Having lived in Canada and the United Kingdom, I would have happily had single-payer socialized medicine in the United States, just as President Truman proposed in 1947. But I am mad as hell as I see President Obama's "reform" kick in.
My company got no increase last year for health care (note: it's two words!). That's when the whole medical gouging system was afraid of reform. Now they got the reform they want and rates have jacked up: 29 % for us in no-inflation times!
That's not the worst case.
An acquaintance, I'll call him Bob, lost health insurance because he is unemployed. United Healthcare and Kaiser Permanente rejected him because he suffers from depression -- I'm talking serious, clinical depression. As always, you have to be healthy to sign up for medical care, right?
Bob is on disability. He could work with medication, but he can't get any prescribed.
OK, "reform" kicked in during July. Everyone has to be insured. But if commercial firms won't insure you, Bob learned, you have to have been uninsured 6 months to qualify for "high risk" pool. Then he gets to pay more than $600 a month for insurance that has a $6,000 deductible.
So if you're unemployed, you have to have spent about $13,000 out of pocket. Where, pray tell does someone uninsured (because he is unemployed), get $13,000 in the first place? Get it, unemployed? Meaning little or no income?
This is not the "change" I voted for, Mr. Obama.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Death Month
(This is a repost for the benefit of the people involved.)
For two sisters I know who live together, and their third sibling far away, today is what they regard as the second "Death Day" in less than a month. August brings anniversaries of the death of both their parents.
Other people they know have died this month, but nothing quite tops the loss of a father in childhood. A father who by all accounts was an older man besotted with the daughters of his senectitude, yet a strong-willed pater familias with ideas of yesteryear that would have clashed with these children's in a matter of a few years.
The young woman he'd met as a spy in World War II -- true story! -- was left to spend nearly half a century on her own; well provided, yet surely bereft as she raised three daughters. Decades later she still referred to herself as Mrs. X, rather than by her own given first and family names.
He died what must have been an excruciating struggle with cancer a few decades earlier than the actuarial expectations would have led anyone to expect. She died at a ripe old age, in her sleep.
They were both individuals whose lives, and the artifacts of their lives, with which I became acquainted long after the heyday of either one, bespoke a manner of abiding seemingly now gone. People of few spoken emotions, of thorough learning received and augmented as a given, lucky enough to be born to see the fruits of their labors pay off handsomely.
They were people of distinction, yet also rebels. She was a mother and housewife with a then-rare graduate degree designed to fulfill her unrealized ambition to run worldwide cartels. (I recounted her interment here.) He was that unusual businessman with a love of Dante Alighieri.
After people have lived long enough, there are always death days throughout the year; dates that remind us of people long gone.
In my mother's childhood it had been December, for her older sister, whose teenage death had put an entire household in mourning. For me it was November for years, the month my father died; that is, until my mother died on a date that was, only a few years after her passing, destined to become famous -- September 11.
Now I have photographs in which everyone portrayed is now dead. People I knew, people whose jokes still resonate from the picture as if they were still speaking.
I suspect that is what the two sisters will recall: their parents in their light summer clothes having evening drinks by the lake beside their home; he tossing witticisms, she laughing gently and her laughter rippling across the water.
For two sisters I know who live together, and their third sibling far away, today is what they regard as the second "Death Day" in less than a month. August brings anniversaries of the death of both their parents.
Other people they know have died this month, but nothing quite tops the loss of a father in childhood. A father who by all accounts was an older man besotted with the daughters of his senectitude, yet a strong-willed pater familias with ideas of yesteryear that would have clashed with these children's in a matter of a few years.
The young woman he'd met as a spy in World War II -- true story! -- was left to spend nearly half a century on her own; well provided, yet surely bereft as she raised three daughters. Decades later she still referred to herself as Mrs. X, rather than by her own given first and family names.
He died what must have been an excruciating struggle with cancer a few decades earlier than the actuarial expectations would have led anyone to expect. She died at a ripe old age, in her sleep.
They were both individuals whose lives, and the artifacts of their lives, with which I became acquainted long after the heyday of either one, bespoke a manner of abiding seemingly now gone. People of few spoken emotions, of thorough learning received and augmented as a given, lucky enough to be born to see the fruits of their labors pay off handsomely.
They were people of distinction, yet also rebels. She was a mother and housewife with a then-rare graduate degree designed to fulfill her unrealized ambition to run worldwide cartels. (I recounted her interment here.) He was that unusual businessman with a love of Dante Alighieri.
After people have lived long enough, there are always death days throughout the year; dates that remind us of people long gone.
In my mother's childhood it had been December, for her older sister, whose teenage death had put an entire household in mourning. For me it was November for years, the month my father died; that is, until my mother died on a date that was, only a few years after her passing, destined to become famous -- September 11.
Now I have photographs in which everyone portrayed is now dead. People I knew, people whose jokes still resonate from the picture as if they were still speaking.
I suspect that is what the two sisters will recall: their parents in their light summer clothes having evening drinks by the lake beside their home; he tossing witticisms, she laughing gently and her laughter rippling across the water.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Why Congresscritters (and "Outsider" opponents) Don't Care About You
Congress and the self-dubbed "outsiders" who are vying to win their seat this November ultimately don't give a damn about the likes of you and me (assuming you're not a billionaire) -- nor much, much less the unemployed and the poor. The question is: How come?
Aren't these supposed to be the people's spokesmen and women defending "the little guy" (and gal)? No. Here are three reasons why:
So, if they're not average folk, they don't need our campaign money and can do just fine without our votes -- why in hell would they care?
Aren't these supposed to be the people's spokesmen and women defending "the little guy" (and gal)? No. Here are three reasons why:
- They are not like you and me. Almost anyone who runs for Congress, certainly almost everybody in Congress, is a multimillionaire. They went to the best (read: most expensive, private) schools and played ... what's that Iroquois game called, again? ... ah, yes, lacrosse.
- You and me can't finance electoral campaigns. Didn't the last presidential candidates spend about $100 million apiece? You can frisk me all you want, but I don't have that kind of money. If I did, why would I throw it away on someone else's political campaign? The only reason would be to get laws that apply to everybody else, but not me.
- You and me don't have the necessary votes. Who votes the most? The elderly, who are as a whole well off and want their well-being protected. The rich and most educated, ditto. Some of the middle class (including those people who can't tell Jay Leno what the candidate they voted for looks like) -- most against their best interests. Not enough people who depend on public services and help ever vote.
So, if they're not average folk, they don't need our campaign money and can do just fine without our votes -- why in hell would they care?
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