Are you worried about the skyrocketing costs of health insurance? If you got your leg caught in a thresher, would you be in a financial bind? So would I, my friends, so I wrote an article about it. It appeared in the San Antonio Express-News several weeks ago, but I’m sharing it here........

I’ve been feeling nauseous lately, which is ironic, because my latest bill for health insurance is to blame.

I’m a member of a PPO, which, as we all know, stands for Painful Premium Organization. Three years ago, my monthly payment was a little more than one hundred dollars. Yes, I know, that’s very reasonable, but I have a high deductible and fairly basic coverage. Even so, the cost has skyrocketed upward every year. Now they want two fifty a month. I’m no math whiz, but off the top of my head, I’d say that’s an increase of roughly a gajillion percent.

In response, I did what any reasonable American would do in a similar situation. I tucked the bill into a drawer and ignored it. For a while. Finally, like an ingrown toenail, I had to deal with the problem.

So I called these jokers up. Well, to be accurate, I called their voicemail system. And it did what every voicemail system in America has been programmed to do: It kept me in limbo for fifteen minutes, then hung up on me. Probably for the best. If I’d listened to their cheesy on-hold music much longer, I would’ve needed psychiatric help, and my plan doesn’t cover it.

What I wanted to ask them was this: Do my rising premiums have anything to do with the “excellent financial results” the company mentioned in its 2005 annual report? Seems earnings per share jumped 29 percent last year. Go figure. I guess if you’re going to spend money on health care, maybe it should be in the form of stock.

Exactly how bad is the health-care crisis? I did a little research to find out, and I came away with a headache to complement my earlier queasiness. Here are some not-so-fun facts from the National Coalition on Health Care:

For five years running, employer health insurance premiums have increased annually by at least nine percent, nearly three times the rate of inflation.

The average cost of yearly coverage for a family of four is nearly $11,000, which is a thousand more than a brand-new Hyundai. If you have a larger family, you might be edging into Toyota territory.

Forty-six million U. S. citizens are uninsured. That’s a bigger number than the audience for the American Idol season finale. Sure, Taylor Hicks can sing, but going uninsured is, apparently, the bomb.

A Harvard study found that fifty percent of bankruptcy filings in the U.S. are attributed in part to overwhelming medical expenses. Every thirty seconds, someone files for bankruptcy following a serious health problem.

Every year, we spend 4.3 times as much on health care as we do on the national defense. That, to me, is the most mind-boggling statistic of all, given current events. Makes you realize we’re fighting a different type of war right here on our own soil.

Thankfully, my PPO, kind souls that they are, has a solution to this financial crisis. “Good news!” the letter says. I’m pre-approved to select from a variety of lower-priced plans, featuring comparable benefits, but with premiums that are 20 percent lower than my current plan.

Sounds good, but I’m no dummy. I finally hauled out my calculator and crunched some numbers. The premium for my old plan is going up 41 percent. So if I switch to one of the alternate plans, I won’t really be saving 20 percent, as they suggest, when you compare it to last year’s costs. I’ll merely be lessening the amount of the increase. My premium will only go up by 21 percent. In one year.

Is that really good news? If so, we’re in worse shape than I thought.

I was a good high-school student, but I really sucked when I got to college. I did well during my freshman year, but during my sophomore year, I started working at an ad agency. I really enjoyed it, working about 30 hours a week, and college became less and less important to me. But there was an easy solution. I don’t know how it is at most universities, but we had a bookstore where you could purchase notes from a particular class. That’s right, the bookstore paid someone to attend the class and take notes, and you could walk right up and buy the full semester’s worth. What a concept. This meant, obviously, that you didn’t have to attend class if you didn’t want to. I didn’t want to.

But this didn’t work for smaller classes, like, say, English classes. If you were continually absent from a room of thirty students, it was painfully obvious to the professor. So I made it a point to attend all of my English classes, which was probably wise, since I was an English major. I received mostly B’s, but a few C’s, and some of them by the skin of my teeth. I didn’t study much, and I wrote most of my papers the day before they were due. The literature classes were my least favorite, which is sort of odd, considering my current profession. The thing was, I wanted to be writing, not reading. And by writing, I mean fiction of my own, not analytical essays about fiction someone else wrote. I took all the creative writing classes I could, but you couldn’t avoid a few literature courses, even if Shakespeare bored you to tears.

However, I discovered a few unique little courses you could take for upper-level credit. Things like “The History of the English Language” and a few others whose titles elude me now. Then I accidentally stumbled into a Transformational Grammar class. Big mistake. I thought, “Hey, I’m good with grammar, so this will be a breeze.” Unfortunately, I didn’t take into account the “Transformational” part of the title.

