This Week in Our Dumb World
The Hidden Cost of GoFundMe Healthcare
I spend a lot of time on and offline talking politics. It is perhaps my single biggest character flaw. Having said that, I can share that the single biggest disconnect that I confront these days is between the people who want to maintain the current healthcare system and those who w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶e̶ feel that it needs to be adjusted.
The biggest difference between the two groups of people are people who have experienced the bad side of health insurance and people who haven’t had the pleasure. I understand the instinct of people who had good experiences who want to protect that possibility. Similarly, I understand and want to protect the benefits of the existing system.
I get that.
But then you read about GoFundMe.
You should read the story of how GoFundMe, a crowdsource fundraising website, has become a supplemental arm of the health care industry in the United States. You should know that 1/3 of all GoFundMe campaigns are for health expenses and to date, there have been 250,000 campaigns that have $650 million dollars for healthcare expenses.
People shouldn’t need to beg friends, relatives, and strangers for nine figures worth of health care expenses.
That’s not a system that’s working.
The problem of crowdfunding is the problem of authority and access. Who has better options now, and by whose grace? It’s often said that the path forward is self-reporting: people should speak their truths without the mediation of external power systems, so that others can respond. “Let’s get these stories out there!” the line goes. GoFundMe has become an object lesson in the insufficiency of just getting the story out there. People can share their needs, we learn, and still be subject to the pathos market, network advantages, or fraud. People can speak their truths and still get lost within a labyrinth of trending interests, channelled audiences, and ten million individuated heartfelt pleas that don’t connect. The risk in giving medical aid on the basis of stories is that the theatre of change trumps actual systemic reform; the guy with resources helps an ailing friend, or donates to a stranger whose experiences resonate, and believes that he’s done his part. Meanwhile, the causes of problems go untouched.
More effective solutions often push at existing processes and institutions. Lisa Bednarz, an experienced social worker at a large New York hospital, manages a team that helps patients get their finances in order for transplants, which are usually very expensive. (Transplants must be followed with long courses of immunosuppressive drugs, which can be costly even for the insured.) Fund-raising in one’s community isn’t new, she told me—in fact, transplant clinics have long recommended presurgery bake sales and the like to make sure that a patient can afford recovery. What has changed, she said, is financial strain. The patient pool seems more cash-strapped now than it was a decade ago. Medically speaking, that isn’t purely bad news; it suggests that transplants may be reaching a widening socioeconomic cohort, and that treatments are improving. (More sick people kept alive for longer means more to pay for.) “But we don’t necessarily look at the calculations from a payer perspective,” Bednarz said.
Bednarz directs patients to sites that “may not be as flashy as GoFundMe,” she told me, but which are more specifically attuned to their needs. For transplants, crowdfunding platforms such as the Children’s Organ Transplant Association, Help Hope Live, and the National Foundation for Transplants can stream funds directly to medical billers and divert what’s left to assist other patients. (Contributions through those sites, unlike through most GoFundMe transactions, are also tax deductible.) “But there are people whose health conditions don’t have national platforms for raising money,” Bednarz said. “If you’re in a traumatic accident, if a young mother or father passes away unexpectedly, I don’t know what’s out there.”
Mario Batali’s Pizza Rolls
In honor of Harvey Weinstein’s conviction, I wanted to share one of my favorite essays written in the aftermath of another case of high profile sexual assault allegations. This time against celebrity chef Mario Batali and his weird apology which included a recipe for cinnamon rolls. I hope all of these goons get what is coming to them.
I use Batali’s recipe that he’s linked to, which I’ve made before, and I’m already hesitant. Pizza dough is chewy and crispy, not tender – the latter is what you’d hope cinnamon rolls would be. It’s a savory recipe – incorporating white wine and a generous amount of salt – and I feel like he’s shoe-horning it into a dessert where it doesn’t belong. He’s cutting corners because he gets to cut corners.
I roll out the dough – Batali specifies a thickness, but no dimensions, which is strange if you’re making a rolled dessert. There are pieces missing here, and I’m trying to fill in the gaps. The result will be sub-par because he hasn’t provided all the information, and I will blame myself.
I baste a layer of melted butter over the dough.
A guy on Twitter tells me that I’m a vile man-hater. His feed contains a photo of my very-alive husband wearing a feminist t-shirt. Underneath he’s written the message “RIP.”
I sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon over the top.
I think about the time that I was an intern at a local news station, and assigned to hand out cake while celebrating some milestone (it had to do with the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.) One of the producers I’d been working with closely walked up to the table.
“Do you want a piece?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, looking me up and down. “Oh, you mean of cake? No thanks.” He and another male staff member laughed while I stood, holding a piece of cake in each hand, dumbstruck.
Batali does not specify how tightly to roll the dough. I do so too tightly because fuck everything.
Atomic Dog and The Rebirth of Parliament Funkadelic
Parliament’s Tear the Roof Off 1974–1980 was one of the core cd’s that lived in a folder in my car throughout high school. Actually, it started out as one of the core CDs that lived in a jewel case that lived in a plastic bin in my car until someone smashed my window and stole the plastic bin. After that, I switched to less conspicuous folders.
Other core albums:
The best of Marving Gaye
De La Soul is Dead
Substance 1987
Best of Prince
Probably other things that are less cool now and so I semi-intentionally forget them. At one point Phish was involved. Also, Billy Joel.
As one of the core CDs, it has become a powerful nostalgia weapon. The first notes of that compilation album take me very specific places (arcades and cafes) with very specific people (Brock and Aaron) with an almost visceral feeling. I find incredible joy in those memories. I have nothing interesting to say about nostalgia and memory, but I can’t read or think about this album without being placed back in my Nissan Sentra cruising around Ann Arbor and so I’m compelled to share it with you. Also, go listen to whatever your high school music was.
I was such a glorious and wonderful complete and utter shithead.
And I really loved listening to Parliament, so here is (a small piece) of their story.
Despite these difficulties, the ever-persistent Clinton had a plan to reclaim the throne with his own label. Uncle Jam Records, named after the character that he introduced with 1979’s Uncle Jam Wants You, would be home to Clinton’s new projects, as previous offshoot groups such as the Brides of Funkenstein, Parlet and the Horny Horns had either lost their contracts, disbanded or moved on. Clinton would run the label with his manager Archie Ivy, and it received a distribution deal from CBS Records in 1980.
In an interview that I did with P-Funk vocalist Ron Ford Sr. prior to his death in 2015, he mentioned a meeting with Clinton, Ivy, CBS president Walter Yetnikoff and CBS deputy president Dick Asher. “Dick walked up and whispered to George, loud enough for me to hear it, ‘Don’t sew your stripes on too tight.’ We didn’t think anything of it, but they never really wanted [Uncle Jam Records] to succeed in the first place. First, they were terrified because we had just started wearing military gear. We showed up to the meeting in military gear. Before, it was shiny costumes and we were making people say ‘Flash Light.’ Next thing you know, George is on the album cover like Huey Newton and we play Soldier Field in Chicago with a crowd of 200,000 people showing up in military gear. I guess they were afraid to find out what we were gonna make people say next. I think they were terrified.”
Ranking Every Mitch Hedberg Joke
I promise that reading this list will make you happy.
Also, I will not quibble with the rankings.
Except to say that the best joke remains: “My lucky number is four billion. That doesn't come in real handy when you're gambling. "Come on, four billion. Fuck. Seven. Not even close."
139. I saw a band in LA and the band was having an off night and some people starting throwing tomatoes at the band. I thought "Who would throw a tomato at a band?" That's bad. But then I thought "Who would bring a tomato to a show?" That's even worse.
138. I've never stayed at a bed and breakfast, and I don't think I would, because I figure you stay at a bed and breakfast, by the end of the day, you start to get hungry. "Is that all you got around here? Then you need to direct me to a chair, lunch dinner."
137. The Kit Kat candy bar has the name "Kit Kat" imprinted into the chocolate. That robs you of chocolate! That's a clever chocolate-saving technique. I go down to the factory, "You owe me some letters!"
136. I like to drink red wine, this girl says "Doesn't red wine give you a headache?" "Yeah, eventually. But the first and the middle part are amazing." I'm not gonna stop doing something because of what happens at the end. "Mitch, do you want an apple?" "No, eventually it'll be a core."
135. As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes... all exciting at first, but then by the end, you're fucking sick of 'em.
The Centralia Mine Fire
The moral of the story is don’t set a coal mine on fire because it could destroy your town and burn for a few hundred years.