Enterprising US bidness!

Manufacturing industries, once the foundation of the US economy, have shipped all their jobs offshore but not all is lost since this type of business ingenuity still flounders flourishes south of the 49th parallel.

[...] here's the most upsetting new service we've heard about in a long time: a company offers to search your wife or girlfriend's panties for semen, then DNA-test it to see if she's cheating on you. Oh, and you can also use this service on your daughter. [...]

The real piece de resistance of creepiness, though, is Infidelity DNA Testing's suggestion that you use its semen detection service to find out if "your daughter is having sex." Because having your child's panties analyzed is definitely a better option than talking to her about sex.

From here.

I can only shudder and imagine how some of the stage mothers pimping their daughters at girls' beauty pageants will use this service for leverage, to identify and blackmail pedophile judges.

Something horrible

I just learned something horrible about US health care. Now, I have been living it for the past several years, and I know quite a bit about how horrifically stupid the payment system is. Practically every US resident has had at least a minor experience of inconvenience that is incomprehensible to most Canadians. But I just learned from someone something that takes the cake and that I never realized.

OK, so, I always knew that American health care providers, no matter how compassionate, practice wallet-based care. Even the ones who give pro bono care at charity institutions are doing so in the knowledge that they are forgoing payment---and give care only to the very poorest.

So, fine, *sigh*, that is health care kepitalism for you. If you're the uninsured working lower class, you're pretty much screwed. I don't like it, it's inhumane and absurd, but that's what falls out of the belief system that underlies it.

But here's where it gets weird---for people who are lucky enough to have employer-sponsored insurance.

To control costs, US private insurers have special deals with certain family doctors and specialists. The big ones, with a very large number of them. This is called an insurer's "network". Under normal circumstances, this actually works out not all that differently from, say, OHIP (or substitute your province's plan) plus a user fee. If you go to an "in-network" doctor, you show the card, pay a (relatively) small user fee, and you see the doctor or have surgery or whatever. The insurers act like OHIP/whatever in this case and negotiate lower rates for themselves in exchange for driving business to these doctors. So you have to do some due diligence to make sure that you go to an "in-network" doctor. A US insurer is, in theory, like a sort of decentralised provincial provider.

But if you go to an "out-of-network" doctor without insurer-negotiated fees, you either bear the full cost yourself, or many plans pay out 80% and make you pay 20% of that doctor's fee in order to discourage "out-of-network" use. OK, so far so good, you can avoid these doctors. (Actually, many people---Americans---don't realize...)

Or can you? Say you're having surgery. That can involve a bunch of medical professionals. So, you show up, talk to your surgeon's assistant, find out that s/he is "in-network", and get onto the operating table. And it's all good. Right?

Wrong.

Quite a few of those professionals, you see, may NOT actually be "in-network." Particularly anaesthetists and pathologists and so on---the latter you might not meet or know is treating you. Oh, they may be working in the hospital or clinic. But they all bill separately.

So, a few months later, you could find a nasty surprise: a bill from your anaesthetist. And guess what. Being "out-of-network", the anaesthetist or whatever can bill whatever they want, and your insurance can pay either 0% or 80% or whatever. But of course, the anaesthetist has no incentive not to bill thousands of dollars for a half-hour's worth of work.

And despite the fact that you had no idea, you are now in potentially unexpected debt-peonage to an anaesthetist---since medical bankruptcy has been made very difficult.

But, it gets worse. Billing errors abound. What if, say, your "in-network" doctor fails to keep his/her registration with the insurer current. Then the insurer won't pay the full-amount. So, you'd imagine, this is the doctor's responsibility, since s/he made the error, right?

Nope.

It's your job to pay the entire bill, or the portion that the insurer won't pay for "out-of-network" costs. Even though it was the doctor's billing error.

THAT is why people who tell you that medical care should be subject to the "free" "market" should be put in the stocks for months. Not just the inhumanity of the idea---that is ideology---but the inherent lying and fraud involved. That is also why the doctors (specialists) are greatly at fault in the US system, not just the insurers. Because doctors can choose to put their patients into debt-peonage.

I had no idea until someone explained it to me, and apparently many Americans born and raised here have no idea either. You're screwed despite the fact that you have good insurance. So you can do everything right and still be wrong.

What a terrible time to be a USian woman

Mother Jones:

The Indiana House yesterday passed a bill, HB 1210, that would force women to carry pregnancies past 22 weeks to term, even if the father of the fetus is their rapist or family member. The only reason a woman could get an abortion after 22 weeks (and most medical experts don't consider a fetus viable until around 27 weeks) is if carrying the fetus to term would result in the woman's death or "substantial physical impairment." Even then, her doctor would be required by law to perform the abortion in a hospital with a prenatal unit, and in the way that "would result in the best opportunity for the fetus to survive."

Wait. There's more:

--Women seeking a first-trimester abortion must be advised that they may face increased risk of breast cancer after the abortion, and that giving birth protects women from breast cancer.

--Women seeking abortions must be advised that "physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm."

--Abortion patients are advised that "medical evidence shows that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks".

--Before an abortion, the woman must view an ultrasound unless she certifies, in writing, in advance, that she does not wish to do so.

I can't work up any anger anymore. I just want to cry.

ADDED: And now I am crying. Because I watched this.

Walk for Choice

Yesterday, in addition to the rallies -- universally ignored by the MSM -- held all over the US in solidarity with the Pizza Revolution, there were also lots of 'Walk for Choice' events. And such actions are increasingly necessary as the ReThugs ramp up their War on Women.

I just found a site loaded with pix of great pro-choice signs.

This is my fave.

Assassination-Enabling Legislation

Now, if Scott Roeder had only waited a bit and lured Dr. George Tiller to South Dakota, that 'justfiable homicide' defense would have worked jim-dandy-great.

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill, which is cosponsored by 22 other state representatives and four state senators.

"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers," says Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. Since 1993, eight doctors have been assassinated at the hands of anti-abortion extremists, and another 17 have been the victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes have tried to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. "This is not an abstract bill," Saporta says. The measure could have major implications if a "misguided extremist invokes this 'self-defense' statute to justify the murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer," the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families warned in a message to supporters last week.

The Excited States is becoming unrecognizably insane.

ADDED: PZ Myers's take.