Jessica Schein

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Posts tagged with "Long Reads"

May 26

Saturday Rant: The High Cost of Medical Bills

If you’ve been following this blog at all you know that in early April my dermatologist and I found a stage 1 melanoma on my arm. This diagnosis required four successive doctor’s appointments—two more to the dermatologist and two to a plastic surgeon who handled the excision. The surgery took a total of 25 minutes and required six stitches. As far as procedures go, this was a minor one. 

Overall, I’m lucky: No further treatment was required, I am on pretty good health insurance thanks to my boyfriend’s employer, and I have money saved up for unforseen circumstances exactly like this one. However, not everyone is in such a good place. In fact, many aren’t.

My doctor’s bills over the past few months have amounted to $500+ in out-of-pocket fees for me. Without insurance, a possibility I don’t want to imagine, I would have paid $3,500+. Each doctor’s visit was $175, the various biopsies and pathology reports cost about $750, and the actual in-office procedure was $1,350. I broke it down and figured out that my surgeon was paid $52.00 per minute, which to me seems, well, unacceptable.

Up until recently I rarely thought about my health insurance. I am young and outside of some allergies and a congenital heart murmur that only means I have to take antibiotics before going to the dentist, nothing has ever been wrong with me. I simply accepted that my various employers would take out Aetna/Horizon/Blue Cross’s monthly pre-tax fee from my salary and paid the small bills I received after my annual doctor visits. Yes, I’d read stories about people whose lives had been upended because of medical debt, and I sympathized as much as I could, but I didn’t truly understand their plight because I hadn’t been there at all. 

Now, I get it—and my case, much like the small procedure done on my arm, is a pretty minor one. I don’t want to think about what a mastectomy or heart surgery bill would look like.

I know going to medical school is a costly endeavor—don’t get me started about the ridiculously high cost of an education in this country—and I respect that doctors want to earn their keep. I also understand that health care companies have the right to reel in some dollars too. They are, after all, businesses that are publicly traded in the stock market. However, someone (hello, elected representatives) needs regulate these escalating costs and protect this country’s citizens from the “bottom line.” 

After receiving a $400 bill yesterday my first thought was, “I’ll just wait until my next doctor’s appointment in July to get that other other freckle checked out,” but that isn’t right. I shouldn’t be weighing my future health against an upcoming bill, yet I have a feeling I’m not the only one who approaches his or her medical care this way.

I wish I could end this with some revolutionary new idea of how we can fix this, but I have no answers. There’s too much politics, lobbying, and big business interests intertwined with our own heath. Instead I have only a lingering sense of frustration, an emotion I’m sure those of you who’ve dealt with a similar or much, much worse situation, can understand.

Posted 12 months ago

2 notes

Medicine, Long Reads, Medical Bills, America's broken health care system, Melanoma,

May 12

The Sundae Issue

I spend a lot of energy on useless thoughts like wondering whether or not what I’m writing is crap, if it’s an original idea, and why I keep using the word “bear” in my manuscript. True story on that last one, by the way: I used it 57 times in my latest WIP. My character is bearing her weight, feelings, and at this point bearing down on me in a very, very bad way. But I digress. My point is that, as you can see, my mind brims with a therapist-worthy amount of confusion.

It’s usually around this time, about two-thirds of the way into a project, that I have another idea. This isn’t a just a thought by the way—it’s a six-figure generating golden heap of amazingness I can’t believe no one else has ever come up with. I’m a genius! I need to start working on it now! Four chapters must be completed by next Friday! I’m on a roll!

So in the past I’ve put my current project aside to focus on my new, shiny, bright one—only to find myself in the exact same frustrating “what am I doing?” position six months later. A writing teacher of mine once called the magnificent idea that arises when struggling through something else a “slut project.” I prefer not to use that word, so I’m going to go with the “sundae bar” metaphor and it works like this:

You have a new idea—an imperfection-free banana in a way-too-big dish. For some reason or another, you find yourself at the edge of one of those long semi-covered cafeteria tables where there’s chocolate sauces, sprinkles, and fresh fruit sitting untouched in rectangular metal bins. The toppings are winking at you, talking at you, and saying “Pick me! Pick me!” There is just so much possibility and after you heap it all on top of your banana idea you get a few bites of bliss; the kind of tingly-on-the-inside feeling where you don’t care that there’s syrup dribbling down your chin because you’ve made something so worthy, important, and downright filling.

It’s so, so good.

Except after a few bites you realize you’re not used to so much sugar at once and that maybe, all the toppings weren’t necessary. Maybe they don’t even go together. And then panic sets in because in all the time you spent creating and eating one sugary mess you could have been “eating your vegetables and getting stronger” as mom used to say.

I hated the green, mushy peas forced on me as a kid, but my mom knew that by sticking those suckers in front of me she was showing me how to eat better. Now it’s my turn to put together my own plate; teach myself a similar lesson. I may not like every scene, plot line, or character, but by continuing on with my novel I will become a better writer—even if, like I did during dinners at the age of 7, I have to gag parts of it up. I can clean it and myself up later. It’s yet another part of the process.

So this time, I’m resisting the sundae bar and focusing on my current project. Publishing a book is only half of my goal; what I truly want is to get better at this craft that I love-hate so much and in order to do so I must wade through lands of leafy greens and peas to get there. Mom was right; they’ll make be stronger. Besides I’m old enough to know now that a sugar high never lasts, and the crash is a bitch.

