We’ve recently had our insurance stop covering a medication because it is now available over the counter. This seems to be happening more often. It doesn’t really make a huge difference, but it does end up costing us more for the same medication.

I’ve never really understood this concept. So a doctor prescribes a patient a particular kind of medication, let’s call it Loopie, just for fun.

So Loopie is a special medication that is available only by prescription and costs quite a bit of money. Thank goodness that the health insurance I pay for every month covers this very special drug, Loopie, and I only have to pay a fraction of the price to get it. Now, someone decides that Loopie isn’t quite so special anymore and they start selling the drug over the counter for a fraction of the price that my insurance company was paying for it before.

Yay! I think. Now, it will be much cheaper for my insurance to cover the cost of this great medication, Loopie OTC. However, the insurance company says, now that anyone can get Loopie, we don’t see why we should have to pay for it. Pay for it yourself.

Wait a minute, insurance company. If you were willing to pay the pharmaceutical company $200 for the month supply of Loopie you used to require me to pay $20 to pick up from the pharmacy, why is it that you aren’t willing to pay at least a portion of the $25 that I now have to pay for Loopie OTC?

Am I alone on this one?

I’m sure that many of you are aware that comedian Jon Stewart, in his ongoing feud with Fox News, recently referred to the network as “the lupus of news.” I don’t feel like creating any new links to this, so if you want to find out more, search for it.

There is so much about this topic that disturbs me, I’m not sure where to begin. Well, let’s start with the obvious one, that lupus is still considered by many to be a joke disease. Why? Well, I think people joke about things that don’t make sense to them and Lupus certainly doesn’t make much sense. Some people we know who have lupus have such a mild case that they appear to others as not being sick at all. On the other hand, someone we knew just lost their battle with lupus. I don’t know how to fix society’s perception. American society appears to be much more interested in being entertained than being educated.

When a society makes political decisions based on entertainers masquerading as journalists, the eventual conflict for ratings and viewership can only result in a political system forced to make decisions based on the amusement of the masses and the economy of YouTube viewership.

Every day that a person turns on the radio and listens to someone like Rush Limbaugh tell them how to be a real American or feels like they are politically involved because they watch The Daily Show, this economy of stupidity will continue to perpetuate itself until this country is reduced into neatly identified marketing groups of lemmings running blindly toward their edu-taining talking head of choice.

I wish I had some easy solution, but sanity is not very entertaining.