An unincorporated division of the Anonymous Anything Society - October 30, 2013
THE HEALTHCARE JUNGLE
Someone once said that by using statistics one can prove anything. However, when it comes to the Affordable Health Care Act, hereafter to be forever known as "Obamacare," and for the sake of simplicity in this essay, "AHCA," the answer from almost all sources I was compelled to google in a querulous effort to find clarity of opinion in my own mind, is that we probably can survive it, at a severe cost.
For some who heard President Obama tell them that they could keep their present plan if they wished have learned that in many cases the old plan has been pulled by the insurance carrier and replaced by a more detailed plan, at a much higher cost. I think this is known in business as gouging. Something needs to be done to prevent this practice. When asked, the presidential spokesman added a caveat to the president's promise, during a press conference. "Why yes," he said, "One can keep their present plan, if it's still available." DUH!
As is well known to many of my acquaintances, in my protracted time on this planet, I've not been particularly kind to Democrats or Republicans who appear to be feeding on raw ambition for power.
The first hint of confirmation that that we may overcome this radical departure from the normal business of piling up fortune for ourselves, is that most of the people who passed the law are decent, well-meaning people. They cannot all be cretins and Satan Worshipers, as is being proposed (really!) by some of the opponents of the issue. This does not prevent any of them, chief among them Medicare Chief Marilyn Tavenner, from being less than mentally acute or savvy.
The majority opinion among our elected representatives may be wrong, and has been numerous times in our history, but it's the way the republic was designed to work. Throwing wooden shoes (French: "sabos,") into the machinery and destroying it (sabotage), is self-defeating. If the machine is wrong, the best solution is to fix the machine.
The mechanism to bring that about is available - in good time. That's the reason we pay our delegates such generous salaries and emolument and throw them out of office, if needs be.
From the first moment of the endeavor on this continent, we've had to become survivors. Some, like the original inhabitants, just barely. And that's where we are, as regards the existence of this Republic.
It was immediately apparent that if I expected to chop my way through this almost impenetrable maze of amazonian proportions veiling the AHCA. I need a much sharper machete. I doubt that a Doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would help in the slightest.
It's the political spin given to each and every matter of practicality, public safety and happiness that so distorts reality, and makes solving the challenge vastly more difficult.
I also had to remind myself that an army of entrepreneurs can smell billions of dollars, a volcano of payoffs that promises to exceed the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania.
Most of the data on the Internet is either clearly out of date; using numbers dating back to 2007 and 2009 and understandably, are being disputed. The sorting out of fact from fiction is like shooting at a moving target, travelling at warp speed.
My eMail is being assailed by anecdotal evidence of persons out there on the fruited plain who either will have their health insurance costs scaled to such greater costs; multiples of double and triple, that also being able to purchase a few crusts of bread will be impossible.
In support of the law, flack from the Office of Federal Propaganda claims that as many as "1.3 million 18-34 year olds will get all of the health insurance they need for $50 dollars or less each month and another 600,000 of those just slightly older than this demographic slice will be able to purchase "adequate" coverage for no more than $100 per month." (Feel free to add your own expletive here).
In attempting to try and determine how many people are going to be involved in this societal change, every number I attempted to obtain, using keywords such "percentage," "demographics" and "population" and even in desperation, "Obama" + "care," caused me to be unavoidably targeted as a prospective buyer/patient/victim by waiting predators.
Though one would suspect the bias placed on any subject by Edward Snowden, the Wicky Leaker, here's what I gleaned from that not entirely reliable source: AHCA is going to immediately affect a market of about 18% of the current population of the USA, because a rough estimation from several sources indicates that something like 82% of us already have some sort of health insurance and probably will just keep on keeping on with what we already have - with little or no disruption at all. I fall in that category.
Furthermore, something like 86-percent of all small businesses in America hire fewer than 50 employees, the tripwire that Republican Tree Party insurgents warn will put millions of fired employees immediately in a breadline. The overwhelming majority of small business owners are not required to participate in AHCA. I believe the critics need to quit beating this horse and fix the program. It could be worse.
Add to this mélangé a severe case of Computerus Geekitis, a mutation of the Black Plague of the Middle Ages. My computer-wise grandchildren know that long and severe testing of new programs is required. I'm sorry, but the buck for this stops at the presidential desk.
The writer is experiencing a bit of déjà vu of what occurred incidental to the introduction of Social Security in the 1930s, billed than as an automatic New Deal savings plan for everyone. Republicans and others termed Roosevelt demonic and worse, a dedicated Socialist-Marxist, bent on employing every evil scheme possible in order to destroy America, even as they took their first checks to the bank.
We're going to tread water until high officials in the Department of Health and Mental Acuity have endured a deserved grilling before Congress before saying more.
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