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Health insurance question #2

bookworm4125 — Sat, 09 May 2026 17:06:04 -0800

Despite people giving negative feedback about Healthnet, my job is keeping our insurance exactly the same this year and I just got a bill I'd like help with/feedback on. On March 9 2026 I went to a dermatologist I've been seeing for several years. In the past year-2 years they were bought by a bigger group (Schweiger Dermatology). I went to ask her about better facewash, facial moisturizer, and facial sunscreen options because my skin has been a bit irritated/dry/itchy. She gave me a list of OTC ones (been using Vani-cream stuff and v happy with it yay) and diagnosed me w/ psoriasis around the outside corners of my nose (I ordered an RX cream she sent in but it was kind of irritating so unsure if she made the right diagnosis but whatever about that). We probably chatted about all of this for 7-10 min. She asked if I had anything else and I remembered I had a wart on my hand. She looked at it, diagnosed it as such (billing code says benign lesion). It wasn't itchy or painful or anything else, just kinda annoying. She froze it off which took maybe 30-45 seconds? and put a bandaid on it.

Thanks for reading that very very long paragraph.

I just now received the bill (not sure why I received it so long after the visit but ok whatever). Apparently they charge FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS for an established patient visit that lasts 30-39 minutes that requires a moderate level of medical decision-making. I guess my mistake that I did not know this...wish I had set a timer or something. This sounds outrageous to me. The adjusted rate with Healthnet along with what Healthnet will pay leaves me paying $55 --I honestly don't remember if this is on top of a copay I paid in-office or in lieu but I'll call on Monday.

Then the charge for destruction of anywhere from 1-14 benign lesions with "cryosurgery" is $420, I am left paying $57.29.

To be honest now that I am analyzing the statement properly I guess $112.29 for the visit and wart-freezing is reasonable compared to if I had no insurance (then it'd be $870 out of pocket) to pay for the PA's expertise and the cryo thing but if I look at it from the standpoint of something that took maybe 12 minutes total it seems so expensive.

I fear this has devolved into chatfilter but is there anything to be done other than go on Kaiser which I am reluctant to do b/c of some specialists I see and love?

Is this just the way it is these days with commercial health insurance in America?

What was this essay? More, what was this NOVEL?

Frowner — Fri, 08 May 2026 06:52:54 -0800

A long time ago, like ten or fifteen years, I read a fascinating essay about the development of the novel form, and that essay talked about a book which included a giant spider. Or did I? In my memory, the essay went something like "the structure that we associate with the novel was not in fact always present in things that were published as early novels. An illustration of this is the now largely forgotten NOVEL which has a whole disconnected chunk at the beginning where there's a weird almost supernatural part WITH A GIANT SPIDER."

What was this essay? What was this book? Every once in a while I google around to try to find out, and have had no luck. Did I dream it? I feel like I didn't although it would have been cool if my dreaming brain focused on the history of the novel.

This novel was to the best of my recollection in English. I feel as though it were a 19th century novel more contemporary with Walter Scott rather than eg an 18th century novel contemporary with Mrs. Radcliffe, despite the spider.

I just can't dry the shower anymore, I'm sorry. I'm done.

bluesky78987 — Wed, 06 May 2026 12:02:54 -0800

My shower has glossy porcelain tiles. Water is Los Angeles city water - fairly hard. For 9 years now I've been squeegee-ing and then drying the shower walls with a towel after every shower to avoid mineral deposits. And I'm DONE. I can't do it any more. Help! I stopped drying for a month once and the tile became completely covered in millions of droplet shaped mineral deposits that wouldn't scrub off with normal cleaning products. Matte. Rough when wiped with a towel. In one month! Not even CLR would take that crap off! Nevermind vinegar or the various "leave it on for X minutes then wipe it clean!" products I tried. I finally got it clean with Barkeeper's Friend and a brush attachment on my drill. It took like 10 hours. That was not fun.

What are shiny-tile and hard-water having peeps actually doing with theirs? The Internet says people are using leave-on daily post-shower sprays that prevent minerals from bonding to the tile. Do those work for anybody here? The Internet also says people are doing a weekly "light clean" with "gentle cleanser and a soft sponge" to remove that week's mineral depsits. I have my doubts about that working without a lot of elbow grease though?

