More Delights and Disdains . . .

of a diminutive nature of late . . . Number 26

Disdains:

Reading that my health insurance provider had denied coverage of a Parkinson’s drug that I have taken for several years. I had this same problem last year after changing providers. My former provider approved it. My new provider denied it. Now I am waiting to hear from the pharmacy how much it will cost me out-of-pocket.

Perusing through my health insurance provider’s 2024 Report to Members. I received this report along with a proxy vote to pick the 2025 board of directors. I guess I have a vote because I provide my employees (including myself) with health insurance through them. Not that I have a choice since there are only a few major health insurance providers in South Carolina. The audited report showed a net income of $166 billion. Ironically, this report came the same day as their letter denying my drug coverage.

Discovering via the Wall Street Journal that health insurance providers “collected at least $4.3 billion over three years for patients who were enrolled-and paid for-in other states” meaning these patients were either enrolled in Medicaid or Medicare and had received treatment in two states. Now understand, the patients nor their doctors received the extra money. The insurance providers kept it. I am sure that their auditors consider the amount de minimis. I mean $4.3 billion is tiny compared to $165 billion. Since there is no honor among thieves, I wouldn’t expect the insurance providers to return the overpayment.

Delights:

Reading that dopamine helps baby birds learn how to sing. In a Duke University study released this month researchers detailed the role that dopamine plays in motivating the baby birds to practice. Practice, indeed. I assumed that singing was instinctual, like flying. It never occurred to me that baby birds have to practice their songs and that it takes a lot more time than the 30 minutes a day I spent with a violin.

“The amount of effort that a juvenile bird makes to achieve vocal mastery is immense,” Mooney said. “It takes them about one month of solid practice every day, up to 10,000 renditions a day.”

Young finches keep at it hour after hour, day after day, even when no one is listening. Their motivation for mastery comes from within. And now, new research sheds light on the brain signals underlying their intrinsic desire to learn their songs; it also holds implications for understanding human learning and neurological disorders.

Learning a possible answer to a long held question within my family. Did my dad’s Young Onset Parkinson’s appear suddenly because he stopped smoking cigarettes? Past studies have suggested that cigarettes, or some component part of tobacco, serve as a neuroprotector that stops the death of dopamine cells. Well, a new study funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation found that small doses of carbon monoxide potentially reduce the occurrence of Parkinson’s. It took science 50 years for science to catch-up with my mother’s intuition.

Learning at the same time that a separate study suggests that depriving your brain of oxygen would trigger protective responses that could slow the death of dopamine producing cells. This may work but I am not holding my breath on it.