If you’re in the USA, you’re looking on the open market, and you haven’t selected a plan yet, then you’re already going to go without health insurance for some period of time. Open enrollment with no gap in coverage ended on December 15th.

I was just thinking about this while I was traveling earlier. While I know my situation is unique to some degree and obviously anecdotal, the fact that I could tell my story to just about anybody (friends, family, acquaintances, random strangers) and I’m certain that not a single one of them would find it unbelievably absurd is pretty telling.

In my area, if you are looking for a primary care provider, it’s probably going to take some digging. I’m helping someone out with this now. Most places are not accepting new patients at all. And even if you can find one that is, they may not accept your health insurance. But even if they do, it’s 8 weeks out before the first appointment is available.

In terms of health insurance for 2026, you basically have a window of opportunity to buy on the open market (outside of a limited number of qualifying life events that make you eligible for enrollment outside of that window). You can’t just decide in March “I’d like to get health insurance now”. Sorry, ACA cannot help you. So, when that enrollment period opened in November, I saw how much the prices on the plans was going up, let alone the fact that it was very likely there would be no subsidies on top of that, and that made me realize I better go ahead and make one final appointment with my care provider in case I don’t have health insurance next year. Nope. They were already booked up until mid January, no slots available. So, I don’t even get one final chance to see someone who can renew my prescriptions and check for any obvious health issues.

Of course these days, it’s extremely common for your primary care provider to be a nurse and to never see a doctor at all in a general practice. Nurses are great, not knocking them at all and I have a lot of respect for them, but the fact that many of us aren’t even seen by a doctor at all anymore concerns me.

Anyway, I could really, truly go on. I literally stopped myself from going on and deleted a bunch of shit. None of this is unusual or out of the norm (at least not in my part of the USA).

If we’re bitching about Pixels, mine is allergic to my wireless charger.

The charger works just fine with my other wireless charging devices and my previous phone. It worked fine with the Pixel for the first few months.

Around maybe March or April, wireless charging with my charging pad stopped working. I’d check periodically and after software updates just to see if that fixed anything. No luck.

Then out of the blue, I set my phone on the charger last week and it is working again.

I’m certain it’s the phone that’s the issue, since like I said previous phone and all my other devices work flawlessly.

Really makes me think switching brands was an unfortunately bad idea.