[Health] Appealing your health plan's denial of service

Ever try to read your health plan's rules? I recently did my 'due diligence' in looking over which of the two non-Kaiser plans would be least worst, and ended up with a lot of eyestrain and not a lot of useful facts. Fortunately, US News and World Report did some analysis for me, and here's their results.

In the process, I encountered a description of the appeals process available to Oregonians, which just might be useful to you.

[Geography] Zipped Up

Ever wonder just where your zip code went? Here's a new site which cross references zip codes with the enormously useful Open Source Google Maps.

Where's your zip code?

[Health] Brees Foundation

Surgeons are as bad as programmers; both professions select for folks who prize the social graces and, indeed, human interaction, far less than the joy of solving a challenge. Fortunately, when a programmer doesn't communicate well, you generally just get something like, say, Microsoft Windows.

However, when a surgeon doesn't communicate well with a patient, things get worse. I've had two major surgeries, both with fallout I'd rather have avoided, and one of those (Kaiser, wouldn't you know) had Unintended Consequences Not Explained. So, forgive me when I note I'm wary of the entire breed.

Brees Foundation is a Bandon-based alliance of breast cancer survivors who are taking charge. They're self-funded, and their 2006 calendar is now available for order. Recommended.

[Truth] FactCheck.Org

Katrina: What Happened When is a fascinating article from FactCheck.Org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. It was put together quickly to serve as a conduit for reports on the 2004 election, and has quickly grown to be exttremely useful for broader issues.

It, along with the debunking service Snopes, should be in the Favorites/Bookmarks of every web browser. Really.

Weather map of Milwaukie

This website overlays weather and other information over Google Maps.. so you can see where it's raining, et cetera.

If you click on Overlay at right and select Portland Radar, you can even overlay the current radar image, which looks something like this (but, click on the link above for what's happening now).



Wow.