This HMO

Dear The Insurance Companies, and Dear the Managed Care Agencies, and dear all the people who work for them, yes you, the CEO's and the share holders, the drones on the phones and the schmucks cleaning out their garbage cans at night, and while we're talking, dear all the people that THOSE people hire personally, their housekeepers and gardeners and tax attorneys and pro-doms. This one, this is for ALL of you. To whit,
understand the following: You are all, each and every one of you, and there are absolutely, definitely, NO exceptions here I am so very sorry to say, pure and unadulterated evil.  The kind of evil that causes crops caught in its shadow to wither and crumble, the kind of evil that begets only further and further evil, the kind of viscous, insidious evil that erodes and decays whatever it touches, penetrating it fully until any possible good that could have come out of it is forever imbrued with its horrific taint. (Huhuhuh, 'taint.' But seriously.)

"But JAKE!" I hear you cry. "Most of those people are just trying to get by! They're just making a living as best they can for crying out loud!  They clean the toilets fuck, and you're calling that minimum wage earner evil?? WTF!?"

Yes. When you see evil, real evil, not just your standard every day asshole kind of grossness, but TRUE evil, the kind of autonomic, headless, impersonal, cold evil that will, without any speck of sympathy or mercy, sooner wipe your existence off the face of the earth rather than put your existence above its own gains, you must label it as such. Worse, it will do all of this without even any malice, that's the truly horrific part, its simple and whole and completely personified self interest.

When we speak of an industry whose sole job it is to deny people access to health care in favor of their own profit margin, we cannot call it anything other than what it is. Old school, pure evil. Classical definitions of "evil" usually include some type of knowing breach of a moral code to the detriment of others. I have to wonder, if your job is to make access to health care more difficult and, for example, make a person choose which finger they can afford to have reattached because they cannot afford to have both procedures completed, what kind of moral code would you say that breaches?  If I went to a person and did the same thing, looked into their eyes and said, "You just lost two fingers in an accident. I have the power to give both of them back, but I won't. I will make you choose which one, because you can only afford one and that is not my problem, so choose." Well. I imagine I'd be labeled as evil faster than you can say "heartless cruelty."  Another example: As a health care provider, I know that the weight you are gaining as a side effect of the medication I'm giving you could be avoided if I gave you a newer, different medication, but I won't do it because I'm being paid more by the other drug company and that would eat into my profits if I switched you. Am I evil now?

Of course I would be. Of course it is. Withholding healthcare as a right for the privileged and the lucky is the system we've created.  It positively identifies people who are worth more than others.  It quantifies life, a proposition so ludicrous as to be sickening and yet so many believe in it I wonder if we're of the same species.     But we're digressing. The managed care companies feed off of and support this system. Aggressively lobby against and fight any alternative system.  And anyone who supports that system by working for its supportive agencies is evil by proxy.  I'm guilty too, I pay into the system because I have no other choice, but that's the elegant ubiquitous insidiousness of evil at work again, it makes itself the only option, and makes everything it touches part of its machinations. I'm a part of it, I'm responsible, as is every healthcare provider who has ever charged an insurance company.

So here we are. "So what, Jake, we're all evil. Fine. Thanks for the fucking PSA. I signed the petition for ObamaCare, ok? So now what?"  So now you get your ass to the nearest person who thinks this system makes sense and you make it your job to convince them otherwise.  Try to understand where they're coming from and appeal to their humanity.  If they're not human, help them remember that they were once.  It'll probably have to involve maps, good luck with that.  I've turned a fair few people in my time, but I know a lot more I've failed to touch. One of them, a libertarian I went to school with, horrified me so completely I never touched the subject again. She was a fellow NP. Is a fellow NP. In Texas or some other place that supports those views.  I poked her social network recently. I'm waiting to hear back.  I'm going to try.  Every little speck of sludge I'm able to scrape off of myself makes me feel a little bit better about my own associative culpability.  Try it.

This hypocrisy

You know, it's funny. I've spent most of my life lambasting diets.  I watched my pops take suicidal plunges and soaring leaps on the scale, his weight over time a personification of Tiny Wings (play it if you haven't already). Now, however, I sit before my keyboard 25 lbs lighter in 3 months, singing the praises of Weight Watchers. I make all the usual rationalizations, "It's not a diet though! Really! It's like, this whole new thing, man. This whole new way of thinking about food!" But really, yes, it is kinda a diet.

Not that that changes the fact that I'll be counting points for some time yet, so yeah.

This fat. IN WHICH THERE ARE STRONG OPINIONS YOU MAY WISH TO WIPE YOUR ARSEHOLE WITH AND THAT'S JUST FINE BUT I'M JUST SAYING. OPINIONS. THEY'RE IN THERE.

Ok. Srsly. Let's talk about it. Allow me, if you will, to put down my diet Orange Crush and my lowfat high fiber cereal snack bar and fresh fruit so that we may have a frank, earnest discussion about what one artist notably referred to as "this jelly." I just watched a Colbert Report with a guest who wrote a book about issues surrounding the more bootylicious among us.  I was right with her, I really was. Right up until the end, where she likened fat oppression to racism and inferred that fat people have better health outcomes than thin people. Let's address these two statements one by one:
First, about how fatphobia=racism. No. Just, no. I'm certainly not invalidating in any way the fact that this is a significant social problem that can affect income, what jobs you do and don't get, social standing, etc etc up to and including the fat tax one must pay to get extra large clothes. However, can we please, for the love all things battered and deepfried, at least agree that we as fat people were not, as a rule, summarily stripped of any and all civil liberties and freedoms and forced into slavery for generations? And that we can not, in point of fact, point to a relative who remembers when they had to avoid the Thin fountains and only drink from the fat ones? Can we do that? Also, while we're at it, can we pretty fucking please stop comparing oppressive states and trying to out-oppress each other like two snotnosed kindergarteners comparing scabs for two fucking minutes  so we can spend that energy focusing on larger problems? That'd be great, thanks so much.  Just because we're both struggling with a society slanted against us, that doesn't mean that that slanting looks the same for both of us, and it doesn't mean we understand each other's journeys or could possibly comprehend what it means for each other's cultures. It DOES mean we should be way more fucking motivated to join the other and lock arms when one of us is trying to stage a protest or sign a petition or embetter things in general.  Recognize that we're fighting the same beast, but respect that we are most certainly not fighting the same fight, and understand that in the end that really shouldn't make a damn difference in how we support one another. Ok. So once again, to sum up: NO.
Second:  Better health outcomes? Alright. I'm a nurse, betches. I give risk factors reach-arounds every damn day, massaging and cajoling cost/benefit analyses to give my clients the best care possible. And you know what? I am just as damn tired of the fat-power morons who scream that morbid obesity means nothing for health risk factors as I am of the brainless, hyperreactive PCP's who insist on testing a fatty's thyroid and blood sugar levels every frigging month which comes alongside a lecture about how someday soon as you lie asleep your fat is going to gang up on you in the night, kick your ass, steal your wallet, give you dick cancer and a heart attack, eat all your Pringles and rape your dog. That's right. It's climbing in yo window, it's drivin yo lipids up, and tryin to rape your dog so y'all better hide yo chips, hide yo wine, etc etc etc. So let me make this as monosyllabic as I can: If you's fat, it don't mean you are sick any more than it means you're healthy.