God bless ’em, but the very same people who did everything they could to sabotage, delay, defund Obamacare, up to and including shutting down the US Government for 16 days, are now badgering the witness, Kathleen Sebelius. Predictably, the Democrats are sympathetic and the Republicans are antagonistic. What a waste!
Even as I type, some fat asshole’s badgering her, yelling at her, not letting her answer the question: “Yes or no?! BLAHBLAHBLAH!” for a question that can’t be answered in grunts and growls the Neanderthal Congressman can understand. Or truly wants to know an answer to.
I went through a 15 month period without health insurance because I couldn’t afford the crap policy I, as a person with a pre-existing condition, was able to buy through Nebraska Blue Cross Blue Shield. I say “crap” because the one thing I needed health care insurance for – the pre-existing condition, Wegener’s granulomatosis – wasn’t covered! Yet the crap policy cost me over $1000 a month. Ironically, I had to tell them what the disease was so they could overcharge me: it is so uncommon, it isn’t on their list of pre-existing conditions.
I had the crap policy from August till December, and the only thing I got out of it was poorer. The graph shows you why.
I spent a lot of last fall in bed sick, but didn’t see a doctor because I was afraid he’d put me in the hospital, I was that sick. I was afraid I was in a Wegener’s granulomatosis flare because of some of the symptoms. Untreated, the disease kills; treated, it’s survivable, but at a huge cost if you don’t have insurance!
I didn’t feel I could risk depleting my retirement account to cover the costs if I had, indeed, a flare going. All I had to do, I rationalized through the fevers, was last till I was old enough to sign up for Medicare. My 65th birthday came along before I died, so my risky business worked out.
“Leaf me alone!”
I now am on Medicare, but pissy about using it: I’d hate to be an blanking “taker”! You know, one of those 47% Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and their minions have such a hissy attack about last year, and the current crop of Republicans continue to fume about while they wipe out 24 billion dollars off the 3rd quarter GDP with a stupid, pointless, unproductive US Government shutdown in their war against health care for people who can’t afford health care in today’s money sick America.
I didn’t vote for Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan, or any Republicans in 2012. They want people like me dead, whether they consciously recognize it or not. Christians my ass, which they may kiss.
“…..the very same people….” reminds me of a conversation about councils and governments building bunkers for themselves (apparently there are thousands of square miles of them underground all over the US and one of the biggest is in Denver which is full of occult symbols – check here: http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/pages/deception/denver-airport-hides-secret-underground-bunker.htm) and my landlady saying “What we ought to do is get them all together (MPs, councillors, government officials, etc.) put them in a huge rocket and send it off to orbit outer space where they can’t bother anyone.” I know it could be construed as murder, but I think she had a point.
I remain convinced that the number of governnment officials who are sadists is disproportionately high, as they relish jobs where they sit behind a desk working out ways to make life hell for us ordinary folks, especially knowing that there’s not a lot we can do about it. Hey, just like a real life psychopath, they get greater kicks out of torturing helpless victims than they do ones who give them a fight, which is part of the way their minds work. There are reckoned to be plenty of those in governments as well.
Do you ever watch Jesse Ventura? He did two or three series of excellent documentary programmes about conspiracy theories and really he proved most of them were true.
I am familiar with Jesse Ventura. I generally don’t favor conspiracy theories because of the extremists (usually) who put them out. Watergate was an example where a credible journalistic duo hound-dogged the truth out of the people concerned, and the result was a Presidential resignation.
I don’t get too excited about bunkers because they were (in fact) set up in Virginia, my home state of Nebraska (at Offutt, the air base in Bellevue outside of Omaha where Stratcom was headquartered and the US nuclear response was to be directed from), and Colorado (Cheyenne Mountain) as part of a policy of government survivability during and after a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. Others exist, beyond doubt.
You may remember President Bush left Florida after the attack on the World Trade Towers, but made a detour to Nebraska till he got word from Washington (from his Vice President, Dick Cheney, who was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is less than an hour away from the bunker at Offutt- no conspiracy there, just coincidence) that cleared him to return to Washington.
Ventura is a Libertarian as best I can tell. He’s interesting, but on the fringe of political life in America. I remain sceptical of his and other conspiracy theorists’ works. There are elements of truth in many of these theories, just enough to make them convincing to many people, but enough crap to make them suspect to others who might be convinced if the crap weren’t tossed in. Sorry.
Bullies in government are like bullies anywhere. As long as they have some power behind them, such as membership in a committee in Congress where they can slander decent people with any lie they chose and be immune from prosecution, they will be assholes toward those they chose to hate. Take away the power, and they are pathetic, little fat slobs people pity but toss into the trashbin of history. Senator Joseph McCarthy is an example of what I mean.
