Attribution: Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, finds the keeper weary of providing brilliant answers to life’s big questions and is confident that he and Phyllis deserve to ask one: How the hell did the insurance gang get such a choke hold on our health scene that the option of dying …
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Category:Medicine
Revenge of the Nerds
Attribution: Rhoda Baer (Photographer), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter In the 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds, two socially inept but brilliant—and dorky—misfits go to college and are immediately teased, tortured, and bullied by more popular students. They call them nerds. Denied admittance to any of the fraternities, the nerds, who by this …
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Kickass and Health Maintaining
Attribution: Photo by Laurynas Me on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper and Phyllis looking for a parallel to their constant efforts to keep up with their prescribed maintenance schedule and in the keeper’s case it would be akin to keeping a steam locomotive on the tracks and out of the way of …
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Kickass and Canada Ostriches
Attribution: Oleksiy.golubov, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, noting how the keeper likes to stay informed about issues involving Canada since it is Phyllis’s birthplace, he was intrigued by the news that RFK Jr, the US Sec. of HHS sent a letter to Canada’s prime minister asking that 400 …
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Kickass and Dark Chocolate
Attribution: Simon A. Eugster, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, happily reports that the keeper was at least with it enough to not heed his own advice yesterday about staying in bed in order to avoid the daily “Tin man” fallout. Instead, he got up, dressed in his old-man …
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Wellness Check
Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter I spent last Saturday night in the emergency room, sitting with a family member who wasn’t in dire shape but still needed immediate treatment. Because it was a Saturday night, things were busy. There were probably about twenty people in various stages of distress waiting for care. A …
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Eating Our Young
Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter America has always been full contradictions (the more cynical among us might say hypocrisies). It is a place where anyone with enough spunk, luck, and wherewithal can become rich and powerful, but it is also a country where abject poverty runs rampant. It is a place where people …
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Crises of Conscience
Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter The world was shocked when Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Health Insurance, was recently murdered in broad daylight on a busy street in Manhattan. Reports confirmed a gunman clad in a gray hoodie who fled on a bicycle and then escaped on a bus and that shell …
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Kickass and Polio
Attribution: National Archives at College Park – Still Pictures , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper’s two best boyhood pals came down with polio during the epidemic of the early 50’s. Both cousin Rob and neighbor Darold suffered lifetime crippling effects, with Rob henceforth walking only …
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Kickass and Handsome Rescuers
Attribution: Gamze Yeşildoğan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper recognizes the unfortunate evolution of the word “fall” from to “fall” in love, or to “fall” for a fast-talking car sales pitch, to its current age-related dominance as to “fall” on your face or your ass …
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Kickass and Body Parts
Attribution: FE2656BA, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, will be working with the keeper to bring the business of human spare parts out of the medical shadows and into the strip malls with the auto parts dealers where it will be more accessible and perhaps even competitive. Based on …
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Kickass and UW Health
Attribution: Av9, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, fresh from exposure to the sprawling UW health care system as he retrieves Phyllis from her hip replacement surgery, concludes that the modern hospital may be both the ultimate point of civilization’s advance and the most complex …
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