What happens when you look in a mirror? Is what you see reality? Are your eyes really looking at what your neighbor sees? Or your boyfriend? Mirrors are amazing things, they are the only things that allow us to see ourselves with our own eyes. And that gives them power over us.
Imagine never looking in a mirror. Not once, not ever. Every idea of yourself would be a mixture of what other people say, and your own imagination. Your sense of self would not be connected with the way you looked, because you would have no earthly idea how you looked. What would that mean to the world; society? What if who we were had absolutely nothing to do with pout lips or muscled shoulders? Would personality and character take precedence?
So what if we took away all the mirrors? What if we couldn't see ourselves with our own eyes? This is part of a theory called "The Looking Glass Self," which is a working sociological theory. It boils down to a single idea, which is "We see ourselves through the eyes of other people, even to the extent of incorporating their views of us into our own self-concept."1 And it's easy to see this theory at work when you look at people in their teenage years. They are all strongly influenced by their peers and will often try to conform or even change their appearance to "fit in." When it comes to appearances, without the mirror, we are mercy to the ideas of others.
Fortunately, we all own a mirror. What's more, is that we all seem to own 3 or 4 mirrors. Mirrors to look in when dressing, smaller mirrors for our face, mirrors are even decoration. No matter where we go, we are able to see ourselves with our own eyes. With the mirror, other people's opinions are not so heavily weighed into our self conception. We know our eyes are green, our lips are full, our muscles are developed because we can see them, and we are able to judge them on our own. Our perceptions of ourself become more and more keen. For example, anybody can tell me my eyes are bright green, but only I can see for myself the way they glitter in the light, or change colors around the rim of my pupil.
I guess the real question to ask is- is it reality? How much of what I see in the mirror is real, and how much of it is perception? For example, most women look in the mirror, and see cellulite on their thighs, flat hair, imperfect skin, while most men look at those women and see none of those things. What they see is not what the men see, so which one is real? If nobody notices that tiny imperfection on your face, does that make it an imperfection?
The mirror has become more and more important to our sense of self. In fact, it's become so important that many people are solely concerned with only the view from the mirror. People actually base their entire self concept on what the mirror says to them. They can rationalize anything to the mirror. They become addicted to the mirror, and what is says to them.
The mirror has so much power over us, it can actually destroy us. How many people have looked in that mirror, and hated what they saw so much it actually makes them cry? What about the anorexic girl who looks in the mirror at 90 pounds and thinks "fat?"
There really is no escaping the looking glass self, or the mirror. How does one disguinish between reality and imagination? How do you see yourself in real terms, and not only as a projection of what it's "supposed" to be, or what it isn't? The only answer I can come up with is that there is no reality. What I see in the mirror isn't real, because how do you define real when it means so many different things? What I see is not what you see, but you are helping me to see it anyway. It's the combination of your perceptions of me coupled with my own ideas about me that I see that makes the mirror reflect what it does. On a desert island, alone with a mirror is the only way to truly see only yourself, and conversely, living among people without ever looking in a mirror is the only way to truly imagine yourself. I guess the real power in the mirror lies in finding a way to balance the two. To be the person you would be if the balance was perfect.
Otherwise, all you're looking at is a caricature.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Lincare Can Kiss My Black Ass
Yah u heard me. Lincare is a piece of shit company, and I have proof. Cuz I WAS FIRED!!!!
Yes, that is correct, I was fired. Which to anyone who knows me comes as a complete shock. What? Jessica fired? No way! But I do have a legitimate firing reason. I was fired because Lincare is a piece of shit company. Don't believe me? Check 'er out-
Cpap machines are for people with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a condition in which the patient stops breathing at night. Cpap stands for continuous positive airway pressure. What is does to treat sleep apnea is blow a stream of continuous air pressure into the patient's lungs.
Lincare sells cpap machines, and all the parts that go with it. These parts consist of a mask, a headgear, tubing, and filters. All together, before insurance, a cpap system costs roughly 2500 dollars. Most insurance companies, including Medicare pay at about 80 percent. So the patient would pay 500 dollars for the complete machine.
