After hearing some hopeful things about the Affordable Care Act in New Hampshire from friends who have been using it, I finally had to sign up myself after the insurance from my wife's former employer ran out.
To start with, it's not affordable. Even with my "subsidy" in the form of a tax credit I would be paying more than $300 a month to have a deductible of $5,750. The $40 co-pay for doctor visits isn't bad, but at my income level, $300 a month is a chunk, especially when you consider that I have to pay out of pocket for everything up to $5,750 and, if I did get seriously ill, would still have to go to work to earn the money to keep my premiums up. And of course the deductible resets every year.
I'm not a political pea-brain, so I don't blame Obama. Indeed, the people who make Obama a bad president are the same people who made George Bush a bad president. In the case of Bush they reinforced everything he did. In the case of Obama they throw roadblocks in front of everything. So one president drove us down a rocky slope and when the next one tries to steer us back onto the road the yahoos keep grabbing the steering wheel and stomping on the brakes.
I did not vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary in part because his health coverage proposal was basically like Mitt Romney's system in Massachusetts, based on private insurance that everyone has to buy. After he won the general election, Obama began adding better features to his proposal, like the publicly funded option which would, in fact, blessedly have killed the private insurance industry and set us on a path toward a true universal coverage system. But the insurance lobby and the largely Republican political operatives who serve them made sure that went away.
I know that plenty of Democrats have financial obligations to corporate interests. But most issues tend to divide pretty neatly between the D's and the R's.
If someone said they were going to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a universal, single-payer system and some strong, rational controls on medical service and drug pricing I would support it instantly. And that's simply never going to come from the Republican side of the aisle.
Meanwhile, that leaves me unable to afford Affordable Care. I will return to the ranks of the uninsured, get my self-pay discount from medical service providers, pay the much more affordable tax penalty in lieu of the fat honkin' premium and hold on for Medicare.
Showing posts with label Mitt Romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mitt Romney. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Fun things to do in Wolfeboro in the summer
Staring out the back window of my prison cell insane asylum place of employment over the parade of boats in Back Bay on a summer afternoon I think of things I'd like to see. My colleague Big G and I came up with a whole bunch of them on Saturday as summer officially ended for this year. In no particular order, here are as many as I can recall:
1. Motor sedately down the channel past the other boaters and shoreside onlookers with a single passenger bound, gagged and blindfolded sitting in your boat. At the same dignified pace, go out to the islands at the mouth of the bay and disappear among them. Return alone in the boat.
2. Come in from the open lake with a couple of friends, each of you with shotguns, and a pile of fake dead loons in the bottom of the boat. One of you can be plucking one while another fires up the hibachi.
3. A boatload of people all staring intently into the waters of Back Bay gave me the idea to put a fake dead body down there, perhaps chained to a cinder block. Grim, I know. A fake mermaid would be okay, but it's hard to make it move.
4. Motor in towing what looks like a water skier face down.
5. Motor in towing a bullet-riddled jet ski.
6. Motor in towing someone on a float tube on top of an overturned kayak with what looks like a pair of arms trailing limply on either side of the upside-down cockpit.
7. Motor in towing some sort of mock up of large marine life: big shark, small whale, walrus, or just a nifty inner-tube sea serpent.
8. Tool placidly out the bay, happily looking ahead while a roaring blaze appears to consume the rear half of the vessel.
9. Everybody in the boat is naked. No one has to be great looking.
We did find a radio controlled shark on the Internet. That could provide hours of fun at the many public beaches. We envisioned a churning fleet of boats crisscrossing each other's wakes, filled with bloodthirsty shark hunters with harpoons, rifles and heavy tackle.
Then there's the list of things we thought would be funny to do in front of Mitt Romney's place, each and every one guaranteed to get us severely arrested. In a way that's hardly fair, since the same pranks would be considered no more than a tasteless misdemeanor in front of an ordinary millionaire's summer shack. But then they wouldn't be as funny in front of any old millionaire's place. Since most of them involve large numbers of radio controlled model boats and aircraft our canned-beans budget (and our better judgment) guarantee that they will remain amusing private thoughts.
1. Motor sedately down the channel past the other boaters and shoreside onlookers with a single passenger bound, gagged and blindfolded sitting in your boat. At the same dignified pace, go out to the islands at the mouth of the bay and disappear among them. Return alone in the boat.
2. Come in from the open lake with a couple of friends, each of you with shotguns, and a pile of fake dead loons in the bottom of the boat. One of you can be plucking one while another fires up the hibachi.