Can you please ELI5 what I should do or what worked for you? Or - is it OK to have crusty shower walls? I'm NOT a clean freak and hate cleaning, but they were sooo crusty after just a month - it was nasty.

Scrapbook recommendations for handwritten recipes

DavidfromBA — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:39:02 -0800

Greetings. I'm looking for a scrapbook for storing recipes (handwritten, typically on 4"x7" sheets of paper). This could involve sticking them onto scrapbook pages that already have an adhesive surface, pasting them onto a non-adhesive surface, or perhaps simply inserting them like photographs in a photo album. I am NOT looking for blank pages on which recipes would need to be rewritten, or something designed to store printouts. Nor am I looking for cookbooks. My online searches have mostly yielded those kinds of results, hence my posting this question. Thank you!

you & your partner are not aligned politically & it's just fine

rd45 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:33:44 -0800

please tell me the story of how you & your life partner are not well aligned politically, and yet it's just fine - good, actually I think I've always known that E and I come from somewhat different places politically - but a long conversation yesterday (about justice, I won't bore you with the details) really brought it home. In previous relationships, I've found solace & meaning in a deep alignment on shared ethical & political values. I'm not sure whether E and I will ever have that.

In all the other ways, I'm loving our relationship. But, the lack of values-alignment is bugging me right now and I don't know how big a deal it really is. Help me to learn from your story!

How can I grow my social media presence as a journalist?

longjump — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 16:59:01 -0800

I now realise that letting my work speak for itself is no longer enough - so how can I grow my social media presence without losing my mind? I am an experienced journalist and well established in my field. However I've been losing some work in areas like events moderation and similar jobs to male journalists who are average at what they do, but have large followings on social media like Instagram and LinkedIn. Also, beyond working for specific outlets I want to be able to grow an audience of my own by doing things like launching a newsletter - but again, I need to get better at social in order to nurture that base.

I have been talking about this with a lot of women who do a great job and feel really hesitant and nervous about telling the world about it in a more salesy kind of way. I am one of them :( On the other hand, while I really don't want to live to post every moment of my day, I'm not a refusenik and won't bury my head in the sand about this. For a long time I've felt embarrassed to bang the drum for myself and was convinced that these platforms are just an egofest, but I can see how I need to get my act together and talk about my work and grow my following in an intentional way.

I've started doing something around personal branding, like hiring a designer to develop my visual ID and will get new photos done.

Apart from that, what is the advice from social media pros and journalist who are doing well in that sense? What can I do to put a strategy together and organise myself appropriately to do this, and also what sorts of content I should be focusing on? Apart from posting the articles I am writing, events, trips and other work-related content, what would be interesting to post from a more personal point of view? Would it be worth sharing my journey from barely posting to trying to put myself out there?

Anyway, lots of questions but am hoping the hive mind will come to the rescue :) Thanks so much for reading this!

Please help me create a river song YouTube playlist

runsrealgood — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:51:41 -0800

I am seeking contributions for a YouTube playlist of tunes about rivers. Bonus points for good train songs too. The songs do not have to be about rivers and trains, I'm primarily interested in river songs, but a few good train songs are welcome. I will be blasting this playlist loudly during a May work party at the local train station which is situated by the big river.

I corralled a bunch of the obvious tunes, basically if the word 'river' is in the song, so Sam Cooke, CCR, John Hiatt, Alison Krauss, Joni Mitchell, and some others have made it on the playlist but I know some of you have whoppers that I'm missing.

Oh, and if it's kind of "river adjacent" in just the vibe, because I found myself adding Joe Strummer's "Minstrel Boy" and it's decidedly not a river song but there's something about that extended instrumental cut that moves kind of like a river, so post those too! Thank you!

Uncomfabun?

rabia.elizabeth — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 01:29:10 -0800

I like to hold my friend's baby bunny in my lap (bun tax below the fold) but I don't know if he's comfortable with me doing it. What do these behaviors mean? Baby bunny seems like he's comfortable holding court in my lap, but he gums my clothes (no apparent damage to clothes), gives me gentle nips, and (probably) pees. You can see him mouthing the fabric of my pants in the video.

If my holding him is stressing him out, I would rather not do it. Baby bun pee bothers me a lot less.

