stuff that annoys me: Really important things that cost way too damn much

There's a lot that could fit under this category, but right now I have the following two in mind:

College

Anyone who has attended high school since the 21st century began can probably attest to the mantra constantly drilled into students' brains: go to college. Go to college to make more money, go to college to enhance your education, go to college to experience new things, go to college to make the right connections, go to college to meet your future spouse, go to college to escape from the parents--there's lots of reasons people go to college. Which I personally do not have anything against; I, for one, would love to go to college and fully intend to.

What I am against is the price tag.

Also important to note is that all colleges are not created equal. Of course you'd expect the local Main Street Junior College to be a bit more price-friendly than, say, Yale. (Hell, with all the endowments and financial aid they can afford to provide, many Ivy League-caliber schools are actually becoming more affordable than their smaller (read: poorer) counterparts. The trick with the Ivies is getting admitted.) But for the majority of us who want something more elite than DeVry but aren't exactly Harvard material, the game becomes much harder to play. I myself was looking for a writing-intensive liberal arts school, and found it in the much-respected institution of Sarah Lawrence. Price Tag: $58,700 a year--the most expensive school in the US. Of all the schools in all the towns in all the country, I choose the most expensive one.

Just to put that in perspective, here's a few other things you can buy with $58,700:

1. a new 2010 Porsche Boxster ($47,600 - $58,000)
2. a cheap house in Atlanta ($55,000 - $58,000)
3. your own 1958 Beechcraft airplane ($30,000)
4. a commerical crab boat ($49,900)
5. cruise and month-long vacation for two to Europe (c. $15,000-$20,000)

But no, for this much money I would get one year of education at Sarah Lawrence College.

I'm not knocking the school, really; it's a great school for what I want. Lack of emphasis on grades, lots of writing, tiny student-teacher ratio, the conference system; google it if you're curious. Besides, they paid about 2/3 of the price, which was more than generous. So why am I still bitching? Because it isn't Sarah Lawrence that's the problem: it's the expectation that any school can and should charge that much for tuition and room & board. Believe me, if my family had $58,000 to spare I wouldn't be sitting here writing this.

It's ironic, really, remembering that it wasn't until fairly recently (I'm thinking post-WWII) when middle-class students started going to college as a regular thing. As the privilege of the upper-class you would expect college to be expensive, but as college has become more and more of a near expectation, it has gotten, not cheaper, but even more expensive--twice the rate of inflation, according to this NY Times article. Also referenced in this article is the influence of competition among colleges: yes, higher education has become a business, the dreaded B word. Hence nobody lifts a finger when a college asks for $58,000. That's $232,000 for the whole four years, which is more than most people's houses are worth. 

At first my father refused to pay for my college; apparently he and mother didn't communicate well about it, but a few months later mother said they'd help. For reasons in addition to finances I still will not be attending Sarah Lawrence College. But part of moving out of your parents' house and making it on your own should be taking charge of your life, including your college expenses. And there's no way any average high school graduate has $58,000 just sitting around for higher education. The expectation is that the parents are somehow obligated to pay for their kid's college expenses when the real expectation should be that colleges will charge a reasonable price for their services.

So where am I going to end up? GA State, most likely. To be honest, it isn't a completely shabby school; I certainly can't fault their philosophy or music departments. And although GA State's tuition plus room/board is $16,600 a year when living on campus--actually more than the amount my family would be coming up with for me to attend Sarah Lawrence this year--Georgia's Hope Scholarship will pay for the entire tuition and just over $1000 in books and random other fees, leaving me only the price of on-campus housing and $1600 in miscellaneous costs. Federal student loans can easily cover that $1600. And if I should choose to live off campus? I'm effectively going to college for free at that point. Mind you, this is even if GA State gives me absolutely no aid of their own; if they do, I'd have even more options, like paying for the meal plan. When there's a good chance you can go to a university for free, there ain't much room to complain. But having visited the school myself yesterday I can tell you one thing: 

It ain't encouraging to know that money is the only thing keeping me from going somewhere better.

Healthcare

I know there's people out there who say that healthcare isn't a right. I've never knowingly met one so I can't actually give you a break down of how they argue that position, but where's a break down of how to argue against that position:

          Person A: Healthcare's not a right.

          Person B: You're wrong. (walks away)

Anyone who believes healthcare is a privilege should try being coughed on by public transit riders or homeless people. Bet you'd be wishing they had seen a doctor about their staph infection then.

I suppose the reasoning is that people don't want their tax dollars going to treat Jose the Immigrant's cancer, or that there's already free clinics for those who need them, or that the high cost of healthcare is what keeps it high-quality. From my experiences these are all bullshit reasoning:

• Your tax dollars are going to random people's healthcare no matter what. The only difference is whether it's for Jose's checkup to catch his cancer early enough to control it or for his emergency stay at the public hospital once his cancer gets out of hand. Your guess as to which is more expensive.

• I actually tried to use a free clinic for the specific purpose of saving money on healthcare. The reality is that these clinics are full of bureaucracy, staffed by god knows who, and actually aren't truly free. Pay is usually based on your income level and includes whatever administrative fees, and you'll still have to pay for specialized stuff like lab tests or x-rays. I'm not saying these clinics don't work for some people, but at a certain point it's just more convenient to either try and get insurance or have none at all.

• Any doctor motivated purely by money is a charlatan, not a doctor. If money were their chief concern, all the people wanting to be doctors could just as easily be lawyers or research scientists or business execs or college professors or fucking drug lords if it really came down to it. As long, hard, and expensive as medical school is, I'm sure it weeds out most the students just there for the future paycheck. Not saying there aren't doctors out there who would quit if they were making a penny less, but I feel they're not as numerous as people like to think. Besides, high malpractice fees do a lot to keep doctors on their toes when compared to the salary. 

What I'm really arguing here is that we often pay doctors a lot for a little: how many times have you paid for an appointment only to have your doctor say your problem will go away on it's own or, worse yet, that you're fine? Of course an easy solution to this would be to not make an appointment unless you're really feeling shitty, but then how are you suppose to catch things early on? If you knew you wouldn't have to pay your doctor unless he were able to diagnose you or prescribe medicine, wouldn't you perhaps stop by his office at little more often? Yes, this runs the risk of the doctor prescribing sugar pills or diagnosing imaginary shit, but again, the fear of malpractice fees should considerably lessen this concern.

I woke up this morning with a horrible pain in my throat. Upon calling my doctor's office to see about an appointment, the woman on the phone promptly told me that they would appreciate it if I stopped asking them to charge the co-pay on my parent's account. (I'm on my parent's insurance because I damn well can't afford my own). The main thing stopping me from telling the woman to go fuck herself was the fact that the doctor probably will do something about my throat, especially since I went to the office a few days ago for the same problem. However, the co-pay will cost me all the spare cash I have on-hand.

They better find something really fucking wrong with my throat.