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Anti American left
Propaganda
Here is my answer, too long for Twitter’s format:
When I graduated from high school, the school I graduated from was one of two in the entire county. Everyone from the east side went to one school, everyone from the west side of the county went to the other. We all attended the same classes, taught by the same teachers. I can’t see how there is any difference.
After high school, I joined the military and did six years there. When I got out, I was broke, but willing to work. I tried making it for a couple of years as a business owner, but we were soon technically homeless. My family and I lived in the storeroom of my business and we bathed in a 48 quart ice chest.
I took what little money we managed to scrape together and used it to rent a UHaul, then moved back to Florida. When I got there, I took a job in residential construction that paid $7.45 an hour. I spent 8 hours a day in the Florida summer heat, running electrical wire through roughed-out houses, taking home $950 a month to support a family of four. Our rent was $350 a month. The government told us that we wouldn’t qualify for public assistance as long as we were still married, so we got none.
Over the next 5 years, I moved jobs every time there was an opportunity to make more money: I worked at the airport repairing ground support equipment, at Disney repairing the electronic control systems on dancing chickens, at Sherwin Williams on paint manufacturing equipment, and at a stainless steel mill repairing stainless steel pipe manufacturing equipment. There were ups and downs. A few times, they hired me as a maintenance worker because they had a lot of broken equipment and then fired me as soon as I fixed everything that was broken. Still, I didn’t give up.
Each time I changed jobs, it was for more money. Over that 5 year period, I went from $7.50 an hour to $12 an hour, and finally to a salary of $30,000 a year. Then Bill Clinton signed a “most favored nation” treaty with China, flooding the market with cheap stainless steel, making it cheaper to import stainless steel products than it was to manufacture them, which put my employer out of business.
Finally tired of being laid off, and decided to take my volunteer firefighting occupation full time. I went to school, by working odd jobs during the day, and going to school at night. I graduated the fire academy and got hired. While I was in school, my wife and I got a divorce. Divorce is financially devastating, and the child support added up to about two thirds of my take home pay.
This was the poorest time in my life. I lost my car in the divorce, so I was running to work for a month before I could save enough for a bicycle. I lost 40 pounds that summer. After six more months of saving, I managed to buy a car at a buy here/pay here place. Now that I had a car, I was able to get a second job as a janitor, and then a third job as a lifeguard, to make ends meet.
I got a 4 year degree while I was at the fire department. I bought a house and got married for the second time. Then the mortgage failures of 2009 hit and I was soon filing bankruptcy.
Then my second wife filed for divorce. I left firefighting and became a teacher. Then I left teaching because it sucked and went back to a “bridge” program to leverage my paramedic skills into nursing. I got another Bachelor’s degree, and now I am about to finish a Masters.
But hey, none of that was due to hard work and perseverance. It was all luck and ‘white privilege’ that got me here.
Failure of Education
It’s a Game, People
It’s long been my opinion that sports need to be eliminated from school. They are little more than a distraction from the school’s mission- education. At worst, they are a profiteering money grab. Now we have high school students signing multimillion dollar deals to go to certain colleges.
Bryce Underwood, a high school quarterback from Belleville, Michigan, has reportedly received the largest high school NIL offer, with figures suggesting a four-year package worth up to $12 million. A high school kid, making $3 million a year to play football. With all of this money flying around, students and parents have forgotten about education and sportsmanship. It’s all about the money.
It’s no wonder that high school sport recruiting has become a big business. I know of schools that are buying students and their families houses in their district, so the student can attend. That’s right- if your kid is good at one of the big money sports, you get a free house in a rich neighborhood, at least until he graduates.
Students who are good at sports don’t have to worry about such mundane things like following school rules, dress codes, or even school work. Nope, they are going places, and no one will stop them. Back during the time when I was teaching high school, the Principal approached me and asked that I change a previous student’s grade from the year before, because the ‘F’ he had earned in my class was making him ineligible to play football. Student athletes get a pass when breaking rules. We can’t have them getting in trouble and winding up suspended- there is a big game this week, haven’t you heard?
That’s why it comes as no surprise that a Pennsylvania football coach resigned after he and his family received threats from parents for benching two players that had been acting in an unsportsmanlike like manner. They were only suspended for the first half of a game. When those players sat longer than they had initially been told for that game, school administrators sided with parents and suspended the coach as well as his father, who served as the team’s defensive coordinator, for two games.
Our tax dollars are paying for that shit. That’s one of the many reasons why, when I hear people complain that cutting property taxes will hurt schools, that I just don’t get excited. Here is what your tax dollars pay for:
- Buford, GA has a $62 million football stadium for its high school
- McKinley Senior High School in Canton, OH cost $175 million
- In fact, Texas has 8 of the ten most expensive high school football facilities, and to make the top 10, your school district’s taxpayers have to shell out at least $56 million.