I'm very sorry but this is another question about a friend-break up.

tired and gay — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 18:14:33 -0800

I posted on here awhile back because I had reason to believe an estranged friend's grandmother would be contacting me in the near-ish future, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. Well, she did eventually contact me, but the circumstances are not what I expected. My original post can be found here. Basically, I had a falling-out with my former best friend Lee back in January, for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me. (If you've read some of my other posts you probably already know this. Believe me, I am also tired of this situation.) I'm still Facebook friends with Lee's grandma, "Alice," who I've always been friendly with if not particularly close. Alice sometimes sends packages intended for Lee to my address for some reason, and I was worried that she'd do that again and I'd have to figure out how to get the package to Lee somehow. (She was still liking and commenting on my posts as per usual, so it seemed like Lee hadn't told her about the situation.) So far this hasn't been an issue. At some point Alice stopped interacting with my posts as frequently as she had been, so I figured Lee had probably told her what happened.

Well, over the past few weeks, Alice has suddenly started contacting me...a lot. She still hasn't indicated that she knows what happened, and her messages never even directly mention Lee. But now every time I post something she'll comment on it, and if I post anything to my Facebook story, she'll invariably send me a private message about it. The other day I looked at her Facebook story (I didn't like or comment on it, just viewed it) and she messaged me to tell me more about the photo. (It was a photo of one of her other grandkids, whom I've never met, so not something super relevant to me.) Lately I've been hearing from her more than I hear from most of my own relatives.

I recently made a post that mentioned being back in school part-time (not the main focus of the post), and she messaged me with several questions about what kind of degree I was getting and what kinds of jobs it could lead to. This 10000% could be me just reading too much into things, but...I think some of the animosity that ended Lee's and my friendship was over the fact that I'd gone back to school (and gotten a job) in a field that Lee was struggling to break into. Maybe Alice was just curious! But it just seemed like an oddly specific thing to be asking me a lot of questions about.

For some important context, I only know Alice through Lee. She lives across the country, and the only times we've met in person were when she was in town visiting Lee. She's a perfectly nice lady, but not somebody I'd have any reason to keep in contact with outside of my friendship with Lee.

There's also the fact that (as I've also talked about on here) I'm having a very hard time moving on from the situation with Lee. Every time Alice messages me, it's like picking at a scab. It's not really her fault - she's probably just trying to be nice - but it feels weird every time. And I also can't help but feel like this whole situation seems off somehow: why did she suddenly start messaging me on a near-daily basis, after I'd barely heard from her (or Lee) in a couple of months? Did Lee say something to her?

So far, my approach has been to respond to her messages in ways that are polite but bland, and to not mention Lee at all. ("Yes, I'm back in school and it's going well. Hope all is well with you!") That seems to be working for now, but it seems like there's a big elephant in the room and I just feel weird about the whole thing. I could just stop responding or unfriend her entirely, but I do genuinely like Alice and she didn't do anything wrong here as far as I can tell. (And honestly, if she does know what happened between me and Lee, I don't want to give the impression that I'm going full scorched-earth.)

How would you handle this in my shoes? If she does bring up Lee directly (which I'm sure she will at some point, since Lee is the main thing we have in common), how do I respond? And from your perspective, am I correct that this whole thing just seems a bit off?

Closer trimming shaver/trimmer/beard/head shaver?

4midori — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:27:56 -0800

I use one of these Remington HC4250CDN. It trims hair and beard super short. You can see from the picture how fine the blades are without attachments. I'm wondering if there is something similar (smaller, rechargeable) that trims even closer, but doesn't remove hair to the 'fully bald head/clean shaven' level, because those tend to be hard on the skin.

Any un-enshittified floss?

BlahLaLa — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:48:32 -0800

I have used Glide Pro-Health Advanced Floss Picks *forever* because the Glide slides easily between my tight teeth & the shape of the pick is somehow more helpful for me than the way other flossers are shaped. But enshitiffication came for my floss picks and now they break at the slightest tension. Tell me what to use instead. My teeth are tight against one another, and Glide has been the only floss I can wedge in there. The different shape of these picks makes that easier, and I've never had any luck at all using pickless floss. But I need something else -- I've tried a few different bags of these picks over the past year and now must admit I didn't just get a bad batch, they've been ruined by some manufacturing change.

Recommend me a flosser, please, for your hard-to-reach and very tight teeth? I know about water picks and similar; I am specifically asking about floss.

