I am back

As I have hinted not so subtly before, I have been sick. i had an operation this last week or so, and (fingers crossed) all that is taken care off -- have another post op appointment in a few months to verify that.

In other words: I am back to work and this blog.

And here in lies the struggle -- of all the things that should have happened over the last 12 months of nightmarish health stuff, what do I do first? No, this is a misleading question -- all need to be done, but clearly I should devote different amount of time on the different projects. There is the current project so 100% of my official work time has to go to that. But we all know that we work more than our 40hrs a week schedule. So how do I allocate the time? Spend all that time to get the current project up to speed, because after all it is paying my salary? Spend some of that time on tying up graduate work projects? Or work on the new projects that do not pay my salary but have a higher chance of success, i.e., the papers are in sight?

In graduate school, I always had multiple projects. And I had problems because the new project was always more interesting than tying up loose ends and putting all the sections of the paper together and making the figures publication quality and what not. After all I am driven by curiosity.

Alas, careers are based on what one publishes -- the bits that I find the most unsatisfying. I admit there is a great value in the paper writing process -- it makes me double check that I haven't missed important work, it makes me explain my ideas from scratch again thus double checking for faults and flaws, and it makes me think about the larger picture, and finally down the road it gets me feedback and sometimes new ideas.

So in the past, I could discuss with my Ph.D. adviser and mentors my priorities. I could say I want to do this and this and that but i only have so much time, and get some kind of plan or help with accomplishing all that. In theory I could do the same here, but my postdoc project is vastly different from my other side projects, so I feel guilty for asking for help with stuff my adviser's name won't go on. Especially since my adviser has been incredibly supportive with the little amount of work that has been done over those 12 months. Am I wrong on this issue, and hence discuss it with him? Or ...

Do I need even more so to find another mentor for sanity check? And I don't know how to find one.

In grad school, due to issues with my Ph.D adviser, and due to having taken classes/being a TA, and due to making yearly presentations to the department (that people outside my group found interesting!), I was lucky to find 2 mentors very very easily. The reason I opted for two to run things by was that I didn't want to get too skewed on either the male or the female side; I wanted a balanced gender feedback not the least reason being that a lot of the problems I had were based on sexual harassment by certain faculty.

Here I am struggling. I am in generally a private person, so while I had been open to the facts of being sick and the operation schedule and what not, I don't want to have it define me. On the other hand it is the crux of the issue I think. So more details will have to come out. To make it worse, I have yet to figure out how to talk about it without crying -- not that I want to burst crying, but that my eyes just start crying. Again with my previous mentors who knew my work, I felt I had their respect and could and did ask them to just ignore the tears since they are involuntary.

Anyways, having written the above I decided to bite the bullet. I have looked around and found a faculty member who I think will be level headed and a good mentor. So I emailed her.

Here is me sitting with fingers crossed hoping she will say yes.

economics diagnoses the healthcare debate: Baumol’s cost disease

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/an-economist-who-sees-no-way-to-slow-rising-costs/

On one hand it is pessimistic: nothing can be done to prevent health care costs from going up.

On the other hand: health care costs do not need to be going up at this pace.

Sadly, I find this insufficient when it comes to comparing European models with the US one.

I am still afraid that both my Significant Other(SO) and I now have pre-existing conditions. So I am watching the Massachussetts elections in dread.

Some rough numbers (they are pretty close to exact, but the exact numbers are left out for privacy)
I/we have very good insurance. But since my SO is not my spouse, the benefit of the insurance is taxable to the tune of 4% of our pre-tax income. So if we had to pay SO's insurance out of pocket it would be roughly 40% of our income. Add to that the state tax of just under 10% on income and the federal tax of 30% -- if we were paying for the insurance out of pocket I would be taking home a little over 20% of my income.

Between my job and my SO's school loans we take <60K per year pre tax. That would mean 15K left or so for rent, food, clothes, co-pays and suches.

My graduate stipend after tax was 17K. So my current take home pay would be less than that as a graduate student.

I am soo grateful that this state recognizes my SO even if the federal government does not. that way I only pay 4% of our income for SO health insurance and not 40%. So I can finally pay down some of my school debts.

To expound a bit on the ridiculousness of health care, if I had to pay my premium out of pocket, it currently stands at a bit over 1.5 times my SO's one so that would be 60% of my income. So just SO's health insurance and mine would be 100%. While I ignored the fact that I should be able to deduct the medical expenses and what not from state/federal tax, the picture is still pretty grim.

I mentioned last time that test for really bad condition came out negative. But if it had come out positive I'd have had to take leave without pay. COBRA exists. But I have to pay my part of what the employer is paying which is roughly 100% of our income. COBRA is broken. Very very broken.

So conclusion: don't be young and get seriously sick?

Compounded to this is that I have no right to vote. I have lived in this country for 15+ yrs. I have worked and studied here legally. I have paid all my taxes. I s it too much to ask that I be allowed to vote?That I be allowed to call a congress(wo)man and talk to them about that as one of their potential voters?

I already have a residency for tax purposes. So why not a residency for non tax purposes such as voting? Maybe not immediately but after some (<15? <10?) years. Now I can insert the obligatory "taxation without representation" arguments used in winning rights for both non-whites and for women, but that seems too populist.

Catch 22 in healthcare

What would you do if you are a PI and your graduate student/postdoc gets really sick (over a few months) and there is no alternate funding than say the NSF or NIH grant?

On one hand:
You are responsible for work to be done in a timely manner to said agency, and cannot pay someone who is not working.

On the other hand:
The way health care works here no job means no health care... when the grad student/postdoc needs it. Let alone that the person's dependents would loose healthcare as well if they are on the same policy.

Furthermore:
if the person is foreign, do they get expatriated.

I am sure similar stuff comes up when faculty and staff are reviewed.

It just seems inhumane. I wonder how these would ever be handled without some kind of universal health care that is not dependent on work.

I am reminded of this over these holidays by randomly trying to get information from the registrar's office at my Ph.D. school. In that department, one of the first years (so not even on a grant but on TA) got sick. He was American so no foreign rules do apply. He tried to get home and passed away. The questions I never learned the answer to is
1) why was he allowed to drive home instead of being in the hospital.
2) would it have made a difference if he was on the RA insurance which was better than the TA insurance
3) would they have extended his TA ship so he will continue to have healthcare had he not passed away during break.

On other news my test for potentially very harmful disease came back... Negative. Big sigh of relief.