Magic Shoes

[cjsmith]

HAHAHAHA I bought shoooooooes! I found exactly two web sites willing to sell these magical things to random laymen.

I even got them in extra-small, which means it'll take a lot longer to rip out the stitching around the ankle. (On my current size S, when I try to pull the ankle cross-strap snug enough that I won't wobble, I pull the soft body of the shoe inward away from the rigid heel cup.) If I'm lucky the pivot point on an XS is as good for me as what I've been wearing. Dare I hope it will be better?

I will post pics if I get around to decorating them like I did the others. :-)

Comments

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

Whee! The price is even quite reasonable. I would have expected three figures for a pair of something that hard to find. You can hardly get a pair of ordinary shoes for $52!

I just love those ocean ones! For these, why not something that takes advantage of the empty space? Like an overhanging cliff ... paint a gray and brown rocky cliff on the side of the sole, then on the side of the upper put in grass and bushes and flowers. You could even put a wide blue stripe down the top of the instep to be the sky!

Whatever you decide to do, I'm sure it will be terrific!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

They're really cheapy shoes. Honestly, they should be $10. They are designed to fall apart in just a couple of weeks.

Still, you should see what my insurance company paid for the first set. It's criminal.

I LOVE the cliff idea! That's way cool!

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

They're really cheapy shoes. ... Still, you should see what my insurance company paid for the first set. It's criminal.

That's why I thought they'd be so expensive. I mean, in the hospital they'll charge $19 for "mucus-handling devices" and it's a tiny box of tissues -- and cheap, scratchy ones, at that! A hospital bill auditor saw a charge for FRED on medical bills across the country (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/yourmoney/sns-yourmoney-1009spending,1,4807585.story) and discovered it was an acronym for Fog Reduction Elimination Device. In English, that's a 2-inch-square piece of gauze treated with anti-fog solution used to wipe lenses of equipment in the operating room. "First of all, they can't bill it," Johnson said. "Second, it cost them maybe a penny and a half, and they're billing it at $57." !!


Someone recently told me that she got out of the hospital and checked her bill, and found all sorts of phony charges -- not just $19 tissues, but things she never even had at all (like the woman who was charged $125 for a circumcision last year after the birth of her child (http://www.crodr.org/main/content/display_report.jsp?WebLogicSession=RHNf4KvKttps00Rm2oNtApY2RPrsfSphcw7zcMYaMenX9uTcPXt8|-6477329549567279854/-1407922420/6/7005/7005/7002/7002/7005/-1&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=344725&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=333147&bmUID=1148411872559). It would have been a reasonable amount ... except that she had a baby girl!) My friend said she went over the bill with a fine-tooth comb and documented all the fake charges, and then contacted her insurance company, assuming the company would challenge the bill. Nope. The insurance company said they'd already paid it, and was totally uninterested in pursuing it!

If you multiply the hundreds of dollars my friend was charged for procedures and items she didn't have by the number of patients the insurance company covers, it must be millions or even billions in overcharges. And the insurance companies just don't care -- they just raise their rates and we end up paying enormous premiums while the insurance companies and hospitals are fat, dumb and happy. Why do you think both -- which were historically nonprofit organizations -- are privatizing and switching to for-profit companies at such a rapid clip?! They're both raking in the bucks, and we're caught in the middle.

Sorry about the rant, CJ! This just pushed my buttons!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

As it happens, I agree with you! And even without outright fraud there's immense amounts of fighting just to get things done. We have armies of people dedicated to insurance paperwork and battles, on all sides of the "war": employers' HR departments, doctors' offices, and those enormous insurance buildings all full of people. (There's a reason I used to get deep discounts as an uninsured patient. That WAS the fair price, because I didn't need a single paperwork warrior.) Not only does somebody have to pay for all these people, but the waste of human potential is just criminal. How many diseases could we cure if these multitudes were doing something useful instead of squabbling?

The shoes were $150. You can add that to the next revision of your rant if you like. :-)