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3 comments:
OK, I exceeded the character limit, so I'm posting this in 2 parts.
Just FYI: Last week's dog is still up on your website.
OK, adjacent to much that was discussed this week on the podcast about healthcare, a little story:
I have an unfortunate history of having the businesses I work for for long periods of time go out of business. The Buttercup restaurant went tits up in the late eighties (5 years there), Whole Earth Access bit the big one in '98 (6 years driving trucks and doing home delivery for them) and Tumbleweed Distributing ground to a halt under the incompetence of the folks who bought it from the company founders in '06 (7 years there, starting as a delivery driver and working my way up to warehouse manager for the last 2 years of their existence), so in '07 when I finally found another job, I was determined to have a different outcome than years of service evaporating in a poof of nothing I could influence one way or another. I should have been more specific about that, though.
So when a Canadian company bought them and restarted them under a different name and absorbed a local competitor, I was like "Oh hell no." and put my mind and effort to seeing that they were successful in their new endeavor. That meant working a lot of overtime. With shifts that started at midnight.
Good news? That company (called SPUD) is still going, according to their website. Bad news? After 3 months of such punishing, stressful nonsense, I had a stroke and haven't been employable since.
That new company had Kaiser Health insurance, but the open enrollment wasn't for another month when I had my stroke, and truthfully, taking time from my sleeping hours in the day between 13 hour shifts wasn't gonna happen open enrollment or no, so I had no health insurance. This was '08, pre-ACA.
I got MediCal, California's version of Medicaid after the 120 day waiting period, but pre-ACA, the SSDI that became my sole income left me with a co-pay, and a $700 spend down that kept me from accessing some of the available services when I still could have used them.
Also, by being declared disabled for the SSDI, I got Medicare.
(continued)
(continued from above)
Fast forward to 2014, and my eyesight, never very good to begin with, began to rapidly deteriorate. My friend Sara, the same one with the cat pictures, paid for me to get an eye exam at the Reno Walmart, and lo and behold, I couldn't read anything on their charts at any distance, and a quick check revealed that I had cataracts in both eyes.
Now 2014 is when the ACA fully kicked in, and it changed the Medicaid threshold to 120% of the poverty level, so all of the sudden I had the remaining 20% of the costs of cataract surgery that Medicare doesn't pay covered by MediCal, no co-pays, no spend downs, no nothing, but Dr, Huang and now 20/25 in my right eye and 20/30 in my left without any correction at all.
I was 54 in '15 when I had those surgeries, and living in a goddamn storage unit in an old foundry building. I'd be fucking blind right now without the ACA. I'm 60.
So I was thinking about the comparison between my regular disability from the stroke (I still walk with a quad-cane) and the disability I faced from blindness when you were talking about Medicare covering eyesight, hearing and dental, and I'm here to say that I can get around like I am now in most situations, but without my eyesight? Can't cross the street. Can't read signs for directions or instructions. Can't find the slots to plug an electrical cord in.
Can't read the listings for housing assistance.
So when Blue Gal says "It shouldn't be so fucking hard" what I hear is "If it had been easier to get a basic medical check up between '05 when my blood pressure was just on the high end of OK and '08 when it was 160/100, I wouldn't have had the goddamn stroke to begin with, and would have been working and paying income taxes these past 13 years instead of collecting SSDI and Medicare and MediCal.
Moral of way too long story? Universal health care is actually cheaper in the long run, and I'm the living proof.
Thank you again for the podcast, and I'm gonna bail before I exceed the character limit again...
-Doug in Sugar Pine
When the GOP redistributed $2 trillion in a time of the great debt they had been clamoring of. They told us it would create jobs. They did not specify what type of jobs.
Now we all can see the want ads for Diner hobs at $2.13 an hour. Clowns wanted signs all over the place. Even FOX is hiring more clowns.
Across the vast GOP tax exempt political groups. clowns are employed at high numbers and the demand for more clowns rises still.
Recruiting and hiring for White supremacist hard working angry right wing patriots who are willing to go the criminal distance and be accountable for their trespasses in law of others.
Do you have clown training? Clown experience? Would you like a temporary career in the exclusive republican clown profession?
Have you ever asked yourself there has got to be more to life?
Are you tired in being in a steady decent paying hob that doesn't seem to bring you fame nor fortune?
Have a desire to be all the clown you can be?
Now hiring, heritage Foundation, GOP PACs, White Supremacist gangs for Republican anarchy.
I am being sarcastic you say? I don't think so.
I think if Biden is to accomplish his bi partisan Infrastructure (with 10 republicans). What he will accomplish is reducing the VOO DOO mind control over republican senators McConnel has mystically held a pin in each of his GOP senators voo doo dolls.
Minimizing McConnell publicly like that would be something to see and to build on.
Juist the thought of this happening causes my Dog to purr.
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