Livingston, I Presume

Dispatches

Sometimes I think the hardest part about being a parent--excepting midnight asthma attacks and other Truly Scary Things--is keeping a straight face.

My in-laws are in town from California. We enjoy having them here, and (I hope) they like being here. We were all sitting around the dinner table last night when the Con-man...how to put this delicately...broke wind for a duration that can only be described as exceptional. Now this is a very tricky moment. To laugh would be to encourage future outbursts, as it were, but to ignore it would be impossible. Carefully contorting our faces into what we hoped were expressions of non-surprise, we asked him if he might like to visit the bathroom.

When I went in to check on him later, the first thing he said to me--in as rhetorical a fashion as a 3-year-old can muster--"How long was that fluffer, Mama?" in a very enthused voice. It was pretty clear that our studied lack of response had wounded him utterly.

I'm still debating whether to tell you all the other straight-face story. I fear Google in 12 years.

The fallacy of "comparison shopping"

One of the things we have been told repeatedly since the rollout of the HSA/high-deductible health plan as a savior of the utterly broken U.S. healthcare system is that "giving" consumers control of "their own" money will lead to greater fiscal responsibility. It sounds good, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, it is absolutely unworkable in practice, and I can give a concrete example the size of a pylon to demonstrate it.

Recently we changed insurers. While we are still on an HSA/high-deductible plan, it is now administered by a much larger company with a supposedly better network. One of the results of the change was that we can no longer have our prescriptions filled through the mail-order company we were required to use before. That meant going through the irritation of having all our prescriptions transferred, which we tried to alleviate by having the new member pharmacy accomplish for us. When I called to find out about the prices for the drugs, I was told that those prices would be a mystery until the prescription was actually filled. When they filled them, I returned to find huge increases over what we had been paying for the mail-order drugs. Huge. Like a hundred bucks a month more.

So I asked my insurer about it, and one of the things that was suggested was to call around to various pharmacies--including a mail-order that they work with--to find the best price. The only problem is that all the pharmacies say exactly the same thing: We cannot price out this medication without actually filling the prescription. When the mail-order pharmacy told me that the insurer determines the price and told me to call them, I did that. The person I spoke to was very, very nice and wanted to be helpful, but she could only tell me an average price throughout their national coverage area--not what our necessary, doctor-prescribed medications are going to cost when we show up at the pharmacy or have our credit card billed from the mail-order service.

How is this possible? And how exactly am I, lowly healthcare consumer, supposed to comparison shop when the Health Care Expert at my insurance company can't even figure it out? Believe me, I would go through the extra effort of calling around, of driving to Bozeman, of ordering through the mail--basically whatever it would take to make these drugs affordable. I'm doing my part.

Health care costs--whether for a pap smear or a prescription--are not exactly tacked up to a menu board above reception. When even motivated people cannot get a straight answer, it begs the question of how exactly I'm going to be controlling health care costs with my HSA. In the end, I guess I'll just choose whatever pharmacy is closest and hope for the best. If I get burned I guess I'll go with another pharmacy next time. Meanwhile, I'll just have to keep trying to make hard decisions about how to afford luxury items like milk and eggs given the new out-of-pocket drug costs we're likely to be facing. It shouldn't be this way. It just shouldn't.

The force-field has been breached!

I repeat! We have a breach in the force-field!

Up until just the last week or so, Connery has stayed in his room after being put to bed as if held there by an invisible fence. If he needed something, he would call. Otherwise, he was reliably in his bedroom from, say, 8:30 p.m. right through to around 7:00 a.m. Now, many of you out there will be laughing heartily and telling us to just count our damn blessings for having had more than three years of reliably private sleep, and I recognize the luxury of our problem. After all, I have many friends who have yet to pass a night alone in bed with their partner since the birth of their child. In some cases, that's going on four or five years. We are not those people. The family bed is great, great, great for many, many families who are not us.

From his first night home, Connery has slept in his own bed, a fact that makes Dr. Sears weep at the thought of our insufficient bonding. What Dr. Sears doesn't know--can't know--is that Connery makes noises like a dolphin when he sleeps and thinks our mere presence in the room with him signals fun playtime for all. Also, it's no secret that the family I married into has some snoring issues. Between Flipper and the honk-shu factor, nobody gets any sleep when we're all together, which is why it is a far, far better thing for Chip and I to sleep at least one room away from the son to whom we are insufficiently bonded.

But in the last week, Connery has been violating the existing Sleep Accords of 2004. Twice in one week I have awoken in terror wondering if those legends about cats sucking out your breath are true only to find that it is not the cat on my chest but my son. He hops into bed like he's been doing it all his life and is confused by our consternation. This morning he hopped in at 5 a.m., which is pretty much the rudest possible time (as it leaves us only 21 minutes until the alarm goes off) and then, after we put him back to bed, decided that 6:15 would be a good time to get up for good.

What is this? Does he not understand the sacred time between 5:30 and 7:00, when the non-comics portions of the paper are read, the first cup of coffee is drunk, the showers are taken, and the face is applied? These are key elements of the day and are strictly non-negotiable. They have never been on the table for discussion, and I don't understand why they would be now. Unfortunately, being three, he is not so into the logical argument side of things.

Which leaves us at an impasse. Do we assume that the last few nights are just an aberration? Do we lay down the law? Do we buy a lock for our bedroom door?

I know what all you parent-types are thinking: "None of the above, genius! You get down on your knees and you thank the deity of your choice that you actually got to sleep in your own bed, with your partner, without your child for more than three years. And then you shut up."

Oh, OK.