What is transformational grammar? Even now, I can’t tell you. I remember that it had something to do with Noam Chomsky, and the class was taught by an ancient, highly respected professor emeritus. From the outset, I was totally lost. No idea what we were talking about in class. I went to see the old prof many times, asking for clarification on various issues, but it was no use. For some reason, he and I did not connect at all, and he might as well have been speaking Swahili. I did as well as I could (no, really, I did study) but it wasn’t good enough. He began to give me D’s. I went to see him a few more times, but it didn’t work. I was confounded, bumfuzzled, and bemused. Finally, I asked if I could drop the course and receive a “Q” or whatever you got when you bailed out. He wouldn’t let me. Which made me angry. He and I, at this point, were not getting along. It became obvious that I was going to fail--my first F ever.

So I decided to flame out in a big way. I went to the final exam, made a half-hearted attempt to answer the questions, then dumped the book in the trashcan on my way out the door. The professor saw this, as I’d intended. Surprise, surprise, I got my F.

I’m hardheaded, so I went to the dean and asked if my grade could be bumped to at least a D. Not a chance. So I asked if I could take the course again, with a different professor, and replace the old grade with the new grade. Not gonna happen, my friend.

I took the class again anyway, from the same prof who taught the History of the English Language, and I got an A.

Oddly, I still had no idea what transformational grammar was.

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Since my protagonist is a game warden, whenever something strange happens in the news involving animals, I hear about it. Friends, family members, and other authors point these things out to me. So I've seen a lot. This, however, is the grossest one yet. If you read Buck Fever, you might know where I'm headed. Make sure you read the last line of the article.

This is from the Duluth newspaper....

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Lawyer argues sex with dead deer not crime
BY MARIA LOCKWOOD, SUPERIOR DAILY TELEGRAM,
Published Thursday, November 16, 2006
Prosecution of a Douglas County case involving alleged sexual contact with a dead deer may hinge on the legal definition of the word “animal.”

Bryan James Hathaway, 20, of Superior faces a misdemeanor charge of sexual gratification with an animal. He is accused of having sex with a dead deer he saw beside Stinson Avenue on Oct. 11.

A motion filed last week by his attorney, public defender Fredric Anderson, argued that because the deer was dead, it was not considered an animal and the charge should be dismissed.

“The statute does not prohibit one from having sex with a carcass,” Anderson wrote.

Judge Michael Lucci heard the motion Tuesday.

“I’m a little surprised this issue hasn’t been tackled before in another case,” Lucci said.

The Webster’s dictionary defines “animal” as “any of a kingdom of living beings,” Anderson said.

If you include carcasses in that definition, he said, “you really go down a slippery slope with absurd results.”

Anderson argued: When does a turkey cease to be an animal? When it is dead?

When it is wrapped in plastic packaging in the freezer? When it is served, fully cooked?

A judge should decide what the Legislature intended “animal” to mean in the statute, he said. “And the only clear point to draw the line in that definition, I believe, is the point of death.”

Assistant District Attorney James Boughner said the court can use a dictionary to determine the meaning of the word, but it doesn’t have to.

“The common and ordinary meaning of a word can be found in how people actually use the word,” Boughner wrote in his response to the motion.

When a person’s pet dog dies, he told Lucci, the person still refers to the dog as his or her dog, not a carcass.

“It stays a dog for some time,” Boughner said.

He referred to the criminal complaint, in which Hathaway told police he saw the dead deer in the ditch and moved it into the woods. Hathaway called it a dead deer, Boughner said, not a carcass.

“It did not lose its essence as a deer, an animal, when it died,” he said.

Anderson argued that the statute, which falls under the heading “crimes against sexual morality,” was meant to protect animals. That would be unnecessary in the case of a dead animal.

“If you look at the other crimes that are in this subsection, they all protect against something other than simply things we don’t like or things we find disgusting,” he said.

Other crimes in that subsection include incest, bigamy, public fornication and lewd and lascivious behavior.

Boughner said the focus of the statute was on punishing the human behavior, not protecting animals.

“It does not seem to draw a line between the living and the dead,” he said.

Interpreting the statute to exclude dead animals would also exclude freshly killed animals, Boughner said. That, he said, could lead to people who commit such acts with animals to kill them.

Lucci said he would render a decision by Hathaway’s next court appearance on Dec. 1.

The misdemeanor charge carries a maximum penalty of nine months in jail and a fine of up to $10,000. If convicted, Hathaway could serve a prison term of up to two years because of a previous conviction. In April 2005, Hathaway pleaded no contest to one felony charge of mistreatment of an animal for the shooting death of Bambrick, a 26-year-old horse, to have sex with the animal.

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Is this man a groundbreaker, or what? Someday, we'll all be able to have sex with animal carcasses without the current stigma attached to it. He's like the Rosa Parks of the bestiality world.