Roman shade success; Medicare-for-All politics; and a portal opens, maybe.

The Roman shade project is done, huzzah! I installed the shade for the bedroom window yesterday morning. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

As a reminder, this was the old, ugly shade. I think the new one is a vast improvement. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

Now that I've done two of these, I'm putting this in the "projects to never do again" category*. The mechanics were straightforward enough, but hanging this shade by myself was a challenge because it was so wide. At one point I had thought about doing two shades, one for each windowpane; it would have been easier to hang two shorter ones by myself. But now that the single long shade is up, I'm not inclined to take it down and start over. At all.

I made this installation harder on myself by forgetting to take down the old shade before screwing the new one to the wall. I just got so excited to get the new shade up that I forgot. The old one used the same clip-in system as the shade in the office/craft room, but there's not a lot of clearance for a screwdriver because the clip tilts in toward the room, and having to keep the new shade out of the way didn't make the process any easier. I guess I could have tried using pliers to bend the clip back and out of the way, since I was going to throw the brackets away; too bad I didn't think of that until just now.

If you're thinking of sewing a Roman shade for yourself, I highly recommend getting this gadget or making one out of a nine-inch length of thin wire you happen to have around the house. Basically, it's a needle threader for blinds and shades. I wouldn't have bothered to get it except that I was ordering some other stuff from this vendor, and it was a cheap add-on. I ended up being very glad I had it. It made the process of threading the blind cord through the cord lock take seconds rather than minutes. 

I like the softness of the new shades much better than the industrial clunkiness of the old metal shades, and of course the new colors work better than that dirty beige. So all in all, I'm glad I made these shades.

And one thing I realized while making the shades is that I had fun figuring out all the steps. Life has gotten pretty repetitive for me -- dare I say boring -- lately. This provided me with a challenge, and I like challenges (within reason). 

So I might be scouting around the house for new challenges to take on. But I'm still going to pay somebody to convert the tub/shower combo to just a shower. I'm not completely crazy.

***

* I've posted several times over the years about various projects, often knitted ones: "It's done, and I'm never doing it again." Often, after some time has passed, I end up doing another project like the one I said I'd never do again. So feel free to take my claim above with a large grain of salt.

***

That's enough about Roman shades. On to part two.

I spotted this article from Vox in my Apple News feed earlier today: "Medicare-for-all has a doctor problem". The author, Eric Levitz, attempts to poke holes in Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's support of Medicare for All by saying we would have to make changes in our current healthcare payment system for it to be fair to doctors. Healthcare professionals in the US are much better paid than those in countries that have single-payer healthcare systems, and something would have to be done, he says, to make sure they wouldn't have to take a pay cut.

He cites a report in the Washington Free Beacon that claims El-Sayed's partner, a psychiatrist in private practice, doesn't accept Medicare, presumably because Medicare's reimbursement rates aren't high enough. And then he says:

According to a widely cited 2018 analysis by the economist Charles Blahous, if a single-payer system kept provider payments constant, national health spending would rise by $3.25 trillion over a decade, even with administrative savings taken into account. By contrast, if all providers were forced to accept Medicare's rates, health spending would actually fall by $2.05 trillion over the same period.

So I looked up Charles Blahous. He is a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; previously, he was deputy director of  the National Economic Council under President Bush the Younger and has also been associated with the Hoover Institution, a right-leaning think tank that's part of Stanford University (weirdly, as Stanford is pretty liberal). 

Then I looked up whether the Washington Free Beacon leans right or left. Sure enough, adfontesmedia.com says it has a strong right bias and rates it as mixed when it comes to reliability. 

I am all for examining both sides of an issue. But I also think it's important to be clear about where your sources fall on the political spectrum when you're reporting on political issues, especially in these times, and Levitz doesn't. I'm not inclined to take a libertarian-leaning economist's opinion that Medicare for All is unworkable, and I sure as hell would not reference a hit piece in a far-right publication if I were writing a supposedly even-handed report.

Levitz does suggest some incremental changes to make a single-payer system more palatable in the long run, including instituting state-level caps on healthcare payment rates and removing hurdles that prevent doctors trained abroad to easily set up shop in the US. But I think he too quickly dismisses the profound impact that doing away with private insurance would have on our healthcare system. And doctors may not have to take as much of a pay cut as right-leaning economists claim, once the financial barriers to healthcare are lifted and everyone can afford to go to the doctor when they need to. Plus the elimination of the byzantine system of today would not only be good for doctors, but for patients, too.

Yes, people's taxes would go up to support a single-payer system, but the increase would be offset by the loss of the premium/copay/coinsurance morass we're currently slogging through. Are there figures on how much of an offset? Levitz doesn't say.

A lot of doctors already support a single-payer system -- between 49% and 59%, depending on who's doing the survey and how the questions are asked.

Let's see a study from Medicare-for-All proponents that answers the Blahous analysis. Then we can make a better decision on whether to go forward.

EDITED TO ADD: Levitz wouldn't have had to look very far to find a response to Blahous from Medicare-for-All proponents. Mama Google found this one for me in just a few seconds.

