Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Its over 6 months since it was published, but apparently I was mentioned in a news story in the Guardian, a prominent UK newspaper. Yeah for me!

I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but in the last few months a new pain management clinic was opened in the strip mall behind our house called Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. For two and a half years, we’ve had no problems with the strip mall that is just over our fence. But in the last few months, that has changed.

On January 31st, a Saturday, Debi and I woke up to the sounds of chainsaws. I didn’t immediately realize from where the sound was coming, but soon realized that someone was cutting down all of the trees on the other side of our fence by the strip mall. No one had approached us about doing this. What’s more, the previous owner of the house who put in our fence, didn’t actually put the fence on our property line, but instead put the fence about 2 to 3 feet away from our property line because he didn’t want to cut down those trees. Ergo, the trees they were cutting down were actually at least partially our trees, on our property. I went out, stuck my head over the fence, and got the attention of the woman who was cutting down the trees. I mentioned to her that the trees were on my property, which immediately gave her pause. She was hired to cut them down and was told that they were on the property of the owner of the strip mall. She immediately went to talk to the person who had hired her to let him know that this was sketchy. He and another business owner then came around to my place where I was out talking with my neighbor, to apologize and try to smooth things over. A little late – the trees were already cut down!

Over the last month, with the trees gone, we’ve had several instances where people have been walking around in the alley behind the strip mall at 11:00 pm talking loudly or yelling. I went out there a couple of weeks ago after a guy had been talking loudly for over an hour at 11:00 pm and popped my head over our fence. I don’t know who he was, but he didn’t wait around – he dropped his phone and ran.

One other time over the past week there have been people talking loudly in the alley at night. But last night, at 11:00 pm, it was really getting on my nerves. Then a car alarm went off, waking up Toren. I’d had enough. I went into our backyard to see what was going on, but by that time no one was back there, despite there still being 6 or 7 cars in the alley. So I decided I’d walk around to the front of the strip mall to see what was going on.

I’m probably too naive to realize that this was very risky, but I was pissed. As I walked around the corner to the strip mall and started to head down the sidewalk, I started noticing a group of people hanging out in front of the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. As I got closer, I realized these people were not really the kind of people I’d want to run into late at night – they were wearing tattered clothing, looked unkempt, looked to be in relatively poor health, had various scars, and looked, well, mean. Having no experience with drug dealers, I can’t say for certain that’s what they looked like, but that was the initial impression I received – white, scummy, drug dealers. There were about 6 or 7 of them standing in front of the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. When I got to the door of this “clinic”, I started to ask the people sitting around outside if it was open, but then one of them opened the door and walked in, so I followed him. Inside, at 11:00pm on a Friday night, there were at least another 15 to 20 people sitting around a makeshift clinic, watching TV. They looked just like the people outside.

Cut into one wall was a window where I assumed the staff were. I waited while the guy who entered before me asked if he was up yet. Then it was my turn. In the little, unfinished, and really scary looking office, there were three people I could see – a young woman, a young man, and Gloria, a middle-aged woman. I started right in on them, complaining about the noise and wanting to know what was going on. Gloria was the one who piped up and denied that it was them, claiming that they didn’t let anyone back in the alley. BS! I mentioned the car alarm and told them I have an 8-month old son. She apologized, then said that they were going to be leaving in a week. When I asked why, the young man said, “Does it matter? You don’t want us to leave?” To which I responded, “No, you leaving would be great, but it just looks funny for you to set up shop for a month or two then leave.” Anyway, I ended up getting the card of the Doctor who supposedly runs the clinic and Gloria’s name, then warned her that I would start phoning in noise complaints to the police every time I heard them from now on. At this, one of the patrons said, “If you have a problem with this place, you can go talk to the police officer who is watching it from his cruiser in the parking lot over.” I told him I just might.