Now a little Lincare background- Lincare is huge, with 800 centers in the US. It has huge profits, sometimes earning record profits while the competition is in bankruptcy. The reason Lincare is so profitable is because almost all their money comes from Medicare. Lincare bills Medicare for oxygen and nebulizer therapy, cpap machines, and nebulizer medication. They're the welfare mothers of the medical world.
Only problem is, after Medicare part D was introduced, the government slashed the reimbursement amount on nebulizer medication by almost 40% to help pay for the new prescription plan. Lincare took a huge hit, and started losing money on these "designer medications."
Forced to keep revenue up to keep the stock value up, Lincare decided to milk money out of cpap supplies and parts, which as I pointed out are pretty pricey. From a CEO's point of view, it's not a bad plan:
Each mask is about 200 dollars. A headgear runs about 70. Tubing is 30, and filters range from 5-30 dollars. If you multiply all those parts by the number of cpap patients Lincare services (easily a million and more) you come up with a pretty hefty number. And since Medicare allows a new mask and other parts every 3 months, you could easily bill for all those items a million times 4 times per year.
That's a shitload of money.
And here's where I come in. It gets a bit dicey from here on, so hang tight. I was introduced to this scheme in December. Lincare implemented a new computer program that listed all the center's cpap patients in a queue that rotated every 3 months. My job was simple- call the patient, tell them it was time for more cpap supplies, order them through the queue, and Lincare would bill the insurance company. And it went pretty okay for the first couple of weeks. I was given a list of Medicare cpap patients, and I spent an hour or two getting my goal of 2 orders a day.
After the Medicare patients, I moved on to private insurance patients. I noticed there were a lot more private insurance patients than Medicare patients, probably because sleep apnea seems to affect the men and the overweight more that older people. And since my instructions were to say that they were eligible for new supplies every three months, and because they were rotated in the queue every three months like the Medicare patients, I had no problem telling them they could get these things at the 80% insurance rate, just like Medicare.
Then I started to get phone calls from people asking what these Lincare bills were. I told them I had no idea, and referred them to the billing office in Casper, Wyoming. I started to get e-mails telling me that I was not to ask patients if they would like new supplies, but to tell them that they WERE going to get new supplies. One gave us permission to send masks that weren't currently prescribed just to make the sale. Another said that if a patient came in to the center to get a part in person, to tell them that we didn't have anything in stock and then ship one to them. And everyday, I had to call more and more people.
Eventually, people were calling and literally screaming at me about these bills. Turns out, the three month rule ONLY applies to Medicare. Blue Cross and Mutual of Omaha and United Healthcare don't follow Medicare guidelines. Some plans had a cap, some allowed parts once a year, and others only paid for one part at set-up, and the patient was responsible for the rest. While most of the plans had a cap, I had no idea whether the patients insurance was capped or not, and for the most part, neither did the patient. So even though everybody in the company knew that most private insurance companies DO NOT follow Medicare guidelines, I was still required to call them every three months and tell them they were eligible for parts.
Not being one to rip people off, I stuck to Medicare patients only. I had enough to scrape my goal every month. And I could be sure that none of them was going to receive a bill for 250 bucks by account of me. And this got me through most of Februrary and March.
Then came a fateful day in the middle of March, when I came back to work after a long weekend, and found a fun little e-mail. From now on, I was to bill 40% of my cpap patients a month. This was about 120 cpap sales a month. I wouldn't be able to stick to Medicare anymore, and worse, more and more people were going to pay out of pocket for stuff that I told them would be covered. The more I though about this, the more it started to bother me. I mean, what if that 40 bucks the Medicare patient has to pay for their 20 percent of the mask is their food or drug money? When I say "eligible" are they always going to be lucid enough to understand that it won't be completely covered? What if they have ahlzimers and don't remember ordering a new mask? What if they're sick and think it's gonna be paid for? They are old, remember, and I was to be as ambiguous as possible.
But what really bothered me was the private insurance people. Even if the first mask I sold them was covered, chances were the second or third one wasn't going to be. And I knew that, which made me nothing short of a liar. And again, what if that 200 or so bucks was rent money, or food money? They would think "great, I could probably afford 30-40 bucks every 3 months to have this new mask", but imagine when they get a bill for 250.
