ugh.
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I have this impulse too. But really, the main trouble is that in the U.S., anyway, we have an enormous, influential industry peddling this crap, and lousy laws that make it so easy for young people, who may know better but face enormous pressures, to get started (and from what I’ve read, tobacco is the most addictive drug there is). What we should do is follow the Australian model, where cigarette packs are required (I think) to have the most disgusting pictures of disease people caused by smoking to discourage it. (Anyone from Down Under correct me if I’m wrong.)
And tobacco profits should be used to pay for the insurance of smokers.
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I believe that - in children - it is typically due to the sins of the father (and\or mother) for whom the tyke is suffering for.
They must not realize how they are hastening single payer.
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Oh, forgot to say. May Rep. Mo Brooks die of a horrible ghastly painful incurable disease that takes forty years to kill him.
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I was thinking, perhaps some preexisting enterobiasis.
There is jack shit to do in Huntsville.
There’s the Space Nazi museum, of which you’re probably well aware. There’s a good place for whiskey tasting a ways north of there in Tennessee, but it’s been a decade or so, so I forgot where exactly. Locals should know though. There might be a couple of good restaurants, but i never had the chance to go to any of them. Vegetarian food is nigh on non-existent down south, so you may be short on options there. Cultural stuff? There’s a pretty good amateur symphony there, but they may be off season when you visit.
Not a whole lot of there there, off the top of my head, but I might not be the best judge of it. If you want to go exploring, you may find some interesting stuff to do. Otherwise, prepare to be bored.
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This guy is a real asshole, so such an infection might hit him atypically hard; but it isn’t really ideal as a demonstration of “and this is why insurance that ignores pre-existing conditions is so atrocious”. Too quick and easy to treat; relatively cheap; might not count as a preexisting condition at all so long as you clear it up before you switch insurers.
Ideally a nice autoimmune condition would be just the thing. Typically nonlethal enough to be a chronic problem; but serious enough to require ongoing maintenance, often including specialist referrals because they can be cryptic and poorly understood. I don’t think that vaccines designed to produce immune sensitivity to human cells are something you can easily get your hands on; or that respectable medical researchers would prefer to focus on; so I’m not sure if that’s actually doable in practice.
It sounds like you’re describing Crohn’s Disease. Or more accurately, something that isn’t Crohn’s but has baffling Crohn-like symptoms.
Moe’s logic is that healthy people living a healthy lifestyle should have to pay less for health insurance… until they eventually come down with some illness (no body lives forever) in which case they then must pay more for their needed health care which they had already been paying into when they were healthy and didn’t need health care?
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And the diseases and ailments of the elderly? You wouldn’t have gotten them if you had killed yourself at age 40.
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Some employees in our company were required for a time to support work at Huntsville on an on and off basis. “Bored” was the common report. Apparently, all they could do there – apart from work – was to try and find some decent place to eat.
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Pretty much. Huntsville has one of the highest rates of advanced degree holders per capita in the US, but they’re not the kind of advanced degree holders who appreciate nice things. Engineers just want their needs met, and we want everything to be practical. As a whole, we don’t care about art and culture and creating a habitable environment. We shoot down Richard Florida’s ideas about the Creative Class.
Vegetarians are screwed though, as they are most places in the South. Maybe there are serviceable Indian or East Asian restaurants there. I was never a vegetarian and in Alabama at the same time, so I never needed to know. I’ve got dietary issues, but they’re easy to work around.
All in all, I think there may be stuff to do in Huntsville, but one really has to seek it out. People who like to explore new areas will do relatively okay, but those who demand everything be like home but nicer and with more tourist crap will be sorely disappointed.
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UC?
But Crohn’s is just what I was thinking it was a description of (from personal experience) and whilst I would not, as they say, wish it on my worst enemy, this guy …? Meh.
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And, AFAIAA, they cost less overall, as they tend to die relatively quickly rather than loitering for a long and expensive-for-healthcare senescence. Your private insurers tend to offload that phase onto Medicare, though.
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I was never a vegetarian and in Alabama at the same time
Sounds like the first line of a great poem!
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Thanks! That’s what I assumed, but I was hoping there’d be something worth spending at least half a day on. Natural wonders, that sort of thing. I don’t think I’d pass the eagle-eye test of potential visitors to the Ark Encounter or Creation Museum, and it wouldn’t be any fun by myself anyway. I’d need some fellow Mutants to truly enjoy myself at either of those places.
Good thing I enjoy long distance driving – singing non-stop to a playlist, of course – and my car gets exceptional highway mileage.
Question for Mr Brooks:
How can we determine what evil acts were committed by newborns with congenital health issues?
In the unlikely case that they are innocent, how will your bill help these tiny babies survive?
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The Space Nazi Museum should cover it.
It is interesting, at least from the space exploration point of view. The part where they glorify Nazis is kinda WTF though.
Those are in Kentucky.
To be fair, though, even in years of living within an hour or so’s drive of the Creation Museum, I’ve never actually been there. I don’t know how much of that I’d be able to stomach, and I haven’t found anyone else who wanted to go there with me bad enough. I hear it’s really well done but such utter bullshit. I’d be interested in the production value, but appalled by the bullshit.
When you get down there, place a banana on Miss Baker’s grave for me 
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