I walked out to glares from some of the patrons, then headed back the way I came. I did notice as I walked that there was a Tampa Police cruiser in the parking lot opposite the clinic as the patron said, so I went over to the cruiser to see what was going on. I think he was a bit wary at first, but when I introduced myself and explained what I was doing, he relaxed and we started to chat. He was, in fact, observing this “clinic” because the police are fairly confident that what is happening is that the doctor is simply writing whatever patients walk in prescriptions for narcotics and painkillers. My neighbor and I had guessed this was what was happening, but to hear the police confirm that it was the suspicion was surprising, especially because the officer said there was nothing they could do at this point. That annoyed me because the local police recently busted a bunch of people in the Tampa area doing just this. As we talked, the officer was amazed to hear that I had gone into the clinic. He was also amazed that it was open at 11:00pm on a Friday night. He kept saying, “I don’t know of any doctor’s offices that are open that late at night.” Anyway, the officer was nice and did confirm that I could call in noise complaints after 11:00 whenever they occurred. So, I’ll be doing that.

But I also decided to look into things a bit more this morning. Here’s what my internet sleuthing has discovered:

Ronald J. Heromin

Ronald J. Heromin is the doctor who is running the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. He is licensed in Florida. However, he was been disciplined by the Florida Board of Medicine, on April 4, 2009, for beginning to operate on a patient’s wrong leg. (You can see a copy of the discipline decision here as well.) Unfortunately that only ended in a $5,000 fine. Dr. Heromin has also recently filed for bankruptcy with close to $150,000 in debt. This sounds like the perfect recipe for a doctor to start slumming it, doling out prescriptions for narcotics. I, of course, cannot say that Dr. Heromin is doing that, but his clinic is certainly sketchy. The clientèle were sketchy. And staying open late at night on a Friday doling out prescriptions in a clinic that, from my quick purview, doesn’t even have a room to see patients seems really, really sketchy. So, I don’t know what Dr. Heromin is doing, but it’s not above reproach.

Because I don’t want to keep the card I took that night any longer, I’m posting all of the information it included here:

Tampa Bay Wellness Centre
Office of Ronald J. Heromin, M.D.
1943 W. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607
Phone: (813) 374-8950
Fax: (813) 374-8949

Ettinberg Properties, LLC & Haim Goldenberg

The owner of the strip mall where Tampa Bay Wellness Centre is located is Haim Goldenberg, the registered agent of Ettinberg Properties, LLC. Here’s the property tax information on the property, which says it is worth $1.4 million. And here’s the corporate information on Ettinberg Properties, LLC. Apparently he’s living quite well – here’s a picture of his home courtesy of Google Maps. It’s 2009 market value is $688,764.00. He’s also the registered agent of Universal Auto Leasing Inc. at 8542 N Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33614, which looks like some strange car rental or leasing location. I’d laugh if this also happens to be Haim Goldenberg, the famed Israeli mentalist, but I doubt it.

You can’t get your healthcare provider to talk to itself.

Some background to explain.  Upon moving to Florida, I took a job at the University of Tampa with Ryan, where I had good health insurance.  A large chunk of that insurance was covered by the University and we didn’t really worry about the insurance that much.  Our insurer: BlueCross BlueShield of Florida.  But upon the termination of my contract at the University of Tampa, we had to decide what we were going to do about insurance.

Turns out, the insurance at the University of Tampa is far from perfect.  Ryan is covered under a minimal insurance option, at no cost to himself – he literally pays nothing to cover himself.  To add Toren with the minimal coverage plan costs about $60.00 per month.  To add me to his plan (and not Toren) would cost $80.00 per month.  One would think, then, that to add both of us to his plan would be something like $140.00 per month.  And thinking that would be wrong!  Nope, it’s closer to $340.00 per month for a family plan.   Now, if we had 5 or 10 kids, that would be a steal.  But couples with 1 kid are charged the same as couples with 10 kids, or 20.  So, what did we do?  I ended up getting insurance as a student at the University of South Florida for… $80.00 per month!

