Stacy Horn

Thanks to the urging of my friend Christine, I knuckled down, and went to New York’s healthcare exchange and spent a few days learning about my options and picking one.

I want to encourage everyone to do the same. If you’re poor or low-income you’re going to pay less. A lot less. If you’re very poor you will get insurance at no cost to you at all. If you’re middle-income you are going to pay less or roughly the same—you have to research very carefully and calculate your risks.

I see some people’s insurance premiums are going up because their existing insurance provider is raising their prices. Why are they raising their prices? Is it because they have to cover things they didn’t cover before? I looked at what insurance companies have to cover now and it’s pretty basic stuff. If they weren’t covering these before, what were people paying for??

Is it because their administrative costs are going up and they want to maintain what I am sure is an insanely high profit margin? Fuck them in both cases. They are the bad guy, not Obamacare. (Also, I don’t get why insurance companies don’t love the ACA in the end. All these new customers! I have to believe that in the new few years, there will be a shake-out in the health insurance industry. Competitors will arise and there will be more and better options.)

So if you are one of the people whose insurance is going up, get online and find another provider and plan. Maybe you hate the idea of finding new doctors. I hated the idea at first too, but eventually I decided it wasn’t the end of the world and saving money was a good idea, and then it turned out I didn’t have to. Even though my primary care doctor wasn’t listed, and his office said they didn’t take any of the plans I was considering, the person who was helping me when I called New York’s healthcare exchange insisted that they misunderstand or were mistaken and she talked me into calling my doctor’s office back. My doctor’s office had made a mistake and I don’t have to change doctors.

I forgot, some states turned down Medicaid expansion. Which was free and would have helped a lot of people in their state. They are the biggest fuckers of all. Don’t vote for those guys the next time around. Also, some states might be offering more limited options. I’d be interested in hearing about these, and why that is.

Update: Here’s an article about states with fewer and not great options. “Some states have had a flowering of competition among insurers, including nonprofit co-ops — entirely new entities that are capturing the largest market share with low prices and remaking the coverage landscape in places like Maine. But in other places, including parts of states like New Hampshire and West Virginia, consumers have hardly any insurance choices at all.”

My sympathy if you live in one of these states. I wonder if you will have better options next year, when the marketplace in your state wises up to the opportunities?

These articles helped me understand how to approach making a choice. Please dig in and explore your options.

How To Choose Between Bronze, Silver, Gold And Platinum Health Insurance Plans.

Your Questions About The Affordable Care Act.

Weighing Health Plans: The Devilish Details.

Finney and Bleeck relax because their caretaker has new health insurance and will hopefully be around to feed them for a long time to come.

I passed by this mini-photo shoot on the way to choir practice last night. I loved the endless ruffles in the bottom half of the dress but the top half was less of a success. But I don’t know if this shoot was about the dress. Maybe this is for the cover of a single she is releasing or something!

I walked around my neighborhood to see how the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Anniversary was being commemorated. Here are pictures I took in 2011, the 100th anniversary, when the crowds were huge. It’s quieter this year. Normally you’d see chalk tributes like this one in front of the homes of every victim. Maybe they just haven’t gotten around to all of them yet, but I didn’t find a chalk tribute to all the victims in my neighborhood.

This is the actual building, with flowers out front. Someone always lays out flowers, with the name of a victim on each one. Note the tiny group of people.

I looked down and immediate found Gaetana Midolo, who lived the closest to me. She was only 16 years old, and she’d come to the U.S. from Italy when she was 14. Imagine moving to another country, so excited because of all the wonderful things you’ve learned about your new home, this paradise, and then you end up working at a sweatshop, which ultimately murders you.

There’s some confusion about where she lived. It says 143 Commerce Street on her death certificate, and that’s what most people go with, but that’s an error. There wasn’t a 143 Commerce Street in 1911. I found references to Commerce Street being longer than it now is, but according to 19th century maps it had already been shortened by the time Gaetana lived there. She couldn’t have lived at #143. Actually, I just found a 1794 map and it was the same length even back then. AND, I just found photographic proof, except I’m going to post that another day. I want to go back and shoot the same spot and do a “then and now” view.

I suspect she lived at 14 Commerce Street and some tired, harried, possibly distraught city employee inadvertently added an extra number to her death certificate. In any case, poor Gaetana was unlucky enough to have lived in a world where an employer can cause the death of over 100 children and young women and not a damn thing happens to them. This is why we need government to impose regulations. Oh God, I could go on, about how these girls picketed their conditions, saying they were dangerous and inhumane, and how New Yorkers spat on them, the NYPD roughed them up, and the courts threw them in jail. A year later, 146 of them died in this fire.

The book, YOU can sing in a choir or chorus, arrived in my mailbox recently, along with a lovely letter from the author, Richard J. Faber.

This is the perfect book for people who want to sing in a choir, but have zero experience, can’t read music and are afraid to start. Faber begins at the absolute beginning, he even covers how to learn a piece of music if you can’t read a single note.

His advice along those lines, by the way, make sense even if you can read music. I could read music when I first joined my choir, but I learned to read music in order to play piano and I didn’t really have the skill of translating the notes I could read into song. Until I developed that ability, when I first joined the choir I basically did everything he suggests in his book.

Oh wow. I just googled Faber to find a picture of him and I found this article about how he was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal in 2011 for his service during WWII. The photograph is from the article and it was taken by Blaine T. Shahan.

Faber has a long history of singing in a variety of choral groups (envy!) and he knows how great it feels and how fun it is. His desire for the reader to not miss out on this wonderful thing rings throughout his book.

But it’s working for me. I cannot resist that face. What would you like? Some food? Playtime? Whatever you want. Just please stop tormenting Finney.