The kicker was that these masks DON'T need to be replaced every 3 months, they can easily last 6 months or more if you take care of them. But for some reason, Medicare allows for them every 3 months, which is now the "standard" at Lincare. I honestly felt that the "customer service" part of my customer service title was slowly being replaced by "lying telemarketer."
Once they suggested that I work late and on weekends to get all my sales in, I had had enough. My responsibility was to the patients, taking care of their needs, not selling them stuff they didn't need because some guy in Florida I've never met said I had to. So I wrote my boss an e-mail. I was very blunt in it, which I figured was no big deal because she was my friend and nobody would read it but her. In it I said this is horrible, we are ripping off patients and Medicare, I wasn't hired as a telemarketer, and I had ethical objections to lying to people to make a sale. Which I guess pissed her off, probably because if I wasn't going to do it, then she would have to. She had already written me an e-mail saying "please do this so I don't have to," and honestly, I don't know what I was trying to accomplish by sending her the e-mail, only to vent a little I guess. Well, the e-mail pissed her off, so she sent it to the manager above her, who decided to fire me, because I was easily replaceable and money is king at Lincare. They don't want "ethical objections," they want lying ass-kissers who won't stand up and say they think something is wrong.
So goes in the corporate world.
I'm sitting here hoping and praying this thing blows up in their face. It's only a matter of time before Medicare changes their guidelines on this, I mean imagine the money Lincare is sucking out of Medicare's pockets. Our pockets, actually, because taxpayers pay for Medicare. Everytime you look at your Medicare deduction on your paycheck, realize that money is going to pay for shit that doesn't really do patients any good. I'm also hoping that enough people complain to their insurance companies about this that maybe they'll investigate fraud against Lincare. Wouldn't be the first time- the Attorney General's office conducted an investigation against Lincare for Medicare. Lincare ended up paying a 3 million dollar settlement, which isn't even a dent in their wallet, believe me.
And I don't want to work for a piece of shit company like that anyway. So one more time: Lincare- Kiss My Black Ass!
Yes, that is correct, I was fired. Which to anyone who knows me comes as a complete shock. What? Jessica fired? No way! But I do have a legitimate firing reason. I was fired because Lincare is a piece of shit company. Don't believe me? Check 'er out-
Cpap machines are for people with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a condition in which the patient stops breathing at night. Cpap stands for continuous positive airway pressure. What is does to treat sleep apnea is blow a stream of continuous air pressure into the patient's lungs.
Lincare sells cpap machines, and all the parts that go with it. These parts consist of a mask, a headgear, tubing, and filters. All together, before insurance, a cpap system costs roughly 2500 dollars. Most insurance companies, including Medicare pay at about 80 percent. So the patient would pay 500 dollars for the complete machine.
Now a little Lincare background- Lincare is huge, with 800 centers in the US. It has huge profits, sometimes earning record profits while the competition is in bankruptcy. The reason Lincare is so profitable is because almost all their money comes from Medicare. Lincare bills Medicare for oxygen and nebulizer therapy, cpap machines, and nebulizer medication. They're the welfare mothers of the medical world.
Only problem is, after Medicare part D was introduced, the government slashed the reimbursement amount on nebulizer medication by almost 40% to help pay for the new prescription plan. Lincare took a huge hit, and started losing money on these "designer medications."
Forced to keep revenue up to keep the stock value up, Lincare decided to milk money out of cpap supplies and parts, which as I pointed out are pretty pricey. From a CEO's point of view, it's not a bad plan:
Each mask is about 200 dollars. A headgear runs about 70. Tubing is 30, and filters range from 5-30 dollars. If you multiply all those parts by the number of cpap patients Lincare services (easily a million and more) you come up with a pretty hefty number. And since Medicare allows a new mask and other parts every 3 months, you could easily bill for all those items a million times 4 times per year.
That's a shitload of money.
And here's where I come in. It gets a bit dicey from here on, so hang tight. I was introduced to this scheme in December. Lincare implemented a new computer program that listed all the center's cpap patients in a queue that rotated every 3 months. My job was simple- call the patient, tell them it was time for more cpap supplies, order them through the queue, and Lincare would bill the insurance company. And it went pretty okay for the first couple of weeks. I was given a list of Medicare cpap patients, and I spent an hour or two getting my goal of 2 orders a day.