In many places, the high school football coach is the highest paid member of the staff, making more than the principal. I just don’t think that sports should be paid for with taxpayer dollars. If you want your kid to play a sport, pay for it yourself. Many parents pay for things like gymnastics, dance, and even weekend soccer. One of my grandkids plays hockey, but his dad is paying for it. Why should I be forced to pay for your kid to play a game, under penalty of losing my home if I refuse?
Me
Lame
The training was stupid, and the instructor actually admitted that it was designed to absolve the hospital of any liability of a patient were to attack a nurse, because now we can’t sue the hospital for not providing us with training. If a violent event happens, it must be the nurse’s fault for not properly de-escalating the patient’s behavior.
Today’s class was 8 hours long. The first four hours was on how to redirect the patient’s behavior. The training said that all behavior is a form of communication, and the patient is simply trying to tell you that there is some sort of problem that the health care provider needs to address, but doesn’t have the words to be able to express it, so this manifests as “Risk Behavior.” The only proper reply to this “risk behavior” is to safely, and in a non-confrontational way, control and redirect the patient until the patient can realize that what he is doing isn’t productive. It’s called nonviolent crisis intervention, and I think it is bullshit that is designed to cover the employer’s legal ass, and who cares if employees get hurt? Healthcare systems hide behind the workers’ compensation immunity shield, so you can’t sue them if they trained you to avoid violence. They can, however be sued if one of their employees defends themselves from a violent attack using a violent response.
The next hour was all about how employees need to remain detached and not allow the patient that is in crisis to goad or bait you into engaging them.
Then we broke for lunch before returning to learn the practical skills. The first step to each one is to “take a non-threatening stance that is designed to not provoke the patient into engaging in risky behavior.” Then, if the patient tries to hit, grab, bite, or shove you, how to break free and escape to run away and call for help. The key is for the employee to avoid violence.
I was the only male there, so I got to be the one that the instructor kept using for demonstrations. One of the scenarios was how to escape a front chokehold where the patient is facing you and attempts to grab you by the throat. The instructor, was roughly my size, had us watch a 1 minute video on how to escape this and said let me demonstrate, then spun around and grabbed me by the collarbones with both hands. I swear with all of my being that I didn’t do it on purpose. He caught me by surprise because I was zoned out and not really paying attention. What happened was reflex.
I brought both hands up through the middle of his arms, then palmed his face with my left, causing him to lean backwards slightly. Once he was off balance, I stepped into him, put my right leg behind him and shoved. He landed on his ass. The entire class got to hear about how what I did was a violent response, and would get you in a discipline issue of we were ever to do that to a patient.
I don’t give a shit. I will not allow myself to be some crackhead’s punching bag and spend the rest of my life eating through a straw from my wheelchair. A couple of events from Florida this year drive that point home:
A nurse for Palms West Hospital had every bone in her face broken by a patient who attacked her. It was two months before she could walk well enough to go to a rehab center. She is still there, and hasn’t yet returned home, as far as I know. The hospital responded by designating a desk in the ED for the use of a sheriff deputy, to encourage them to hang out there. Also, that makes them a substation, which many hospitals use to declare that they are a police station, so concealed carry is off limits. Most hospitals only use unarmed security, and many times those security guards are unarmed women and old men.
A pair of nurses in Port Charlotte, FL were attacked in March. No one was arrested.
Me
De-escalation
I am having to take de-escalation courses for my employer this week. There is an online component and a classroom component on how to handle patients in a crisis. The online is supposed to take 2 hours and the in-person class is another 8. Sure, I will take 10 hours of overtime. The online class consists of videos that constantly ask for interaction, so you can’t just hit play and walk away. Things like
- “Click next to continue”
- Click on each image to read more. You have to click on all of them, or the class won’t go on.
- and quiz questions on the material to test if you are listening. If you get any of them wrong, you have to start that section over.
- If the video isn’t the only window open, it stops playing.
So I am sitting here having to let the video play on a laptop while I type this on my desktop.
The way online training works is they tell you how long it should take. In this case, 2 hours. That’s all they will pay you for. I have stopped doing the training, since they aren’t paying me for it. I got talked to last week for that. It seems that they are not happy that I am not completing the required training. I told them that I only do the training that I am paid for.
Back to today: I have been watching this video for an hour and 15 minutes. I haven’t failed one of the 4 built in quizzes that I have taken so far, so I haven’t had to repeat any sections. According to the progress bar, I am only 19% complete. At this rate, it will take me 6 and a half hours to finish. Remember, they will only pay me for 2. For that reason, I am stopping at 2 hours.
