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8
WEDNESDAY
While most of us struggle to pay for health insurance and fight with Blue Cross to get our claims approved, the rich apparently line up for something known as the “executive physical.” When James McManus (poker columnist for the New York Times and author of Positively Fifth Street, about the World Series of Poker) spent three days seeing medical specialists at Minnesota’s famed Mayo Clinic for his new book, the bill came to a whopping $8,484.25. In Physical: An American Checkup, McManus uses the experience to rail against, say, luxury health care and drug companies. He dishes up the rage with plenty of personal anecdotes and humor: After being asked to turn his head and cough, McManus quips, there’s “nothing like knobby male fingers probing your scrotum to mitigate guilt about privileged white maleness.” McManus appears at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Rachel Beckman)