***

Finally: there's reportedly a seismic shift brewing this week due to an annual astrological phenomenon known as the Lion's Gate. It happens between this Tuesday and August 12th, with the big punch on August 8th. This year's is supposed to be especially intense due to Jupiter's conjunction with the Sun in Leo on the date of the full moon this Wednesday, and particulary auspicious because the date of the portal opening, 8/8/2026, reduces via numerology to 8, a number associated with abundance and with balance between the physical and the spiritual.

I'm not an astrology stan, and I haven't dabbled in numerology for decades, but I thought I'd mention this thing since I keep hearing about it. You can find more info on the annual Lion's Gate here.

***

These moments of bloggy pros and cons have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, who hopes that good things will come through the Lion's Gate because honey, we are due.

The health insurance CEO and the backlash.

Welp, so much for taking a break from the news. 

As you have likely heard by now, the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare was shot to death Wednesday morning in midtown Manhattan, outside the hotel where the company's annual investor conference was to start a couple of hours later. The assailant is still at large.

That's all I'm going to say about the murder. Feel free to google for more info; details, breathless updates, and social media rumors have been rife since it happened. 

(This story even eclipsed a school shooting that happened in California Wednesday afternoon. Although since only three people died -- two kids and the shooter, who killed himself -- it doesn't even qualify as a mass shooting. I only found out about the school shooting on social media, from friends who were commenting on the difference in coverage between the two incidents.)

The most interesting reaction to the UnitedHealth story has been to the company's social media posts about the CEO's death. Every last reaction has been a laughing emoji -- at least 77,800 on its post on the dead bird app.

While I don't condone violence in any form, I've gotta say that I get why people are laughing. UnitedHealthcare reportedly has the highest rate of claim denials in the country. And a congressional subcommittee report released this fall has taken insurers to task for using AI to deny more Medicare Advantage claims than ever. 

artursz | Deposit Photos

In short, people are undeniably angry. They're forced to pay for health insurance, and when they have to use it, the insurance company has the power to decide whether to pay for their doctor-ordered care -- on the basis of cost alone.

This happened to me several years ago. My doctor at the time had put me on a new medication called Januvia for my diabetes. She gave me a batch of samples, and they worked well. But when she wrote me a prescription, my health insurance at the time refused to pay for it; they wanted me to try other, cheaper medicines first. Those, of course, didn't work. Eventually my insurer did cover Januvia, but the whole thing was pretty frustrating, not to mention ridiculous.

This wasn't life or death for me -- just annoying. But it's not hard to imagine how people who are in life-or-death situations must feel when they're placed in this sort of situation. It's heartbreaking, and so unnecessary. And everybody knows it's all about the bottom line for shareholders.

Which is what probably inspired the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, to issue a message to its employees via video. (Apologies for the Vanity Fair dunning notice at the link; I have access to the magazine via Apple News, which didn't charge me extra for it.) In the video, Andrew Witty called the open-season on his company a result of "aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful" media coverage of the murder. He goes on to tell his workers, "I'd encourage you to tune out that critical noise that we're hearing right now. It does not reflect reality." The reality, he says, is that "the health system needs a company like UnitedHealth Group." He also says, "We guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe or unnecessary care to be delivered, in a way that makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable."

You might have noticed that he left out the part where companies like his add to the "too complex and ultimately unsustainable" nature of healthcare in this country. In fact, UnitedHealthcare has been in trouble with the federal government: among other things, the Justice Department launched an antitrust investigation into the parent company in November. And there's been class-action suit filed against UnitedHealthcare over shenanigans related to denials of coverage for its Medicare Advantage customers.

On social media yesterday, I called health insurance a remora -- a parasitical creature that feeds off its host, improving the life of nobody but itself. These companies' whole reason for being is to take in premiums and keep as much of that money for their executives and shareholders as possible -- and they do it by denying payment for services that doctors order for their patients.

It's a miserable system, and Congress could end it by enacting Medicare for All.

I'm not holding my breath.

***

These moments of bloggy disgust have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay well!

Medicare For All? Forget I said that.

I used to be a big proponent of Medicare for All. But I will be turning 65 in a few months, and now that I'm running the Medicare gantlet*, I have changed my mind. 

Nobody should have to do this -- certainly not anybody who has spent 40 or 50 years of their working life having their health insurance choices dictated to them by their employer. Medicare, as the system stands today, is overly complicated -- very possibly by design. It's also weighted toward private insurance companies. And if things keep going the way they've been going, Medicare as we've known it for generations will very likely cease to exist, only partly because it will "run out of money".

