emotional experience for me and I needed recovery time before looking back on it. Add that with a couple of huge crazy things last September and I’m finishing it in 2012 instead of 2011. But life happens and goes on.

Detoxing – The “Gory” Details – Part One

Missy — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:46:21 +0000

Warning – posts about detoxing include some things that might sound gross. It’s the human body and crazy things happen sometimes. Just beware!

So I did a detox or cleanse, whichever you prefer. Either way, I experienced some very interesting things.

So the most important part of the cleanse was to have my digestion achieve regularity – because who likes to be full of shit? Not fun. Regular bowel movements are necessary for a healthful life because your colon provides one the most important ways to eliminate wastes. Gotta take out the garbage!

So Part One of my cleanse was to move stuff along, to empty me out. Amazingly replacing lunch with juice released a whole bunch of stuff. It took a couple of days to start. On day three I started to feel lighter. I had no idea that I was feeling full, full of, well you know.

Setting the stage: Lunch was juice mainly of beets and carrots and whatever else I had on hand to make that juice tastier. Beets taste like dirt. Carrots are great but don’t completely make up for dirt taste. Apples and citrus are wonderful top notes to even everything out.
After a couple of days changed the rest of my meals just a little. Breakfast became almost 100% raw: veggies and fruit, sometimes some soaked nuts. In the evening I did eat an animal protein but focused on fish and other easy to digest stuff. There were more raw veggies with dinner as well. Snacks were mostly raw. Raw, raw, mostly raw = detox.

What went down:
For the most part early on, I felt fine, almost invigorated. Then around the end of the first week I started to feel strange.

I believe it was day five and I was sweating partly because it was warm and humid out and partly because of something else – detoxing… nervousness? Instead of sweating just salt, water and sweat smell, I was releasing crazy smells. At one point I smelled like onions, then hotdogs, and bacon. Rick joked that I was making him hungry. It was mortifying. Thank goodness Rick and our friend whom was hanging out with us for that day didn’t care.

Closing in on day 10 I still smelled like onions and sometimes fast food. I was sweating without having to move. Yes it was humid some days, and I do feel hot and misty much sooner than other people, but I was showering more than once in a day because I was damp and oniony a lot.

After about day 10 I also started to feel exhausted. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was overly emotional. Sleep couldn’t touch how weird and crazy I felt.

Powering through week two into week three left me with very regular exits of waste (poop heehee). With that I was happy. Goal one achieved. However, as week three came to a close I felt dead, tired, weepy, strange, out of control, and dead again. I was tired of smelling like onions and other stuff. Over that weekend I eased back into “regular life”. Juice still, paired with solid food for lunch. Then less juice and then no juice at all.

Stay tuned for Part Two to finish it off!

For a synopsis of why I chose to torture myself see the link below.
Detoxing Intro

Detoxing or Cleansing – Cleaning out the body!

Missy — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:01:34 +0000

So over a year ago, the nutritional counselor I saw recommended that I do some sort of cleanse focusing on my large intestine (colon) and then my liver. She recommended Dr. Schultz stuff to help the process along. I’ve heard wonderful things about it. What I’ve read on the website has also excited my health conscious hippie self. However, it’s not cheap because the ingredients are all organic and wild crafted where possible. That’s awesome, but it has to wait for now.

Since I’m not using Dr. Schultz stuff now, it’s become necessary to adapt to my circumstances and learn how to do my own version. I am reading a lot of what he has on his site. Through this I have learned a few things and want to follow the basic guidelines for his colon and liver cleanse. I’ll be trying to replicate some things, like a detox tea,as well as the colon cleansing blends, and picking up a local echinacea tincture. I’m just in the beginning so it’s all a fuzzy idea and no concrete plans have been made yet. However, I have taken a few steps, as an experiment of course, to see just what it takes to detox my body.

The first thing I did was to replace a solid lunch with a nutrient rich freshly juiced lunch. The basic ingredient has been beets, with carrots until I ran out a couple of days ago. I’ve read and heard that just juicing can send your body into a detoxing or cleansing state. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to happen. I was pleasantly surprise. But I’ll save the “gory” details for later. Today’s post is just a precursor to the crazy.

Currently, until I figure out my plan – which I am writing up today and over the weekend – I’ll keep lunch as juice. It’s not bad, feels almost indulgent – though it’s a very healthy feeling which doesn’t have the sinful indulgent feelings. But hey, who wants to feel sinful all the time?

Until next time. Feel free to share your own detoxing stories!

~ the B’ham Hippie

Homemade Planter Box – Porch Gardening

Missy — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 07:41:38 +0000

From Rick with Love

Rick’s love note to me on the bottom of my new big garden planter box. He’s so sweet.

Monthly Goal #2 – Make the porch liveable again!

Missy — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:56:47 +0000

So I know that it is more than half way through the month of May. Perhaps it seems like it’s too late to work on another goal and I should just wait. Well, instead of falling prey to procrastination again, there will be another Monthly Goal – my second!

One of the most important things in my life is outdoor time. While I don’t have a backyard, nor a huge garden to go play in, I do have a sizable porch that has been calling my name for several weeks.

In the last two days cleaning my porch and getting it ready for sunny weather has become a screaming priority. I need sunshine! I need a place to go and sit and listen to the birds while I do homework. I need vitamin D! And another porch garden!

So my goal this month – hopefully it won’t take that long – is to do the following:

Sweep and de-leaf the porch
Move the grill up against the shared wall so the propane tank is no longer in direct sun
Take the coolers and other unnecessary things to storage
Reorganize my porch garden and start it’s rehabilitation!
Get rid of the carpet of moss that is growing in certain areas!
Do some general cleaning on the shared wall and the railing
Look for a shelf to expand my surface area for gardening
Keep my compost accessible!
Apply some feng shui to the porch? (I have very limited knowledge but I want to give it a try)

It’s a pretty long list of things to do, but I don’t mind doing them so hopefully I won’t get overwhelmed and not be able to finish. There are other things in store for the porch but I didn’t want to make my goal too big, plus one of them isn’t my goal but Ricks. He is hoping to build a small garden bed for some more veggies, which is pretty exciting. Also, I need to start some seeds, though it may seem late for some of them. There are several herbs that I want to start so they are at least somewhat secure (taller than half an inch) before winter gets too crazy.

Anyway, I’ll check back on my progress in at least a month!

~ B’Ham Hippie

Monthly Goal #1 – Rehabing the Compost Bin – Recap

Missy — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:18:06 +0000

So here is my recap from last month. My goals were centered around rehabilitating my compost bin.

Stir the compost – Check!

More worms from my parents garden – Check!

Walk the food waste across the porch – This is more complicated…

Tidy the porch so it’s less easy to be lazy

The compost bin is a bit too full to handle my food waste, except for the occasional coffee grounds. So I’m going to let the wormies do their job and then I’m going to use the compost for plants!!!!
Can you feel my excitement?

Overall, I’m very pleased with how my first Monthly Goal went. It was great, I only had one thing to worry about – not that there wasn’t a million other things I had to do as well. But this was one goal that I set for myself outside of the usual “to dos” that had plenty of time to get done. Best thing – it actually got finished! So here are two pictures of my rehabilitated compost bin to finish off. I’m so proud!

Cheers!

~B’ham Hippie

Rehabilitated Compost Bin

Compost Bin - Kombucha Baby