The Deep Six: Clues “The Price Is Right” Was Invented By A Diabetic

This isn’t the first time diabetes has been featured in this series. That was all about things I learned after being diagnosed in 2022. It’s funny how a blogger who comes up with strange comparisons between sports and movies might have a unique perspective on one the more insidious diseases known to mankind after trying to drop dead in a “big-box” retail store. Once you understand that premise, what you’re about to read shouldn’t surprise you.

When I was a kid, daytime television was dominated by two things; soap operas and game shows. Maybe that’s the reason why I’ve always had a weird obsession with shows loaded with bells, whistles, and a year’s supply of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I’ve always believed that fascination sprung from the six-year-old J-Dub having a better understanding of the cost of a can of soup than anything to do with women and (gasp!) sex. Now that I’m approaching sixty years old, I still understand crap in a can far more than anything concerning the “fairer sex.”

That’s probably my major contributor to ending up as a blogger.

In any event, you don’t have to travel far through the annals of Dubsism to see examples of my pseudo-unhealthy fascination. There was the time I compared the then-members of the (as it existed then) Big Ten Conference to some classic game show hosts. Then there was the time I made my way on to another well-known game show, only to be asked to leave when I insulted the host (which played a major role in his dead ass being compared to Ohio Fucking State). Beyond that, I once compared my blog brother from another mother to several game shows, including today’s subject – The Price is Right.

Despite the fact that keyboarding this electronic screed gets me little more than the occasional toss into InstaFaceX jail for violating some imaginary community “standards,” I still feel the need to give back to those robot RSS feeds loyal readers who have kept this inanity alive as long as they have.

One thing nobody ever tells you is once you’ve been drafted on to “Team Diabetes,” your future is going to involve far more daytime television in places where you don’t control the remote. Specifically, I mean in the waiting rooms of various health care entities. Whether you’re being bled for lab tests, couching for whatever specialist you get to see this month, or just another episode of “Days of Our Primary Care Physician,” somewhere in front of your face will be a flat-screen full of something you don’t really want to watch.

That brings us to another manifestation of age. The younger crowd has no problem just plugging into their phones and tuning out the world around them. Maybe I should have my doctor find out why I was born without the bone that would let me do that. But until then, I just can’t help but to soak up what is going on around me.

Really, it’s what we socially-maladjusted weirdos writers do.

The reason is quite simple. You just never know the origins of your next inspiration. Had I been ParaStreamFlixing on my phone, I would have completely missed today’s topic. For the cost of a co-pay, the six-ish old fascinated with game shows collided with the sick sixty-year old, forming the “Bonus Round” of all epiphanies.

If you were to make a list of the most iconic game shows, it cannot be complete without The Price is Right. But I was today years old when I realized that whoever concocted that show had to be with me on “Team Diabetes.” The clues are subtle, but they are everywhere…once you know how to recognize them. While you may be familiar with the format of the show, I need to work backward to best illustrate those clues.

In other words, the end of the show is the beginning of today’s revelation.

6) The Showcase

It doesn’t take long watching The Price Is Right to know the big pay-off is The Showcase. It also doesn’t require the FBI Crime Lab to discern the difference between the prize packages offered to the two finalists.

One Showcase is pretty amazing; it has a a new car and a bunch of other cool shit; jet skis and home saunas abound. The other has the dreaded trip to someplace which sounds interesting until winners find out they are staying in Wherever-i-stan’s version of Motel 6. Don’t get me wrong, just because I don’t understand the benefits of having a goat pen in your room doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But I don’t think those are the memories the winners anticipated bringing home to their year’s supply of Dinty Moore Beef Stew.

For diabetics, this all about the choice. Rather than being about prizes, we’re choosing health plans. For me in particular, this was brand new exposure to the “Spanish Inquisition” that is health insurance in America.