First, a quick primer. Everybody's eligible for Medicare once they turn 65. It has four parts:

• Part A covers hospitalization. It's free, and everybody gets it.
• Part B covers outpatient stuff like doctor visits. It is not free -- this year's premium is $170.10 per month -- and you don't have to get it. But most people do. Together, Parts A and B constitute "Original Medicare".
• Parts A and B don't cover every expense, though, so a lot of people also pick up a Medicare Supplement (a.k.a. Medigap) plan. These are designated by letter (I'd like to get hold of the genius who decided that both Medicare's Parts and Medigap Plans should have letter designations), and while these plans are sold by private insurance companies, the government decrees what's covered under each lettered plan. In other words, if you buy a Plan G, no matter who you buy it from, it has to cover the same stuff as every other Plan G. Below is a chart that I cadged from Medicare and You, the handbook that the government will send you when you enroll. (Ignore Plans C and F; if you turned 65 after January 1, 2020, you can't get them.) Most folks go with either Plan G or Plan N. Now despite that the coverage in each plan is mandated by the feds, premiums vary -- sometimes by a lot. The highest premiums are usually charged by the companies that do a lot of advertising (AARP, I'm looking at you).
  
  
  
• Part D (I'm going out of order intentionally) is drug coverage. It's provided by private insurance companies, and the premiums vary widely. Plus each company has its own formulary, or tiers of drugs they will pay for; just like with the drug coverage you have now, generics are cheapest and brand-name drugs can be hella expensive. Medicare.gov has a search function where you can plug in your prescriptions and your favorite pharmacies, and it will generate a list of Part D plans available to you, which you can then sort by cheapest combined premium and drug costs. Most people who do Parts A and B also pick up a Part D plan.

You can see why people might get bewildered by the choices: You don't just get Medicare, poof! done! You get Parts A and (maybe) B, and (maybe) a Medigap plan, and don't forget your drug coverage. There are a lot of moving parts. Even folks whose employers served up a cafeteria plan might find this overwhelming.

There's another choice, though: You can leave all this confusion behind and go with Part C, a.k.a. Medicare Advantage. You've probably seen lots of ads for MA. It sounds like a terrific deal. Many policies include drug coverage, just like the insurance you have right now. Some policies include dental, hearing, and vision benefits, which Original Medicare doesn't cover even if you buy a Medigap plan. (I'd like to get hold of the genius who decided that Medicare shouldn't cover dentures and hearing aids.) You can even get a policy with a zero premium! How can that not be a great deal?

Well, here's how:

Medicare Advantage is regular old insurance. The vast majority of plans are either HMOs or PPOs, which means each plan has a network of doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers that they want you to see. Maybe your primary care doc is in-network, but what if she wants you to see a specialist? You're back to the game of "Do I need a referral?" and "Do they take my insurance?" -- games you don't have to play with Original Medicare.

There's also the matter of out-of-pocket costs. Your MA plan may not charge you a monthly premium, but your maximum annual out-of-pocket cost could be thousands of dollars higher than Original Medicare's -- to the tune of as much as $7,550 in-network or $11,000 out-of-network per year, compared to $233 per year for Original Medicare. (I saw this bullshit with Obamacare over the past couple of years. A whole lot of plans on the exchange have cheap premiums and insane annual deductibles.)

But here's the biggest problem with MA. You see, Original Medicare pays per service: Your doctor provides your care, and Medicare pays the doctor a set price for that care. But MA insurers are paid by the government per customer. Most are for-profit insurance companies, so they have an incentive to pocket as much of that fee as they can -- which means they have an incentive to deny care, sometimes even care that would have been covered without question under Original Medicare. Also, the government pays more for customers with certain diagnoses -- the more diagnoses, the better. So these insurers have been discovered combing customers' health histories and having their customers complete "health risk assessments" to find diagnoses to add to their charts, thereby bilking the government out of $12 billion in 2020 (and, by the way, making their customers look sicker than they are). All of this came out in a hearing held in July by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The subcommittee also heard evidence that many MA customers in their last year of life switch to Original Medicare -- an indication that MA plans aren't providing the best care for their sickest customers.

In addition, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, is looking into possible deceptive advertising practices by insurers that provide MA plans. Wyden says the federal government received twice as many complaints about MA plans in 2021 as it had in 2020. He's seeking information from 15 state governments about complaints they've received about MA plans.

The percentage of older Americans enrolled in MA plans is expected to top 50 percent within the next couple of years. MA was supposed to save the government money on senior healthcare. But some MA plans cost the government more than they should, and some aren't providing the level of care that Medicare requires them to provide. 

I'm mindful of the fact that conservatives have wanted for years to get rid of Medicare (and Social Security). And my inner conspiracy theorist is urging me to say that it's no accident that Original Medicare is so confusing while MA plans seem so simple. My rational mind is holding my inner conspiracy theorist back. But I will say this: I've set up a spreadsheet for my Medicare choices, and none of them are MA plans.

And when I said before that Americans should have Medicare for All? What I meant was single-payer insurance -- like Medicare's Parts A and B, but better.

***

There are a ton of websites and YouTube videos purporting to help you through this process. This video has a good summation of the pros and cons with MA plans, but in linking to it, I'm not endorsing her company in any way.

***

*Before somebody says I misspelled gauntlet: A gauntlet is a type of glove. A gantlet is the thing where people form two lines and have you run between the lines while they try to beat the crap out of you -- which is a pretty accurate description of the process of picking Medicare coverage.

***

These moments of bloggy clarification have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe out there!