Posted 1 year ago

6 notes

Long Reads, Lit, Writing, Prose,

Apr 22

What the Etan Patz Case Taught Me

Ten weeks before I was born in 1979, Etan Patz went missing. I  wasn’t aware of his case until many years later, when I tried persuading my mom—at the age of 9—to allow me to ride the Manhattan transit system alone. Already I was worried that the yellow school bus that safely brought me to school and home would permanently peg me as a dork. Besides, I’d noted in whatever haughty way a short, skinny little girl can muster, the school gave me a city bus pass. 

My mother calmly told me no and when I persisted she explained her reasoning in two words: Etan Patz. At the age of 6 he left his apartment downtown, alone, to go to his school’s bus stop. No one heard from him ever again. What happened to him? I wondered in my bedroom that night, after my mother tucked me into my warm, cozy bed. I was safe, because she was a room away, but Etan didn’t have the luxury of such comfort. Left to my imagination, I went where human minds often do—to the worst place imaginable. I didn’t pester my mom about going to school on my own again for at least a few more years.

Through the years his name would come up on the news now and again; a new lead that would end shortly thereafter, or a milestone anniversary would that be announced with some muted fanfare, although I never liked such a word associated with something so tragic. Outside of those small mentions, I didn’t think about Etan Patz while I was getting older. I partly pushed him from my mind and partly felt that I’d grown out of his cautionary tale. I no longer feared men luring me into their cars with candy, as my mom once warned me, or mistakenly going home with a stranger who’d told me he or she was sent to pick me up after school.  

As of last week, the boy who would now be 39-years-old is in the news again. Maybe it’s because I’m older, but when I heard his name I thought first of his mother and father. What a life-altering, life-stopping, tragedy it must be to lose a child; a “parents’ worst nightmare” my mom told me so many times through the years. The possibility of such an incident is enough to make me never want children of my own.

It took this re-emergence of Etan’s case to make me realize why I was so affected by his story so many years before—and why afterwards I essentially made myself forget about him. It wasn’t that a ghoul or murderer took him, or even that at such a young age he was separated from his parents. What happened to Etan became important because my mind couldn’t figure out why him and not someone else. His case was my first brush with an idea that still horrifies me to this day.

Sometimes, like is inexplicably unfair.

I wish I could comfort Etan’s parents but there is nothing anyone can say to make them feel better. Their son is dead, although perhaps soon they’ll have his remains and maybe that will bring them some measure of closure. Maybe it won’t. I’m not them so I can’t say.

Instead I can only offer up my condolences. No one should ever have to live through what they have, which is life at it’s unfairest.

Posted 1 year ago

7 notes

Etan Patz, Long Reads, News,

Mar 29

Adults Should Read Anything They Please

Given the box office smash The Hunger Games movie is proving to be, The New York Times posted a number of essays by writers, librarians, and bloggers in the Debate Room today about the power of young adult fiction. I found all to be thoughtful and well-written until I came to Time magazine columnist Joel Stein’s piece, “Adults Should Read Adult Books.”

The title alone ruffled my young adult and kid-book lovin’ feathers, but I was open to his opinion. I mean, that’s what this country is supposed to be all about, right? Letting people speak their informed mind? 

Except his opinion is based on nothing. Stein has never read a young adult or children’s book for pleasure.

“The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads… I’m sure all those books are well written. So is Horton Catches the Egg. But Horton doesn’t have the depth of language and character as literature written for people who have stopped physically growing,” he explains.

Yes Mr. Stein, to my 5 foot 2 inch dismay, I’ve stopped physically growing—but I’m still looking to expand emotionally and hey, if it’s kid lit that gets me to think about the world differently then so be it. In fact, I’d venture to guess we could all learn a few things from children, who have a curious eye for everything without adult cynicism or rationality in the way. 

About the only thing I agree with in Stein’s piece is that books are an opportunity to learn. I’ll stop at agreeing with his notion that they’re one of the “few” ways to do so. In my opinion one can learn from any medium if he or she is open to it. But I have a feeling Stein’s definition of learning means hard facts like the names of all of our presidents or perhaps the first paragraph of the Gettysburg address. Important, yes, but so is enjoying my time. While I may not know the exact date of Kristallnacht after finishing The Book Thief, I have a better sense of the life of an average Austrian citizen who didn’t agree with Hitler’s programs and could do little to stop it. More importantly, I had the experience of tuning out everything else and building a relationship with characters (who, yes, have a lot of depth) and a story I love. 

But that’s the beauty of being an adult, right? I don’t have to prepare for a history test on Monday, nor do I need to listen to Joel Stein’s opinion on what I should and shouldn’t spend my time reading. He may have 3,000 years of adult fiction to get through but I have all the time in the world to choose whether I want to read Wonder, a touching story about a young boy with a facial deformity, or The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a stirring coming-of-age novel in which a girl grapples with her own sexual identity. Neither seem very Cinderella and Disney, both examples given in Stein’s piece, to me.

Maybe, Mr. Stein, it’s about time you stop wondering whether there are “Pynchonesque turns of phrase” and “issues of identity” in The Hunger Games and actually read the series before you add your opinion to the debate. I believe the adult readers of Time magazine would expect that type of high caliber research from you. 

Posted 1 year ago

10 notes

Joel Stein, The New York Times, The Power of Young Adult Fiction, Long Reads,