Was this word a slur in the 70s/80s

BlahLaLa — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:46:49 -0800

Older LGBTQ people, I want to ask about a word that is definitely a slur now, but I'm wondering if it was a slur in the 70s & 80s in the US. I will put it under the fold. I grew up hearing the word "tranny" in the 70s and 80s. I was in a family with several gay friends, in a mostly liberal community. It was not expressed negatively, however I was also a child/teen and perhaps I wasn't understanding fully. As I got into my teen years I definitely loved Rocky Horror, which uses "transvestite," so I feel certain I clocked tranny as just another way of saying that word, with no additional stigma attached.

I'm interested in the evolution of this word. I know it's a slur now; I will not use it. My closest trans friends now are quite young and weren't alive then, so that's why I'm not asking them directly.

I want a Roomba. Do I want a Roomba?

kitten kaboodle — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:40:15 -0800

I have a geriatric old man kitty (cat tax) who is in renal failure, but who is doing pretty good all things considered—he'll be 19 in a few months. With the kidney stuff, he pees a lot, as you can imagine, and so he tracks litter everywhere. Sweeping up after him is taxing, as I am increasingly battling disability. I keep thinking a Roomba might be the answer, but I'm just not sure a robot vacuum would really work. His litter box is sort of in the kitchen area--I put an addition on the house that extends from the kitchen to a dining area, and there is a utility space with the water heater, furnace, laundry, etc. where his box sits, near the back door. He tends to jump out of it, scattering litter, and then walks onto the large Water Hog mat in front of the door, which collects the litter like crazy. Then he tracks it everywhere--all along his paths to his water, his food, on the little stairs for climbing into his favorite chair, into my bedroom, just everywhere.

I keep eyeing robot vacuums to do this work, but I'm honestly not sure if it would end up being more trouble than it's worth. It seems like they bump into things all the time, and the kitchen area has a lot of obstacles, such as the dining table chairs and the counter stools. I don't want the wood to get all beat up from a vacuum slamming into it, but I've honestly never seen one work (at least in a situation like mine--small house, lots of furniture and things to bump into).

There's also the different flooring--the whole kitchen area addition is porcelain tile with some deep grout lines on occasion, and the rest of the house is old hardwood with some rugs here and there (mostly Flor carpet tiles). There's a threshold between the tile and the wood that I wonder if it would be able to go over. I used to worry about it picking up poop or something (sometimes my buddy gets stuff stuck to his butt and I find some poo somewhere outside the box, but otherwise he's a really good boy about using his litterbox) but I guess you can control when you run them so you don't end up with a surprise of poo or barf being smeared around?

I also don't quite know where I would put it--there really isn't an obvious kitchen area place I could plug in something like that to charge and sit. Are they really big? There's just no free wall space.

What do you think of your robot vacuum, and is it worth it? Will I just have to accept that it'll bonk into everything and damage furniture? I literally don't know anyone who has one, let alone someone who has one in a small home with lots of furniture.

How to sleep while having piriformis syndrome?

BlahLaLa — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:21:52 -0800

You have piriformis syndrome but you've managed to find a position to sleep in. What is that position? Dr. Google tells me everybody with piriformis pain sleeps on their back with a pillow under their knees/lower legs. But that doesn't relieve the pain for me! I have tried sleeping on my good side with a pillow between my knees, and on my bad side with a pillow between my knees. I can just barely eke out an hour or two flat on my back, but just barely. I haven't tried belly sleeping but I can't imagine the associated hip opening would be good in this scenario?

I'm dealing with the medical side of this, but I desperately want to sleep. Help?

Citation Frustration

orange swan — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:32:46 -0800

In a book I'm writing, I want to use a quote from G.K. Chesterton that goes, "We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty." I've been trying to track down the source of the quote. Can you help? This quote is cited online as being from The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Volume 28: The Illustrated London News, 1908-1910, and the Toronto Reference Library has a reference only copy of that book, but when I went there the book turned out to be a 600+ page collection of essays. Though I spent over an hour with the book trying to find the quote it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and I can't check the book out, take it home, and read it until I come across the quote.

Does anyone know which essay this quote might be from so I can confirm the source and get a page number in order to cite it properly, or have any suggestions as to how I can find it?

