Last night, I was given this article on medical outsourcing from a May issue of TIME (linking to a blog becuase the original is now premium content), a rag I flip through occasionally. What struck me was the price differential between the US, and say India is higher by a factor of 10 for nearly every kind of elective surgery (heart bypass, kidneys stones etc). I keep hearing all these boasts about the quality of medical care one can get here in the US but still a $90,000 difference for a bypass surgery with comparable outcomes is just too much. I, definately for one, will be using outsourcing as a idea when I begin consulting in a few months. Maybe my doctor cousins and friends back in India will give some "kickbacks" for doing so. cough cough

Besides, my only visit to a hospital here ( downtown ER after a cooking/ burning accident; this was in the early days of cooking, now I can doze and cook) disabused me of the notion that top quality care is a given across the board here in the US. I think not. Also earlier on Thursday, when I was talking with my boss-prof the subject veered to insurance if you are not working, or if you are retired here in the USA. He said that in order to keep the medical coverage intact for his family, he plans to keep working for ever at the university. Me thinks, at that point, i.e., when I renounce Cubeville with its full medical coverage, I would rather move to Mexico (Baja is lovely, and I can get me a boat a la 'Shawshank Redemption') or Costa Rica (as quite a few gringos already do).

Now I will not get into discussing the few crazy dental stories I know of here. I would like to know what medical folks think of this subject?

Since I have camped out here at Buoyantville for 1500+ days now, I am trying to bring some order to the massive disorder this has grown into. Even though Antville doesn't have all the snazzy features (and necessary features such as tags) more powerful platforms like Wordpress have, I am too lazy to move. Also after the recent Indian random & Kafka-esque ban/censorship of Blogspot, I think staying put on an German (which is where I think Antville.org is based) publishing platform may have its own advtanges. Oh! yes, another very good reason to stay on Antville is that it runs off on open source software, and I like open source a LOT. That said I hope to sort this mess out in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the latest logo is made from the macro of a poppy flower taken by Elle, an excellent photographer and intrepid world traveller, over at Flickr. I had previously written some words on this photo here.

[a] Just for kicks, I am migrating to a new CSS sheet y'all. Leave a comment if this happens to break your computer, or on your computer. :)

[b]Yes, yes, I got rolling, BlogRolling. Attempting to come out from under the rock, am I? If you want to be put on (or for that matter taken off) the "Shiny Marker" list, just say so.