3. A boatload of people all staring intently into the waters of Back Bay gave me the idea to put a fake dead body down there, perhaps chained to a cinder block. Grim, I know. A fake mermaid would be okay, but it's hard to make it move.
4. Motor in towing what looks like a water skier face down.
5. Motor in towing a bullet-riddled jet ski.
6. Motor in towing someone on a float tube on top of an overturned kayak with what looks like a pair of arms trailing limply on either side of the upside-down cockpit.
7. Motor in towing some sort of mock up of large marine life: big shark, small whale, walrus, or just a nifty inner-tube sea serpent.
8. Tool placidly out the bay, happily looking ahead while a roaring blaze appears to consume the rear half of the vessel.
9. Everybody in the boat is naked. No one has to be great looking.
We did find a radio controlled shark on the Internet. That could provide hours of fun at the many public beaches. We envisioned a churning fleet of boats crisscrossing each other's wakes, filled with bloodthirsty shark hunters with harpoons, rifles and heavy tackle.
Then there's the list of things we thought would be funny to do in front of Mitt Romney's place, each and every one guaranteed to get us severely arrested. In a way that's hardly fair, since the same pranks would be considered no more than a tasteless misdemeanor in front of an ordinary millionaire's summer shack. But then they wouldn't be as funny in front of any old millionaire's place. Since most of them involve large numbers of radio controlled model boats and aircraft our canned-beans budget (and our better judgment) guarantee that they will remain amusing private thoughts.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Your Chilling Thought for the Day
When George H.W. Bush chose Dan Quayle as his vice president, many of us joked that it was Bush's life insurance policy. Who would take out the president if that would simply put the photogenic but mentally void Quayle in the Oval Office?
Now it is 2012. Mitt Romney has chosen ultra-conservative poster boy Paul Ryan as his vice president. Since the far right would love to have a zealot like Ryan in full command, doesn't that give a faction already known for gun-toting, threat-spouting and blowing up federal buildings a huge incentive to remove Romney from office as soon after the inauguration as possible, in a way that automatically places Ryan in charge?
In an article yesterday, Bill Moyers pointed out all the ways in which Paul Ryan meets the far right's strongest expectations. He did not venture that this choice presents a physical risk to Romney. I came up with that myself. But if I, a tree-hugging peacenik, can think of it, so can people more inclined to act on the impulse.
A more patient approach for conservatives would simply let Ryan call the shots from the copilot's seat and then run him for the presidency of whatever is left of the country after two Romney terms. He's young enough and in much better health than the country's previous leader from second chair, Dick Cheney. Romney could even come up with an excuse to step aside after one term for Ryan to run that much sooner. Romney barely has a quarter of a billion dollars. He's really the poor boy in the wealthy elite. With all the money funding the right wing, I'm sure he can be bought. Someone with real wealth can provide a very nice severance package for him.
None of this matters if he does not get elected. If Barack Obama remains in office for a second term the right wing will have to continue to inflict their damage through lower offices and obstructionist tactics to keep the economy tough so the majority of citizens will perhaps be more susceptible to persuasion or coercion next time.
Now it is 2012. Mitt Romney has chosen ultra-conservative poster boy Paul Ryan as his vice president. Since the far right would love to have a zealot like Ryan in full command, doesn't that give a faction already known for gun-toting, threat-spouting and blowing up federal buildings a huge incentive to remove Romney from office as soon after the inauguration as possible, in a way that automatically places Ryan in charge?
In an article yesterday, Bill Moyers pointed out all the ways in which Paul Ryan meets the far right's strongest expectations. He did not venture that this choice presents a physical risk to Romney. I came up with that myself. But if I, a tree-hugging peacenik, can think of it, so can people more inclined to act on the impulse.
A more patient approach for conservatives would simply let Ryan call the shots from the copilot's seat and then run him for the presidency of whatever is left of the country after two Romney terms. He's young enough and in much better health than the country's previous leader from second chair, Dick Cheney. Romney could even come up with an excuse to step aside after one term for Ryan to run that much sooner. Romney barely has a quarter of a billion dollars. He's really the poor boy in the wealthy elite. With all the money funding the right wing, I'm sure he can be bought. Someone with real wealth can provide a very nice severance package for him.
None of this matters if he does not get elected. If Barack Obama remains in office for a second term the right wing will have to continue to inflict their damage through lower offices and obstructionist tactics to keep the economy tough so the majority of citizens will perhaps be more susceptible to persuasion or coercion next time.
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