Roofing around

kitten kaboodle — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 17:29:58 -0800

Pursuant to a previous question I asked about a roof leak, I'm trying to figure out what kind of financial trauma I'm looking at. Everybody was very helpful and I really appreciated the advice about my leaking roof. It has never happened again even with heavy rain, so I do think it had something to do with snow but it's weird because we don't really have ice dams here in Seattle.

But I started trying to just get a general sense of what it's gonna be like for me financially so that I can do some planning, and it's really hard to get any sense of what a roof might cost. I'm not looking for precision, only a very general sense. Before I start getting bids I'd like to have a basic idea of what I might be looking at. There's a lot of AI garbage out there for searches about "how much would a roof cost in this area with this much square footage of a house," and none of it seems legit.

More and more these days of course it seems anything online is not legit. A contractor scared the crap out of me a few years ago when we were casually talking about it and he said it'd be like 30k. There's only one layer on the newer portion of the house, but I can't recall if the older part of the house is one layer of shingles or two. How might you go about figuring out how much a basic asphalt shingle (base level, not architectural) roof for a 920 square-foot house with not very complex building details would be?

Or do I just need to go into the bid process and start sorting that way?

Pet death logistics

kitten kaboodle — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:50:04 -0800

I'm not totally sure how to ask this question. But my little old man who I mentioned in a recent post (sorry, I'm on mobile and can't link for the cat tax right now) has taken a downturn in the past few days. My question isn't about getting him to eat or things like that. I have a weird logistics question instead. He seems to perk up in the morning and paces around yowling to go outside and sit in the sun on the deck, but then gets worse as the day goes on, and he won't eat except treats, and sometimes not even those —so I think it's time.

As sad as I am, I've been trying to figure out what to do. The place I'd like to use for euthanasia will be here Wednesday morning. But he's going downhill at a pretty fast clip, and there's a possibility that he doesn't make it until then. In that case I'm trying to figure out what I would do with his little body if it happens after normal business hours. I would like to have him cremated, rather than bury him myself in the backyard. I did that for one of my cats and it was quite a miserable experience.

There's a place near me that a friend raved about that does water cremation and I'd like to take him there if he passes naturally. But if he does pass during nonbusiness hours, what would I do with his body? It's cold enough here at night that I could probably put him in the garage, but I fear that would attract pests (it's a completely detached garage quite a few feet from my house proper). It's not rundown and has never had anything in it besides spiders, but who knows. I couldn't fit him in the fridge freezer so that's a suggestion someone made that's right out.

If I kept him in the house, would that smell (and possibly also attract pests)? I know I will be a basket case but I feel I need to make plans.

Although the little brat just now woke up and decided to make a run for it when I took in the garbage bins and now I have no idea what to think.

How to donate medicine?

BlahLaLa — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:27:13 -0800

A friend has several large unopened bottles of Metformin, a diabetes drug. These are the bottles straight from the manufacturer, which the pharmacy just slaps an external label on. These meds are no longer needed; is there any way to donate them? Yes, we know about proper drug disposal, and we also know that this isn't a particularly expensive medicine, but we're just wondering if there's any way to Do Good before doing that.

Great/classic repudiations of "they're all the same" polical talk

Shepherd — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 05:52:43 -0800

I run into "oh X is terrible but all politicians are terrible, so who cares" silliness fairly frequently. I'd love both (a) strong, thoughtful deep arguments as to why that's a dumb premise, and (b) the most pithy, cut-and-pasteable response, readymade to drop into a Reddit thread or Instagram post. My model response in these scenarios would be "I understand how you feel that way, A, but I think B said it better than I could -- 'PITHY QUOTE'. I used to share that pessimistic feeling that nothing really mattered in politics, but Y and Z really got me thinking about it; if you're interested, check out LINK.

Some may feel this is a fool's errand, but I do think I run into people who are tired as opposed to, like, aggressively misinformed, and a cheerful, not-finger-pointy reply can't hurt.

Noise from extended weekend of pruning behind my house

caviar2d2 — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:42:58 -0800

I live in a suburban development where the houses are about 12 feet apart side to side and 100 feet back to back across a lightly wooded berm. The house diagonally behind me has paid someone to trim the berm, which I'm easily able to do with just pruning shears. They have been revving gas cutters all yesterday and since 9 am today Sunday. I can't think INSIDE my house and I'm sick. I can't go outside to read like usual. Can I say something? The noise echoes across the whole area and I'm sure is driving others nuts.