I was all set to start blogging on my author site Mexico Trilogy.com as part of my marketing campaign, just something light and breezy, and then –- damn! — if those tea party Republicans didn’t get on my last nerve when they shut the government and the economy down.
While my neighbors who work in the National Parks will be getting their salaries docked, our Representative Tom McClintock is raking in several hundred dollars a day plus government healthcare, healthcare he wants you to be free enough not to have. Since he makes roughly $174,000 a year, he really doesn’t need his gold-plated federal employee insurance for himself and his family, but I haven’t seen him offer to give it up, you know, just on principle. Neither did I see his name on the list of Representatives who have decided to forgo their salaries during the shutdown since other federal employees, like the many who work in ALL the Sierra National Parks in McClintock’s own district, aren’t getting paid.
Time to call BS on this guy, or you could just call him. The number? (202) 225-2511. Ask him when he’s going to pony up. I did, and his secretary told me it was an appropriations problem. Not for the other representatives it wasn’t.
It’s time to remind Rep. McClintock that the ACA is the law. Remind him that this law was declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court, that the guy who put the Obama in Obamacare got re-elected, and the guy who wanted to repeal it got defeated. What’s next? Repealing the law that gave women the right to vote? Or Blacks? Wait. That IS what North Carolina is trying to do.
If you’re reading a blog written by a retiree about gardening, recipes and life in the country, you’re probably on Medicare, in other words, Obamacare for seniors.
How’s that working out? Pretty good, huh.
Just so you know. Obamacare is not going to do anything to your Medicare. Period. In spite of Ronald Reagan’s prediction that Medicare would be a disaster and that you’d be “spending your sunset years telling your grandchildren what it was like in America when men were free”, you’re probably glad you’re not dead broke from medical bills and forced to move in with them. Trust me, they are, too. It’ll be the same with Obamacare. People will like it. Even young people will like it. Yes, even those poor, young people the Koch brothers say are being forced, FORCED to buy insurance they don’t need will be glad they have it.
Yoo-hoo. Everyone needs insurance, especially young people with their whole, and we hope healthy, lives in front of them. Have any of the geezers in the tea party actually been around any young people lately? Do they let them into the senior living parks where these people are hunkered down?
If not, here are some notes from the field: Young people ski, snowboard and mountain bike on dangerous trails. They are always getting rescued by the ski patrol or medevac’d out of the backcountry. They drink and fall off second floor decks. They go to Frat parties and end up in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning. They speed; they ride motorcycles without helmets; they break their arms playing ultimate Frisbee at college. They have raging hormones, pick up guys in bars and end up with one of those social diseases you sure want to make sure doesn’t get passed around. They travel to third world countries on the cheap and come back sick as dogs or have to take isoniazid because they got exposed to TB.
Why do young people do this? Because. They. Are. Young. They take risks. Oh, and they are all going to live forever. That’s why older people have to nag them to get insurance, have to be, you know, responsible adults not well-paid shills for the Koch brothers.
Tragically, every now and then, one of those young people does develop cancer and would, without Obamacare, never get insurance in this country again. You should be so lucky if your kid pays for insurance and NEVER has to use it. That’s the point, people.
Obamacare does not cut the insurance companies out of the loop here, is not National Healthcare like they have in most of the developed European countries, because God forbid we should be like, let’s say, Denmark—that socialist hell-hole.
I mention Denmark because my cousin and her husband experienced the full impact of National Healthcare there once on a Baltic cruise. Freedom-loving Americans here’s the story. You’ll be in tears afterwards, I promise, just not for the reason you think.
A few days into the cruise out on high seas, my cousin’s husband, an LA surgeon, realized that what he had thought was a bad cold was much worse. Turned out he had pneumonia and had to be transported to Copenhagen where he was in the hospital for three weeks in the care of American-trained doctors who sadly were laboring under the yoke of socialized medicine, a real tragedy. The state also provided room and meals for my cousin while her husband was in the hospital, just to let you know how bad it was! She missed all the fun of staying in one of those $200 dollar a night Extended Stay motels next to the freeways. Sad.
My cousin’s husband soon realized that the doctors treating him were using very sophisticated techniques. At one point, he asked a group of them, since they’d trained at places like Cornell Weill, why they weren’t practicing medicine in the US where they could make so much more money.
Here’s what they said: In Denmark all of their medical school bills were paid for. Their healthcare and their families’ healthcare were covered. Daycare, kindergarten and schools were all good and all free. Their kids’ college costs were covered, plus if the kids continued on to grad school they would be considered “national treasures” and given stipends. If you factored in what they would have to pay to practice medicine in the US what with accountants, malpractice insurance, a staff, healthcare for the staff, healthcare for themselves and their families, college and so on, they were much better off in Denmark even with high Danish taxes. Plus, they worked fewer hours with much less paperwork, and they had a guaranteed pension that was more than enough! Why should they move?
See it’s sad what national health care will do to people. They’re employed, so what? You only know what real freedom is when you get laid off, have no health insurance and you have a gun. Pay taxes? What a bunch of lazy chumps. Can’t they at least TRY to figure out how to squirrel their money away in the Cayman Islands? LOSERS! And who cares that, in an international study, Denmark was deemed to be the happiest nation in the world. What do these people know from happy? True happiness is when your kid with a Master’s Degree finally moves out of your basement because he got a part time job at Starbucks with health benefits.
But, here’s the really sad part. You know how much it cost my cousin for three weeks of state-of-the-art medical care?
Nothing. Nada. Zip-wah.
National healthcare. Sucks doesn’t it?
Like I say, you don’t know what freedom really is until you get to pay $12,000 for a rooster-comb injection in your arthritic knee like Dave did. True story. I swear to God. Dave thought the bill was a typo. It wasn’t!
As far as Obamacare goes, I’m afraid a small minority of House Republicans are on the south end of a north moving horse on this one. Don’t get in line with them. Trickle down will have a whole new meaning for you.
As of the writing of this, two million people in New York have visited the website for healthcare exchanges. In Connecticut by 9:30 am, 10,000 people had visited the site set up there. In Kentucky, there’s been huge interest. Sorry Rand Paul. And then this: The federal site, where people from the 36 states that refused to set up their own exchanges will be signing up, has been deluged with requests. More than one million people hit the federal exchange site, Healthcare.gov, in the past 24 hours, five times more users than have ever been on the Medicare.gov website at one time. I’m sure it’s more by now.
The Affordable Care Act. It’s the law. Go online to Healthcare.gov and see how it can help you or a loved one. Time to get informed. You’ll be glad you did.