Until this point, I always had the cheapest, no-frill single plan available; the “1040EZ” version of health insurance. Mrs. J-Dub didn’t come along until I was in my 40s, and even now, her employer offers better insurance options than mine. I could always go to the Veteran’s Administration, but that really is healthcare brought to you by the same people who brought the the IRS. In other words, my best option is the “Showcase” that is Open Enrollment season.

This is all about choosing the health insurance plan you will have for the upcoming year, and since I have all the things that kill us black guys, the “1040EZ” plan is not in the cards. Realistically, I have two choices. The plan with the lowest premium comes a with low deductible, but everything has an out-of-pocket co-pay attached to it.

The other has a high deductible and no co-pays, but comes with a Health Spending Account (HSA) which when planned correctly can offer some tax breaks. The values involved in these choices vary from insurer to insurer, but it comes down to a simple selection…pay now, or pay later.

Either way, you’re going to pay. That’s the part nobody remembers when it comes to game show prizes. The choice of which Showcase is irrelevant, because no matter what they win, don’t think for a minute the winners don’t have to pay taxes based on the value of what they’ve won.

5) The Showcase Showdown

The “signature” big wheel is just today’s first example for the soul of managing diabetes…hitting target numbers. No matter how times a day you need to do it, blood glucose monitoring is all about being as close to a dollar as possible. In this case, if you can consistently keep your sugar level somewhere around 100, you can significantly reduce your chances of some the less desirable diabetic complications…like having your kidneys go on strike or accidentally leaving your toes in your shoes.

4) Different Places, Different Prices

I’ve mentioned plenty of times through the course of this blog that my childhood spanned places like North Dakota and California. If you’ve ever watched this show with someone who has never lived outside the Midwest, you know they don’t understand how a can of soup that costs $1.89 in middle America can go for much more on the West Coast.

There’s a similar mechanism in the world of healthcare.

The American economy is a complex series of variables, but the one which matters most here is universal It doesn’t matter whichever “-ism” suits you, they all are defined by the degree to and/or the manner they attempt to manipulate the law of supply and demand.

In America, the cleanest example representing this law (there is no “pure” example as there’s no such thing as absolutely no governmental influence) reside in real estate. Simply stated, the more buyers there are for a piece of property, the higher the price will go. That’s why beachfront properties in California can have astronomical prices; conversely one could score a four-bedroom house in rural Indiana for pizza coupons.

Conversely, American health-care is the purest case of an industry crushed under layers of government influence. If you doubt that, you simply aren’t paying attention to the sheer amount of both public and private bureaucracy which simultaneously bloats cost and hamstrings efficacy of the American medical world. There’s simply no way to look objectively at the American health care system as it exists today and not see a gargantuan monument to ineffective processes, overburdening regulatory entanglements, and a general waste of money and resources.

So, just what does this all have to do with prices of consumer products on a game show? Because in either case, the law of supply and demand is deliberately being manipulated. The mechanism which allows for free vaccines and anti-overdose drugs also ensures insulin stays needlessly expensive is identical to the one which inflates the price of soup despite the fact we have the industrial capacity to cover the entire state of California in four feet of Campbell’s Chunky.

3) Different Places, Different Prices: Part II

Let’s say you’re still scoffing at the precept of Point #4. Well, there’s another component that inarguably cements that point. Medicare uses something called Competitive Bidding Areas (CBAs), which is just a procedurally-dressed up euphemism for price-fixing. Put simply, prices are controlled by only allowing certain companies to provide services in geographically-designated areas by putting those providers through a contractually-obligating fixed-bid process. In other words, imagine a game show where the host controls the prizes, the price of said prizes, can arbitrability change those prices, and can recall the prizes themselves even after you’ve won them.

If you’re a diabetic in America, there’s no need to imagine such a show; you live it every goddamn day. Everything from your testing supplies, the doctors you can/can’t see, the medications you need…including their very availability are all subject to the whims of faceless entities that literally control your life.

