Check-Ups While U Wait

New Drive-Thru Clinics opening up in the Bay Area let people take trips to the doctor cheaper and faster than via traditional mainstream health-care. But does it work?

Only in America, one might say, when they first read this story. But lose your health insurance and you may be singing a different tune.

Would you like a wedge of cantelope with that?

It’s easy to poke fun at these things as harbingers of the apocalypse right up there with Danny Bonaduce bodyslamming dudes on national TV and that Kansas woman who got stuck to her toilet and didn’t get up for 2 years.

The first time I saw this story, the only thing I could think was you get your Heart Attack Bowl at one window and right direct at the next window you’ve got your Artery Plunger to suck out all the gunk you’ve just put in.

But the idea is more nuanced than that.

If you’ve never tangled with the fragile web of options available to you outside the traditional health-care system, then you’re probably unfamiliar with just how vulnerable someone in that situation can get, and how quickly it happens too. Those of us in the bigger, coastal cities are luckier. In the Bay Area, the clinics are filled with junkies and recent sex-change cases, and the staff are often trying to lump you into either one of those general categories when looking for how to treat you, but at least there are clinics there, if you need them, in cases of emergency. In most American cities, that just isn’t an option.

Today’s America is a strange place, and getting stranger everyday.

At one San Jose pharmacy called “Quick Health,” people can buy everything from makeup and toilet paper, to cholesterol tests or stitches for a minor cut.

“It’s more simple than a clinic or hospital,” said Ruben Robalino, a patient. “That’s why I come here.” Robalino was waiting to see a family practice physician. He said because the prices were posted on a menu board like at a fast food restaurant, he knows exactly how much he will pay during the visit, unlike a trip to a medical center.

[And] … Just like Starbucks when you order a latte, there are a few specials listed up on a board for everyone to see. Like the “healthy lover special” for only $199. It includes a physical exam and STD and HIV tests.

With the economy as it is, and with people looking for ways to make ends meet this is not as surprising as it sounds. In a way, it’s even kind of recursive.

1. We invent the drive-thru.
2. Fast food makes us unhealthy.
3. Grass-roots doctors serve health-care through the drive-thru.

Whatever its flaws, Quick Health is certainly better than trying to self-diagnose with WebMD. I’m afraid to even look at that site anymore, for fear that I’ll inherit another rare genetic disorder just by typing in “sore hand, cramps from blogging”.

(via NBC)

Comics Distributor Diamond Loses Some Luster

Publisher’s Weekly blogger Heidi MacDonald reports on her blog, The Beat, that Diamond Distribution (the largest and practically only off-line distributor of periodical comics) is paring back the listings in their monthly catalog sent to subscribers. Diamond is raising its benchmark requirement for products it will list from $1500 to $2500 in wholesale orders per month; meaning that most everyone but the top, best-selling, kid-friendly comics will be cut.

You can read the whole dish on Heidi’s site (here) but the message is clear: Diamond is a corporation, and in lieu of taking a hit to potentially foster some new off-color voices, it will be serving only vanilla and chocolate flavors for the future to come.

Well, I guess that's always one way to run a business...

According to those in the biz:

“It is going to be rough for us Top 20 publishers. It will be epic for anyone smaller. Lots of folks will vanish due to this, even some bigger guys.”

Still, there is a bright side to this. Many independents have been long frustrated with Diamond over non-competitive policies and their consistent pandering to the Big Two. In light of these new policies, and an independant’s need to reach their market, this aging bloated middle-man might find itself made redundant as online strategies circumvent its listing booklet entirely.

(via Metafilter)

Hedge Fund Manager Wants Us All to Just Toke On It

In the midst of this continuing boondoggle that is the world’s economic confessional, where overperforming industries that have been negligent in the reporting of profits come forth to report criminal levels of optimistic forecasts that will have to be revised down back to normal levels of wealth and suddenly — POOF — there goes another $15bil out from under the mat that never existed … Well, friends, it is a great relief to know that even in those hallowed sanctums of financial misappropriation there are some pretty level-headed dudes who just so happen to be hedge fund managers.

This hit the wires back in October but I think, given the state of the markets these days, that it might just be the kind of encouragement we need to be reminded of once again.

Andrew Lahde was the manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital. In 2006, he burst onto the national spotlight after his one-year old fund returned an unthinkable 866% by betting against the subprime collapse––that is, he figured the markets would hold water a bit longer than everyone else, and he was amply rewarded for that bet––in October of last year he was again thrust back into the news, but this time it was because he was shutting things down.

Mr. Lahde claimed dealing with his banking counterparties had become too risky and that he was getting out; but not before he dropped this, the equivalent of a nuclear bomb sized joint, on the unsuspecting (and, frankly, quite often too predictable) financial market.

It is my delight to reprint this, the words of a true American, in every sense of the independent word:

“Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

[Hit the jump to get the dish on enjoying life, the death of capitalism, and why the US should return to hemp farming:]

Surprise… OPEC unhappy with Return to Sane Oil Prices

What goes up must come down… That’s the way the old adage goes, but the world’s oil-producing nations don’t see it that way. OPEC and several other independent producers, such as Russia and Azerbaijan, convened yesterday to try and arrest what they see as quite possibly the worst thing ever: a return to sane oil prices for the rest of the world.

For the US, this drop in prices could not come at a better time. Just this break alone is the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars in cash injections into the economy. So, take heed, loyal worker: the breaks roll both ways, the blood can be staunched, etc.

And certainly, this Christmas, the last thing Americans needed was $150+ per barrel crude prices.

The Price of Crude, 2008

But this loosening of the petroleum noose around our necks has proven difficult to swallow for the countries which butter their bread with our energy dollars.

Indeed, because of developments both political and technological, many of the industry’s most shrewd recognize that the summer of ’08 just might have been the watershed moment, a high tide in world petroleum demand.

With the price of PV solar set to drop by 20% over the next year because of new techniques, and a president in office who understands more than just DRILL BABY DRILL, perhaps the sultans and sheiks who have bankrolled their own extravagances on our oil addiction are coming to realize that the world energy detox just might affect their bottom line, after all.

Russia, Venezuela and several other countries have already warned that many vast, over-arching social programs will have to be scaled back. But the oil producers aren’t going down without a fight. Indeed, they resolved at this most recent meeting to cut production by another 2.2 million barrels per day, bringing the total cuts to rougly 4.2 million barrels per day over the past four months.

Still, with world demand slumping, this tightening of the noose has failed to produce the desired effect. Panic has not ensued and the price of sweet crude continued to fall today to a four year low of $40.06 per barrel.

“All we can do now is cut, and pray,” said one OPEC delegate. (via the WSJ)

Well, keep praying, I say. Because you can’t run an indoor ski-slope in the desert on camel tears alone, you must have dinars, and drachma and dollars and yen; and many billions of it, too.

After many years of watching the profligate ways these countries have spent their oil wealth, I can only offer another old adage: you reap what you sow.

Welcome to the Global Economy…