After the Medicare patients, I moved on to private insurance patients. I noticed there were a lot more private insurance patients than Medicare patients, probably because sleep apnea seems to affect the men and the overweight more that older people. And since my instructions were to say that they were eligible for new supplies every three months, and because they were rotated in the queue every three months like the Medicare patients, I had no problem telling them they could get these things at the 80% insurance rate, just like Medicare.
Then I started to get phone calls from people asking what these Lincare bills were. I told them I had no idea, and referred them to the billing office in Casper, Wyoming. I started to get e-mails telling me that I was not to ask patients if they would like new supplies, but to tell them that they WERE going to get new supplies. One gave us permission to send masks that weren't currently prescribed just to make the sale. Another said that if a patient came in to the center to get a part in person, to tell them that we didn't have anything in stock and then ship one to them. And everyday, I had to call more and more people.
Eventually, people were calling and literally screaming at me about these bills. Turns out, the three month rule ONLY applies to Medicare. Blue Cross and Mutual of Omaha and United Healthcare don't follow Medicare guidelines. Some plans had a cap, some allowed parts once a year, and others only paid for one part at set-up, and the patient was responsible for the rest. While most of the plans had a cap, I had no idea whether the patients insurance was capped or not, and for the most part, neither did the patient. So even though everybody in the company knew that most private insurance companies DO NOT follow Medicare guidelines, I was still required to call them every three months and tell them they were eligible for parts.
Not being one to rip people off, I stuck to Medicare patients only. I had enough to scrape my goal every month. And I could be sure that none of them was going to receive a bill for 250 bucks by account of me. And this got me through most of Februrary and March.
Then came a fateful day in the middle of March, when I came back to work after a long weekend, and found a fun little e-mail. From now on, I was to bill 40% of my cpap patients a month. This was about 120 cpap sales a month. I wouldn't be able to stick to Medicare anymore, and worse, more and more people were going to pay out of pocket for stuff that I told them would be covered. The more I though about this, the more it started to bother me. I mean, what if that 40 bucks the Medicare patient has to pay for their 20 percent of the mask is their food or drug money? When I say "eligible" are they always going to be lucid enough to understand that it won't be completely covered? What if they have ahlzimers and don't remember ordering a new mask? What if they're sick and think it's gonna be paid for? They are old, remember, and I was to be as ambiguous as possible.
But what really bothered me was the private insurance people. Even if the first mask I sold them was covered, chances were the second or third one wasn't going to be. And I knew that, which made me nothing short of a liar. And again, what if that 200 or so bucks was rent money, or food money? They would think "great, I could probably afford 30-40 bucks every 3 months to have this new mask", but imagine when they get a bill for 250.
The kicker was that these masks DON'T need to be replaced every 3 months, they can easily last 6 months or more if you take care of them. But for some reason, Medicare allows for them every 3 months, which is now the "standard" at Lincare. I honestly felt that the "customer service" part of my customer service title was slowly being replaced by "lying telemarketer."
Once they suggested that I work late and on weekends to get all my sales in, I had had enough. My responsibility was to the patients, taking care of their needs, not selling them stuff they didn't need because some guy in Florida I've never met said I had to. So I wrote my boss an e-mail. I was very blunt in it, which I figured was no big deal because she was my friend and nobody would read it but her. In it I said this is horrible, we are ripping off patients and Medicare, I wasn't hired as a telemarketer, and I had ethical objections to lying to people to make a sale. Which I guess pissed her off, probably because if I wasn't going to do it, then she would have to. She had already written me an e-mail saying "please do this so I don't have to," and honestly, I don't know what I was trying to accomplish by sending her the e-mail, only to vent a little I guess. Well, the e-mail pissed her off, so she sent it to the manager above her, who decided to fire me, because I was easily replaceable and money is king at Lincare. They don't want "ethical objections," they want lying ass-kissers who won't stand up and say they think something is wrong.
So goes in the corporate world.