I dare them to try to tell me that I need to do more.
I know that many of you are saying that I should just get a different job. The issue is that this is how every health care job that I have ever had is. They demand as much as they can get away with, which is why, in my opinion, there is a shortage of nurses. So I just set clear limits and refuse to do work unless I am paid to do it. I also make sure that I put it off so I can do as much training in a single week as I can get away with, as well as doing it on a weekend. That way as much of it as possible is at time and half and with a weekend differential. If you are going to make me do it, I am going to maximize my pay for doing it.
Uncategorized
Break Out the 25mm
The left has begun using Ryder trucks to try and ram the gates of military installations. Gate guards open fire.
When I was in, gates were guarded by wheeled armored vehicles with cannons. We need to begin doing that again.
4 or 5 rounds of 25mm will stop a Ryder truck immediately.
Medical News
Market Forces
Ron DeSantis is taking heat for a statement that he made. He said that people under age 50 largely don’t need health insurance. He is correct. People under age 50 are healthier than those over 50, and their premiums largely pay the freight for those who are older and sicker.
Our nation’s healthcare system gets crapped on a lot. Even though the United States has only 9% of the world’s doctors and 3% of the world’s hospitals, half of the innovation in healthcare of the entire world is being created right here in the United States. We are punching far above our weight class:
- New drug development: The US was responsible for the development of 43.7% of new molecular entities (NMEs) and has seen a surge in new drug approvals.
- Biotechnology patents: U.S. firms filed nearly 38% of global biotechnology patents from 2015–2020.
- Research funding: The US accounts for a significant share of global medical and health R&D, at around 44% of the world’s medical research funds.
- Clinical research: The US leads the world in the number of active clinical trials, supported by its advanced infrastructure and large population.
There are plenty of people who would slam the US medical field because of costs, then drag out statistics claiming that the US lags the world. In many cases, those statistics are misleading. For example, the US says that a child is stillborn if it dies before birth, but some other countries will count a child as stillborn if the child dies up to 30 days after it is born. This is important, because this means a 29 day old infant who dies does not count towards infant mortality. For that reason, use health statistics with a healthy grain of skepticism.
This means that the chief reason for claiming the US healthcare is trash is that it can be expensive. After all, we always hear about how Canada has better healthcare because it is free. Of course, you have to wait weeks to get something as simple as a CT scan or an MRI, while here in the US you can get a CT scan in less than 10 minutes, and an MRI can be done in a matter of hours.
So why do things here cost so much? Let’s use my recent trip to the emergency department as an example. My itemized bill showed that I received 5 bags of normal saline over a 12 hour period. The charge for this was a total of about $11,000. This seems a bit high for 5 liters of salt water, mostly because it is. Take a closer look, and you see a couple of things:
The saline is charged out at $35 per liter. That’s not TOO unreasonable. Then you see that there is an additional charge of about $900 per hour for “monitoring while fluid replacement is taking place.” This is how hospitals pad the bill. They give you a couple of liters early, then run in what is called “maintenance fluids” at a rate of 50 ml per hour. They then bill you almost a grand an hour for that nurse monitoring you while you got those fluids. It’s just a way that the hospital pads the bill, because that nurse is also billed to you as part of the daily room charge. They also bill $50 a day for cardiac monitoring, plus you get billed for every doctor who even glances at your chart.
Of course, insurance companies see right through this, and they refuse to pay. The hospital knows this, and in fact they plan on it. The hospital has an agreement with the insurance companies, and they actually only collect about 35% of what they bill out, on average. The hospital’s total average costs are usually equal to about 31% of what they bill. That 4% difference is the hospital’s profit.
In my case, the entire visit to the hospital was billed out at $43,000. Out of that bill, my insurance paid $2,500, I paid about $700, and the rest was simply waived away. The full bill of $43,000 is what they bill to those poor suckers that don’t have insurance. The hospital knows that what they did for me was in no way, shape, or form worthy of $43,000. The insurance company knows it, too. In fact, everyone involved knows that no one is actually going to pay that much.
Why, then, do they do it that way? Because that is what the insurance companies want. They want medical expenses to be so high that people pay for insurance out of fear. That’s the problem with US healthcare. Not the care, not the cost, but the insurance companies scaring people into buying their products through punitive pricing models.
The answer then isn’t to have more people insured- it’s to get insurance companies out of the equation, or to at least prohibit hospitals from charging the uninsured more than 20% over what insurance companies pay. Market forces will then take care of the rest. It isn’t a problem with healthcare, it’s a problem with insurance companies. If the hospital can turn a profit on what they pay the insurance company, they can turn a profit on 20% more than what the insurance company pays. There is no legitimate need to charge the uninsured 1,400% more than the insured.