Here’s where it gets fun.  The plan Ryan is on is kind of a minimalist plan – there are high deductibles and you pay a percentage of every visit or prescription, but the premium is low.  But here’s how BlueCross BlueShield of Florida describes their student plan that I am on:

A health care plan providing limited benefits

You know a plan can’t be very good when the best the insurer can do when describing it is to call it a “limited benefits” plan.

Of course, the transition from BlueCross BlueShield of Florida to BlueCross BlueShield of Florida couldn’t go smoothly – this is a health insurance company after all.  To begin with, I was denied coverage for a pre-existing condition because I did not have evidence of prior coverage.  Yes, you read that right, BlueCross BlueShield of Florida denied me coverage for a pre-existing condition because they had no evidence that I was covered prior to switching to the student plan by… BlueCross BlueShield of Florida.  After getting the correct form from the University of Tampa HR department and sending it to BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, BlueCross BlueShield of Florida denied my claim that I had pre-existing coverage, again.  So, what does this say about health insurance providers?  BlueCross BlueShield of Florida can’t communicate with BlueCross BlueShield of Florida.  It’s the same fracking company!!!

Do we need healthcare reform in the U.S.?  Duh!

In case you missed it, President Obama came to my university, University of Tampa, last week.  He spoke mostly about the funding for high speed rail, but then took questions from the audience.

Faculty at my University were reserved a certain number of seats, we just had to ask for a ticket.  I asked for a ticket:

The Secret Service shut down a number of streets around my university and we were told that certain faculty parking lots would be blocked off.  So, I decided to ride my bike into work (takes about 20 minutes; I should do it more often, but I’m too lazy).  Anyway, there was a very long line to get into the gym where the Town Hall Meeting was to be held.  Since I had a ticket, I didn’t think getting in would be an issue.  Um, yeah, I was wrong.  Apparently some of the students at UT decided that, rather than wait in line the day before (there were not enough for all of them), they would simply photocopy tickets.  As a result, about 400 people were turned away from the event, despite having valid tickets.  I was one of them.

I ended up watching the meeting in one of the rooms on campus where they were broadcasting it live.  I guess it’s a good thing I went to see him when he was campaigning here in Tampa; now I don’t feel too bad for missing this event.

I noted on here that we bought a new dishwasher back in November of 2008.  It’s a great dishwasher; it has a built in food grinder so you can put all sorts of stuff in there and it makes quick work of it.  It worked fine for about 10 months, but about 2 months ago it started having problems cleaning dishes on the top rack.  It got so bad that Thursday I tore the thing apart to see if I could figure out what the problem was.  I literally removed all of the internal parts and some of the external parts, took it out back, and sprayed it down with our hose, blowing all of the crap out of it.  I was hoping that the hard water deposits (of which there were plenty) were the problem.  But when I started it back up and try to clean some dishes on the top shelf, no luck.  The hours of work I spent on it made no difference!

Out of options for what to tear apart and clean, I turned to the internet.  A couple sites recommended using specific types of detergents.  That’s when it dawned on me that a couple of months ago is when we switched from a name brand gel detergent to a no-name brand detergent.  Wondering if that may be the problem, I put another load in and dropped in some name brand detergent that we had sitting around, Electrasol gel pouches (we were using up the no name brand stuff we bought for cheap).  I also read that if you have really hard water you should use twice as much detergent as the detergent, if it is good detergent, will actually help keep hard water deposits from forming.  So, I dropped two pouches of the Electrasol in and hoped that it was the answer.  Turns out, it probably was. That very first load came out a lot cleaner.  Each subsequent load has also improved.

I’m hoping the knock-off detergent hasn’t permanently damaged our dishwasher, but using the name brand detergent seems to have substantially improved the cleaning ability of the dishwasher.  It’s not back to where it was when we first bought it, but I’m hoping it continues to improve.

The lesson here – if you spend $600+ on a nice dishwasher, spend the extra few bucks for the good detergent.  Not all dishwasher detergent is created equal.