I'm sitting here hoping and praying this thing blows up in their face. It's only a matter of time before Medicare changes their guidelines on this, I mean imagine the money Lincare is sucking out of Medicare's pockets. Our pockets, actually, because taxpayers pay for Medicare. Everytime you look at your Medicare deduction on your paycheck, realize that money is going to pay for shit that doesn't really do patients any good. I'm also hoping that enough people complain to their insurance companies about this that maybe they'll investigate fraud against Lincare. Wouldn't be the first time- the Attorney General's office conducted an investigation against Lincare for Medicare. Lincare ended up paying a 3 million dollar settlement, which isn't even a dent in their wallet, believe me.
And I don't want to work for a piece of shit company like that anyway. So one more time: Lincare- Kiss My Black Ass!
Monday, January 16, 2006
Golden Globs
So the Golden Globes are on. And I, for one, can not imagine a bigger waste of my time being broadcast on TV since the presidential debates. I just switched it on a while ago, during the "Best Foreign Language Film" Award. Some dude from Palenstine won, and in broken English, grabbed the mike and proclaimed Palestine's right for a free state, oblivious to the fact that he was standing in front of 500 Jews. Oops.
I hate this crap because it's just a bunch of celebrities kissing eachother's asses in 500 thousand dollar gowns. I'm a VH1 junkie, sure, but at least on VH1 I can laugh at them. Here, we're expected to take them seriously. How do you take someone who spends hours applauding a gay cowboy movie seriously?
And they expect all these awards for doing something that gets normal people into trouble- pretending to be something they aren't. Last time I pretended I was a superhero, I wound up on Xanax. And as far as I'm concerned, if you can get me to sit through a 2 and a half hour movie without wishing I could blow my face off, then you got your award.
Here's the breakdown on the biggest movies of the year:
Giant monkey takes over town
Gay cowboys actually exist
We still have an asian porn obsession
Math is only interesting if Gwyneth Paltrow's around
Harry Potter needs to get laid
Virgins are (erm,) interesting
Crazy people love chocolate
I wonder if the 60 bucks I spent on movies tickets, popcorn, and soda help pay for the acceptance speechwriters that do such an awesomely interesting job.
If I wanted to watch such a display of shameless self promotion and bravado, I'd watch C-Span. Or rap videos. I think I'll stick to watching shows where celebrities fall down and get caught in compromising affairs. At least I can relate to that.
I hate this crap because it's just a bunch of celebrities kissing eachother's asses in 500 thousand dollar gowns. I'm a VH1 junkie, sure, but at least on VH1 I can laugh at them. Here, we're expected to take them seriously. How do you take someone who spends hours applauding a gay cowboy movie seriously?
And they expect all these awards for doing something that gets normal people into trouble- pretending to be something they aren't. Last time I pretended I was a superhero, I wound up on Xanax. And as far as I'm concerned, if you can get me to sit through a 2 and a half hour movie without wishing I could blow my face off, then you got your award.
Here's the breakdown on the biggest movies of the year:
Giant monkey takes over town
Gay cowboys actually exist
We still have an asian porn obsession
Math is only interesting if Gwyneth Paltrow's around
Harry Potter needs to get laid
Virgins are (erm,) interesting
Crazy people love chocolate
I wonder if the 60 bucks I spent on movies tickets, popcorn, and soda help pay for the acceptance speechwriters that do such an awesomely interesting job.
If I wanted to watch such a display of shameless self promotion and bravado, I'd watch C-Span. Or rap videos. I think I'll stick to watching shows where celebrities fall down and get caught in compromising affairs. At least I can relate to that.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Herpes Is Too Much Info
One of the funnier aspects of my job is the random phone calls I receive. I work at Lincare, a home oxygen and respiratory company. There's also a place in Lincoln called "LincCare," which is an urgent care clinic. People call me all the time looking for LincCare, and I tell them that they have the wrong place. But on more than one occasion, people feel they have to tell me what their problem is.
For example, I get a phone call: "I think I have gonorrhea, do you test for that?" And I've gotten a call about syphilis, which worries me because I'm waiting for the day that someone I've slept with calls looking for a AIDS test.