2) The “Dead Give-Away” Games

There are so many games on this shows that completely changed in meaning once I knew about my diabetes. That insight is really the backbone of this observation, because these games completely exemplify realities of the diabetic lifestyle.

Bullseye

There really isn’t a better way than this game to describe it’s like counting all the carbohydrates you consume. This is where you really learn to read labels because America is the land where sugar in all it’s forms is hidden in fucking everything. For example, when people think of hot dogs, they generally picture ground up pseudo-meats. But many brands are loaded with either corn syrup or straight-up sugar. I understand a slurry of various entrails requires the addition of palatability, but as a diabetic, you have to know what’s in the mush. The irony is that insulin is also made from pig parts, which means while most would opt for the sweet, I’m all about that hog anus.

Knowing what you’re eating is the key here, because going over in this game goes a bit beyond simply not winning that vacation in (insert shitty resort here). Going over on the carb count can mean a ride downtown in a rubber bag that says “Coroner’s Office” on it.

Cliff Hangers (a.k.a. The “Yodel” Guy)

Given the show is titled “The Price Is Right,” logic follows numbers would figure prominently. The same applies to diabetes. Counting your carbohydrate intake is one thing, but that is merely an exercise in trying to control the big number involved. Welcome to the wonderful world of glucose monitoring!

If you’re like me, your route to the discovery of diabetes came about from finding out what happens when your blood sugar is so high the results come back “Karo Syrup.” That’s how you go from walking into a TargSprawlMart just to end up in an emergency room having a doctor say your “Yodel” Guy almost walked off the edge of the cliff.

The Clock Game

We’ve established having blood sugars which are too high is a bad thing. But numbers which are too low can also kill. That whole “higher/lower” thing may very well the game we diabetics play the most. This is why the “carb counting” thing is monstrously important; it’s the primary tool for keeping your glucose readings within the the desired “non-death” range.

Obviously, the addition of the clock brings the sense of urgency, which is actually the key here. Diabetics should always be in tune with where their numbers are, but there will always be times when we to know exactly where we stand, and need to know it a big hurry.

The Range Game

Speaking of range, all my fellow finger-stickers out there are crucially aware of the importance of that concept. Every diabetes management tool on earth is all about keeping your sugars within a “normal” band. But just like different prizes, we diabetics all have different ranges. We also know what spending too much time outside of that range leads will mean…

Plinko

For diabetics, every gram of carbohydrates is like that fucking Plinko chip. Once I drop a carb into the pegboard that is my digestive system nobody really knows where it’s headed, and the destination is measured in effects.

Will that carb be broken down to pure sugar and absorbed? If so what will it do? Will it spike my number? Will it give me a “buzz” like a six-year old full of Pixie Sticks? Or will my kidneys kick into overdrive to excrete my excess sweet by making me urinate for four solid minutes?

Lucky Seven

We’ve finally arrived at the point where we need to discuss something which is the lifeblood of both game shows and those of us with high blood sugar…money. Game shows give away the green stuff, and diabetics must manage it to pay for all the medical costs we incur.

While being the most nuanced example of the diabetic influence on this show, it’s also the most accurate. Lucky Seven is all about estimating costs, especially when you have a “high-deductible” plan with a Health Saving Account (HSA).

This game is where they hand you seven dollars, and the game is guessing digit-by-digit the price of a car. Guessing the digit correctly means keeping the dollars. Missing means giving up a buck for every integer between the guess and the reality.

There is simply no better example for funding your HSA account than this. Necessity dictates putting enough money in that account to a) pay all the out-of-pocket expenses and b) rake in the sweet tax deduction, but there are limits. First, there’s an allowed amount for funding an HSA, and going over that amount negates the tax break. But more importantly, doctors and doctor-related shit comes with a cost, but there’s also a need to save some funds for things like food. Ramen noodles and boxed mac and cheese are dirt cheap, but they are two of the worst things for diabetics.

That means making seven bucks cover meat and insulin. Good luck!

This was not a Mark Goodson/Bill Todman production.

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