{"id":2670,"date":"2008-02-12T07:28:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=2670"},"modified":"2008-02-12T07:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T15:28:00","slug":"random-observations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=2670","title":{"rendered":"Random Observations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few morning observations:<\/p>\n<p>It appears that Blue Cross is now asking doctors about a patient\u2019s medical history&#8230; in order to confirm that they listed all pre-existing conditions on the application. Specifically, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-bluecross12feb12,0,4319662.story\" target=\"_blank\">according to the LA Times<\/a>, Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose &#8220;material medical history,&#8221; including &#8220;pre-existing pregnancies.&#8221; The letters state &#8220;Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately&#8221;. If there is anything that indicates why we need to reexamine how we do health care it is behaviors like this. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cahighways.org\/lj-images\/ca-sign-icon.gif\" height=17 width=17 align=top alt=\"***\"><\/center><br \/>\nThe price of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.usatoday.com\/ondeadline\/2008\/02\/mail-call-price.html\" target=\"_blank\">a stamp is going up again<\/a>, 1c to 42c in May. You remember stamps? Those things you stick on envelopes when you write letters? Sigh. Kids these days.<\/p>\n<p>This makes me think about my stamp collection, which I stopped updating a few years ago when it got prohibitively expensive. I\u2019m trying to figure out what to do with it, as well as the collection of a few foreign stamps I collected as a kid. Do kids these days still collect stamps? We print so many that modern issues aren\u2019t worth much.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cahighways.org\/lj-images\/ca-sign-icon.gif\" height=17 width=17 align=top alt=\"***\"><\/center><br \/>\nRon Leavitt, the creator of \u201cMarried with Children\u201d, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/obituaries\/la-me-leavitt12feb12,0,2446866.story\" target=\"_blank\">died at age 60<\/a>. This was a real groundbreaking sitcom, turning the functional families of past sitcoms on its head, and creating the Fox network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few morning observations: It appears that Blue Cross is now asking doctors about a patient\u2019s medical history&#8230; in order to confirm that they listed all pre-existing conditions on the application. Specifically, according to the LA Times, Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=2670\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,113,1],"tags":[281],"class_list":["post-2670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-chum","category-obituaries","category-lj-xfer","tag-hobbies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}