Some girl called and asked, "It burns when I pee, do you think I'm pregnant?" To which I told her she was an idiot with a urinary tract infection, and that anal sex, which will give you a UTI, will not get you pregnant.
Another one of my favorites is the fat people who call looking for giant toilet seats. Back in the day, we were a medical supply company who actually carried jumbo toilet seats, and thank God we don't anymore. But I still get calls for things like toilet seats, bedpans, catheters, and colonstomy bags. Eiw. Nothing makes a day go good like the vision of a fat guy on a jumbo toilet seat using a catheter.
I also get faxes from hospitals letting me know when one of our patients is admitted. One of them was for a patient named Beverly Orstrander, and her admitting DX was Bowel Obstruction. Written right there on the fax- bowel obstruction. Why would someone who provides her with breathing medication care that she can't take a dump? Makes me scared for the day I show up with carpal tunnel from masturbating too much. Who else is going to know that I can't keep my hands off myself?
The medical field is not something I'm going to delve into much further. The day I have to "loosen a stool" is the day I'm going to loosen my lunch. As for all the kids who call with an itchy case of crabs, maybe you should keep that info to yourself. After all, you wouldn't want some asshole to tell everyone, would you?
For example, I get a phone call: "I think I have gonorrhea, do you test for that?" And I've gotten a call about syphilis, which worries me because I'm waiting for the day that someone I've slept with calls looking for a AIDS test.
Some girl called and asked, "It burns when I pee, do you think I'm pregnant?" To which I told her she was an idiot with a urinary tract infection, and that anal sex, which will give you a UTI, will not get you pregnant.
Another one of my favorites is the fat people who call looking for giant toilet seats. Back in the day, we were a medical supply company who actually carried jumbo toilet seats, and thank God we don't anymore. But I still get calls for things like toilet seats, bedpans, catheters, and colonstomy bags. Eiw. Nothing makes a day go good like the vision of a fat guy on a jumbo toilet seat using a catheter.
I also get faxes from hospitals letting me know when one of our patients is admitted. One of them was for a patient named Beverly Orstrander, and her admitting DX was Bowel Obstruction. Written right there on the fax- bowel obstruction. Why would someone who provides her with breathing medication care that she can't take a dump? Makes me scared for the day I show up with carpal tunnel from masturbating too much. Who else is going to know that I can't keep my hands off myself?
The medical field is not something I'm going to delve into much further. The day I have to "loosen a stool" is the day I'm going to loosen my lunch. As for all the kids who call with an itchy case of crabs, maybe you should keep that info to yourself. After all, you wouldn't want some asshole to tell everyone, would you?
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Family Finds Raw Meat Instead Of iPod Inside Sealed Box
A 14-year-old girl who received a new Apple iPod opened the sealed box and found raw mystery meat inside, according to a Local 6 News report.
Rachel Cambra purchased a new high-tech iPod for her daughter as a gift this week.
When she opened the sealed box, the device was missing and in its place was a piece of raw meat, the report said.
Cambra said the box was sealed and that it didn't appear to have been tampered with when she brought it home from the Honolulu Wal-Mart where she works.
An investigation found that a former employee apparently tampered with a shipment of iPods and put the meat into several packages.
The former employee now faces tampering charges, Local 6 News reported.
The Wal-Mart where the device was purchased from promised to give the family a new iPod from the next shipment the store receives.
Copyright 2005 by Internet Broadcasting Systems and Local6.com.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sucker!!
A 14-year-old girl who received a new Apple iPod opened the sealed box and found raw mystery meat inside, according to a Local 6 News report.
Rachel Cambra purchased a new high-tech iPod for her daughter as a gift this week.
When she opened the sealed box, the device was missing and in its place was a piece of raw meat, the report said.
Cambra said the box was sealed and that it didn't appear to have been tampered with when she brought it home from the Honolulu Wal-Mart where she works.
An investigation found that a former employee apparently tampered with a shipment of iPods and put the meat into several packages.
The former employee now faces tampering charges, Local 6 News reported.
The Wal-Mart where the device was purchased from promised to give the family a new iPod from the next shipment the store receives.
Copyright 2005 by Internet Broadcasting Systems and Local6.com.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sucker!!
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