Congressman Darrell Issa, in today’s Congress, is another example of that mentality. He starts from his premise (without any proof), then tries to find proof to prop up his premise. He is doomed to the ash heap of history, but he will harm many people before he is brought to a comeuppance. Witch hunts consume the innocent and the perpetrators alike, and poison institutions they represent.
I’d like to see the real culprits blamed for a change – it was the INSURANCE COMPANIES that changed our healthcare. It’s the insurance companies who are now saying that under the new “better” rules they can’t offer affordable plans because they have to cover everything in the world (and not just sell cheap policies for a small group of uber-healthy folks). Doctors used to be able to just charge for services and get paid. Once the insurance companies got involved, they created a bureaucracy of paperwork and collections hell that meant adding many people to the payroll and raising rates just to get paid for the original work. It was also the insurance companies who said you can’t trust your doctors so multiple tests for everything are required (again raising costs for everything). When we were kids, very few folks had health insurance and no one noticed because you saved money in banks for emergencies – and the emergencies didn’t cost more than you could possible earn in a lifetime! How come no one wants to talk about the insurance companies? Who is reaping the rewards of their stock dividends? Do you think only one political party will be represented in that group?
Absolutely not! In my state, represented across board by Republicans, Republicans get “credit” for being lapdogs of the insurance industry, but I would not be a bit surprised to find nice boxes of loot left on Democrats doors, too, by that industry.
I agree with you, incidentally. The administration did a poor job of explaining the cancelled policies and why until recently, but the Republicans already smelled the chum in the water and circled the boat, looking for red meat, preferably Democratic Presidential meat.
See my next post, an e-letter from one of my Senators and my response. For that matter, this post demonstrates very well what kind of insurance one used to get from the pool before the ACA outlawed denying insurance because of preconditions or meeting lifetime limits.
I don’t mean to be over-dramatic when I note I was sure I was dying last year at this time because I was without insurance, had no desire to see a doctor because I was pretty sure he’d hospitalize me, and my retirement nest egg would go to pay for his boat, car, or house payment and those of many others in the medical profession involved in the many tests I surely would have been subjected to because of the nature of Wegener’s granulomatosis and the drugs used in its treatment.
It’s difficult to verify, so there are urine, blood, and bone marrow tests typically used to establish you are having a flare, then to assure you aren’t getting wiped out by the Prednisone and Cytoxin used to reduce inflammation and to suppress one’s immune system- WG is an auto-immune disease, like rheumatism, so your body is wiping itself out. In this case, the medium and small blood vessels are killed off, leaving inadequate blood supply to organs, which, ultimately succumb, along with the miserable wretch they are stuffed inside!
My sympathies on a rough time. You’re certainly keeping an impressively positive attitude that benefits the rest of us as we enjoy your writing. Thank you!
Thanks! I try to stay positive because it is healthy, but one still needs to keep one’s eyes open to the world around you.
You ought to check the stuff on Youtube about Obama’s guards being aliens and take this HINT (lol):
Sized-up cat toys! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
I believe everyone should have healh care, it shouldn’t be based on having a job or having the resources to buy insurance. I really just wanted to mention that I like the pie chart with the cat!
That’s Louie the ginger cat. He was pissed, too, because it was starting to look like I might have to find a new home for him or get rid of something else to meet my premium payments.
I considered not posting this, then I thought, “What the hell! All my friends who are so against it need to know that I chose to die last fall when I had several consecutive illnesses between October and December instead of seeing a doctor when I was so ill (for weeks!) that one spell around Thanksgiving (as an example), I spent 22-23 hours a day in bed for a couple weeks, got up long enough to feed and water my cats (with great effort!), couldn’t eat at all for four days, hadn’t really been eating much for several weeks (and lost 30 pounds in the process), and generally felt like death.
Having been near death two times, I assure you I do know what “feeling like death” is, and I’m not speaking metaphorically.
In short, spouting off the ultra-right’s anti-health care line is fine when you are healthy, but you sing a different tune when you know there is a good chance you’ll lose your insurance because of cost at a time you really should be hospitalized but can’t afford to risk it! I said there are naughty words in this. What I want to say to people who would deny others affordable health care is I HOPE YOU GET REALLY SICK AND DIE WITHOUT INSURANCE TO PAY YOUR BILLS!
I won’t say that, though, because I still love my friends (and family, for that matter) who are extreme rightists on this topic, and I just hope they come to see it is a moral and humane thing to make affordable health care universally available, that the demagogues on the right are wrong about the specifics, and the Republicans will pay a severe price for their stance on the wrong side of decency. They will, too, if they don’t become more informed about the issues.