I really try not to just be "The Blog that Re-Posts Ted Rall Columns." But then I succumb again.
As a single head of household with a school age child, every few weeks I panic over healthcare (my most recent hyperventilation was over Thanksgiving when I fell and dropped so hard on my lower spine that I ripped through my clothes, tore my skin, and gave myself a very nasty bruise just from the force of impact... nothing broken, but the first thing I did was wiggle my toes. The second thing I did was think about my perpetual state of underinsurance.). I have Blue Cross / Blue Shield, and I have a decent policy through an alumni group. They used to be one of the best providers in the country. Now, they deny every claim; that's their opening gambit.
I should add that of my male relatives going back two generations, 4/6 were (one still is) an MD. (MD's are also bearing crazy insurance costs in the form of their malpractice premium, which rise and fall with insurance companies' investment returns (and not, actually, runaway jury awards).)
250,000,000, INSURED BUT STILL IN TROUBLE
It's obviously outrageous that tens of millions of citizens of the wealthiest country to have ever existed in human history are one cluster of metastasizing cells away from bankruptcy. Did you know that 25 percent of mortgage foreclosures result from high medical bills?
But you really should read it for Ted Rall's wart story, at the end of the article.
We know you never slack off at work, but if you did, what would you do?
I'd co-opt QotD to post a youtube challenge on Vox!
So I'm challenging all men (and some particularly domain-knowledgeable women):
Banana Health.
Background
I'm a single mom of a teenage son. It has come to my attention that the Kaiser Permanent play on AIDS prevention that's presented to high school students has a modular instructional component involving unrolling a condom onto a banana. Astoundingly, many locations' parent groups require them to drop this component out of the play. (Although what can you really learn from 100 feet away, anyway?)
This is one of those things I just don't dare teach my child because, although I think of condom use as a factual health issue, good god, who wants their mother to teach them that?! So I'm left hoping he runs across this important information on the interweb! So, here I am, doing my best to improve the likelihood of that happening. On behalf of single mothers everywhere, I pose this challenge:
Challenge
Make a clinical video on how to select and use a condom, and post it to youtube.
Details
It can use any number and types of fruits or other non-sexual props, but no actual manufactured dildos or other sex toys no matter how abstract. You may use any number of condoms of any color, size, etc., from any manufacturer. I hope it will convey things like how to choose a condom that fits you, and it can certainly include any other kind of health related information such as where to buy condoms anonymously and/or cheaply, info on condom quality, etc.
Then post it on Youtube with the search terms "banana health"
Thanks!
Highly recommended: Brotherhood, a increasingly fab show which evidently recently signed for its second season on Showtime in 2007, does a dance on this riddle: what's the different between organized government and organized crime?
It ties in strongly to issues about social capital as well
(particularly the subset of political or social capital, and how those
lines cross). Another relevant issue: how does "military might," a type
of capital rarely mentioned get convoluted into social capital?
