It was a Kabuki Dance, and one of the main players was Paul Ryan, scripted to play the evildoer. He was going to destroy Obamacare and allow millions to die unless Democrats rallied and pressured Congress to save ACA from the Republican menace. Trump played his part too, and when the effort ended in “failure,” he projected anger and disappointment. So said Huffington Post, showing stock photos of Trump with a dejected look on his face.
Obamacare, or ACA, written by the insurance industry and placed into law while Obama was still the actor-in-chief, is a massive transfer of wealth that makes Bush’s Medicare D prescription drug folly look like Amateur Hour. Take but one example, my 33-year old daughter, now forced to pay $312 a month for health insurance – not health care. This is by force – a whole new arm of the state now monitors us to make sure we comply with this aberration. If she cannot afford it, the taxpayers will pony up. In either case, an insurance company gets $312 a month due to this one citizen’s existence. That was the only objective ever behind ACA – wealth transfer.
In the meantime she is still hesitant to see a doctor for anything, as she is saddled with co-pays, deductibles, co-insurance, max-out-of-pocket of over $7,000 that few Americans can afford, and uncertainty that a condition is even covered. Insurance policies are laden with such features to discourage people from seeking care. They have a name for it – they claim that if they do not build disincentives into their policies, they create a “moral hazard” whereby people abuse the health care system.
I am out of words here. Please supply them. I am not sure any exist.
Everything we just witnessed, Ryan and Trump posturing, Democrats rallying, was scripted, the object being preservation of ACA, a bipartisan rape of the American public. Set Republicans aside for now, as there is a special level in Dante’s Inferno for them as well. Right now I want to single out Democrats for special treatment in reprisal for their aggressive stupidity.
I am thinking about forming a death panel. Care to join in the fun?
Piece of Mindful 
This is of no help to your daughter but I don’t even take aspirin and even though I have health coverage up the wazoo thanks to the Teamsters and work in one of the great medical research facilities and hospitals anywhere, I won’t step foot in the medical center unless baked potatoes are on the cafeteria menu- If anything goes wrong, I’ll give my self to the Tibetan doctor/monks and hope boiled pebbles and tree twig sap cures me-
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That is a whole ‘nuther kettle of fish, and I agree with you. I noticed when I was very young that aspirin did nothing for me, and over the years have learned to avoid the health care system for anything but trauma-related care, such as having a GP removed some deeply embedded glass from my foot. They are pretty good about fixing broken bones and the like. My three older brothers all died of cancer, and doctors could do nothing but watch them … with one in particular, I suspect it was aggressive surgery that set in motion the decline that killed him.
At age 66 I expect in the future to be told that I have some malady like cancer, and I intend to avoid the standard remedies which are ghastly expensive and rarely effective, only delaying the inevitable while destroying quality of life. One of my brothers was offered radiation to buy him a couple of months. To his credit he said no. The hardest thing about that are your loved ones who say you have to go through it for their sake. That is a true moral dilemma.
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Western medicine is war medicine. Its big advances came out of the need to patch up soldiers and get them back on the line. Basically, it’s good at the kind of acute problems arising at the battlefront: broken bones, severe infections, etc. For these conditions, it saves lives like no other treatment.
But for chronic conditions like arthritis, obesity, and, yes, cancer, Western medicine is largely useless. Wrong set of tools for the job. Long story short: if you aren’t suffering from something you might get in a war zone, don’t bother seeing a regular doctor. A waste of both your time.
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At best a waste of time. Their drugs can screw up your head and destroy your body, as Mark has mentioned. I heard somewhere that doctors live four years less than average, and someone had commented that it’s because they know what they are doing is harmful, and it takes its toll on them.
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“Western medicine is war medicine” – this is a good quote/summary.
