I'm sure Comcast hates me now

One of my clients, a nice, intelligent lady, called to say she was having trouble paying her health insurance premium, and was considering dropping it, and did I think that would be okay? Of course I did NOT think that would be okay, because she needs a lot of treatment and possibly surgeries in the near future, before her Medicare will kick in.

In discussing possible solutions, the conversation turned to her bills, possible bankruptcy, and her other household expenses. Turns out she is paying a big cable bill each month. I suggested she drop the cable, as her health insurance was surely more important.

Silence.

"But that's all I have left to do every day--watch TV!" (She is rather severely disabled.)

I encouraged her to think of some other way to obtain the same programming (our libraries here lend out DVDs of just about everything, movies, series, etc.) and pointed out that my husband and I, in 27 years of marriage, have never had cable, even though we could certainly afford it.

Another silence.

"Never?" she asked incredulously.

Nope. Never. Haven't missed it. If I hear about some HBO series I want to watch, I check out the complete season set at the library. For free. Frankly, if I had cable, I would spend all my time watching MythBusters and While You Were Out and Dirty Jobs and whatever is on The Food Network. I catch these whenever we stay in a hotel, and get my fill, and that seems to hold me until the next time.

We are not in the sticks. We live in a large metropolitan area with broadcast TV that includes all major networks, 2 PBS stations (one of which has 3 subchannels in HD with bizarre programming such as Austrailian Rules Football--I'm a big fan now--and news programs like the English version of "Russia Today"). We have 2 Spanish language stations, one of which seems to run nothing but soccer games, the other one nothing but telenovellas. So what cable adds to this besides MythBusters and FoxNews is beyond me.

So I told my client to think about it, and she promised she would.

Sadly, she called back and told me she was dropping her medical insurance premium, not her cable.

Sigh.