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It is really getting old listening to people complain about the sick care system. The things needed to fix it have been known for decades. Such as…Maintenance needs to be removed from the risk pool, One price regardless of any 3rd party payer, Binding estimates ( every other business in the world uses it ) If you take your car in for an oil change and it falls off the rack the repair bill doesn’t go on the oil change tab. Etc, Etc, friggin Etc. The fixes are not palatable with the business community or the politicians. None ( I repeat None ) of these important issues were even looked at when they did Oboladoncare. Why anyone would have thought it might work is a testament to the decline of the educational system. 10 year USSA sickcare free! Buy an airline ticket if you need anything big ( like a teeth cleaning or above ) Stop beating your head against the wall. Eat only organic or homegrown food wherever possible. If you eat a lot of processed food stop! It will never be fixed in our great grandchildren’s lifetime. Live it, Accept it, Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. Out.
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Your daughter isn’t the only one unfortunately. I tell everyone to start using essential oils and herbs. I never see the dr unless I have to and I don’t take melds unless it’s a last resort. I am 66 now and by the grace of God I am very healthy for my age. I go to the chiro for aches and pains. I don’t trust the medical field. That’s why they call it “practicing medicine”.
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I pay $30 a month for liability on car insurance. If something happens I get $300k coverage. I would not get that amount of coverage on the ACA for $280 a month. After you get that bill for surgery, you still must continue pay your monthly fee for the following months, or you lose your insurance, and will get charged the penalty, unless at that point in time you are broke, unemployed and can finally qualify for Medicaid. The more people that signed up, the premiums were supposed to decrease, but that’s not happening.
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As I like to tell friends that will listen, You are watching the systematic disassembly of what was formerly known as the United States. Hard landing coming. No doubt in my mind.
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I am usually ambivalent about doom and gloom scenarios. The country is so vibrant that it withstands all of these assaults on its viability. But this one is a frontal blow, a hard hit in the belly. It may severely weaken us.
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The state is basically the institutionalized corruption. So what do you expect ?
Having spend months investigating health and nutrition related issues, I avoid the licensed medical business all together. Patch up bones is the only thing they can do. The rest is just voodoo around the placebo effect …
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The only profit today is in exploiting sick people and driving us to world war. May day! May day!
Prepare for the coming shitstorm — when the (fake equities) bubble is pricked.
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I don’t believe a world war or economic collapse is very useful anymore. Actually I don’t believe the elites can withstand an economic collapse where everything is in chaos (they are weaker from a physical point of view). The standards of living will be lowered in the western countries, and raised in many other places (converging many economies). This will be done in a Fabian manner (in a gradual manner with a few more extreme events like economic depressions from time to time). This year and the next we will probably witness a few major disruptions that will lead to a few transitions (political, economic, social). But the transitions will be managed in a more elegant manner than what survivalist type of people believe(or those that expect an economic collapse the very next second). A more correct name is a Fabian collapse.
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I’m not sure how all this will play out. But I assume there is no violent collapse and “revolution” unless not designed & triggered. The world is almost entirely populated by sheeples in a deep sleep, there is no and will be no Great Awakening.
For a while, I had been following the Austrian Economics school, which seems quite reasonable at first (and second) glance. It took me some years to realize that even hard cash (gold and silver) has no inherent value whatsoever – it is all just social agreement, and a replacement for human interaction. The major difference though, you cannot just multiply precious metals by a keystroke from your desk at Goldman Sucks, like today’s digital $/€ crap.
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I don’t spend a second of my time following the never ending and increasingly poorly written soap opera that is national politics. I’ve seen it a hundred times. I was watching the local news and our local “political analyst” had his take on this health care story. It was standard two party pablum- phoned in. I’ve seen this guy for 30 years and he hasn’t changed a beat. That’s the feel for me on all political news stories. They could be cut and pasted from stories from years past- with the dates and names changed. If I had the interest or time I could put together a generic political news story generator engine- that would just spit out template stories on the “partisan battles” in Washington with only the names and dates needing to be changed. The same could be done on every story about terrorism and ISIS- and so forth.
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Specialized software is already used to spit articles, but the political matters are usually managed in a way to increase the polarization of the unorganized masses (common citizens). Maybe you can have software that specializes in the language that appeals to various demographic groups. Also the news/articles don’t have to be carefully crafted since the things debated/analyzed/discussed are usually misdirection that exist to make noise, confuse and overwhelm.
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