Here We Go Again

Posted on 22/09/2017 by Grumpa Joe

The debate about repealing the UN-affordable Care Act has rekindled once again. Democrats are determined to keep the crap they invented going for as long as they can. Their hope is to stall the ACA act into bankruptcy, and to then foster a bill to push money into its entrails to keep it alive. In the meantime, the millions of people who have not been able to afford it go without any health care at all. Those who can buy it will have crappy care, and go bankrupt because they won’t be able to afford it either.

Years ago while traveling in Canada I learned that the Canadian government has universal health care for all the provinces. In their wisdom they invented a scheme which paid each province the same amount of money. It was up to the province to spend it however they wished on meeting the needs of their constituents health needs. Canadians were happy. I don’t know if that is still the case, but that is what it was back in the eighties or nineties when I traveled there.

The company I worked for decided how much they could afford to spend on health care without going broke and subsidized our company policy to that tune. If we demanded a stronger policy, the dollar difference came out of our paychecks. We grumbled a bit about having to pay more, but overall we were happy with the situation. I was lucky, I had a job, but there were still too many people who didn’t have insurance at all. Yet, none of them with a serious illness was ever refused by a hospital because they didn’t have insurance. They wound up paying the bill on an installment plan.

Currently, the Democrats are fighting against a plan similar to the one I described Canada to have. To me, granting the same amount of money to each state to take care of us makes total sense. Each state has the freedom to decide what kind of system it will have to care for us. If Illinois, a totally blue state wants to venture its bankrupt ass into a single payer system let them have at it. If Indiana wants to come up with something more cost-effective let them invent it. In either case any over-cost will be the burden on the residents living in the state.

A popular argument against the latest system proposed is that there is no provision to include insurance for customers who have a pre-existing condition. This is a very popular feature of Obama Care. It is also one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act evolved into the UN-affordable Care Act. My opinion on this matter is an argument addressed to insurance companies. Isn’t being born a pre-existing condition? When we are conceived we get a blueprint from our parents called DNA. As I understand it our DNA has within it all the reasons we get sick. Somewhere inside that helical ladder of the DNA molecule lies the nucleus for every genetic reason to get sick in a life time. After that we add into the mix the way we choose to live, eat, rest, etc. to make our health or unhealthiness more under our control. I have never heard a definition of what a pre-existing condition is. I think it means that if I apply for insurance and know I am a diabetic, that diabetes is not covered. What happens if I have diabetes and don’t know about it like too many people in the world have? Does the insurance lapse because it is discovered? Jimmy Kimmel’s argument about his son being born with a heart murmur keeps him from getting his son insured. If Jimmy was on a family plan doesn’t that include any new child born into his family? Of course if he wasn’t on the family plan and he had to purchase a separate insurance policy for the new-born I guess the kid is out of luck if Jimmy waited to buy it until he knew of his condition. It is my logical thinking that the difference between being insured, or not insured was the knowledge one has before the condition. What that leads me to is a proposal to insure your child as a fetus with a lifelong pre-condition policy. This policy would cover any pre-existing condition throughout one’s life from the instant of conception until death.

Well Grumpa Joe, how the hell am I going to do that? Does it mean I have to call my insurance agent from the bedroom, the back seat of my car, or the tent immediately after doing the deed? Of course not, you would call him upon learning of your success.

I am shocked that the insurance companies have not offered this kind of policy or policy-rider before. One can buy a life insurance policy at the time of birth, and I would say death can be defined as a pre-existing condition. We all know it is going to happen we just don’t know when. Isn’t the same true with diseases, viruses, or other conditions? Insurance companies argue that they will be taken advantage of by patients who are dying of some terrible disease, and will wait to buy insurance at the latest moment possible to cover their costs. Often they use the example of the man who crashes his uninsured car, and calls to buy insurance from the scene of the accident. I agree that scenario is not fair to the insurer, but I could buy a new car, and buy insurance from the dealership and crash the car on the way home, and the insurance company would have to cover me. I could argue that the accident was a pre-existing condition that one had by virtue of driving on any road. Diseases are no different, and insurance companies are going to have to deal with the facts and offer products for us to cover those situations.

You may choose to buy my arguments and proposals or not, but I recommend we all push for a practical resolution to the health care problem, and not some utopian country-bankrupting system like Obama Care is intended to be. The Bill currently being proposed by Congress labeled Graham-Cassidy appears to be the most logical approach to something that will work for all of us. Call your Congressman ans Senator to vote for this bill. Imagine 50 states working independently of one another with insurance companies from all over the USA and possible from outside to brainstorm how to meet the needs of each state population. The power of that number of teams working to find solutions is unimaginable. Certainly, it will be stronger than a bunch of bureaucrats working in the walnut paneled rooms of Washington, D.C.

If I may quote Forrest Gump’s mother “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.” In this analogy our illnesses, accidents, conditions are all chocolates in the box and we have no pre-knowledge of which situations we will get in life. few of us dies of old age. As my mother used to counsel me “we all have to die from something.” Life is a pre-existing condition.

Filed under: Aging, family, health care | Tagged: ACA, Graham-Cassidy Act, Insurance, Obama Care | 2 Comments »

Stirring Up Trouble

Posted on 08/03/2017 by Grumpa Joe

This morning I did something I haven’t done in over two years, I ate breakfast at the countertop bar, and watched the morning news. Aside from remembering times past when Peg and I made this a daily ritual, memories of my work days stirred to life. How many times did I tell an engineer not to be feel distraught after presenting me with his proudly drafted report, and gave me a chance to critique it? My comment to them, it is a darn-sight easier to criticize something that already exists than it is to be the first one to draft the thing. What caused this recollection? The big flap about the new American Health Care Plan. So many of the people reading the drafts are being so critical of it being too much like Obama Care, Obama Care Light, etc. For Pete’s sake, it is about health care. For awhile I used a program called Grammarian, and another called Grammarly. One of them had a feature in it to check for plagiarism. I turned it on to check my work. After all, I didn’t want to add plagiarist to all the many ‘ists’ I have accumulated. I quickly came to the conclusion that I had to turn the dang thing off. Why? Because it cited nearly every phrase uttered by man since he invented speech as a plagiarism. I couldn’t use any of my favorite phrases because they were used by someone before in a masterwork. So, what are the chances that a new document about health care written on the heels of an old document on healthcare can be phrased completely different? Nada. I challenge the best grammarian, author, writer in the world to take on that challenge. I’ll give them a rotten apple as a reward if they succeed.

Of course the first draft of the new health care act will sound similar to the Affordable Care Act it is all about healthcare, doctors, procedures, drugs, etc. What I am afraid of is that the critics who wrote the ACA will never be happy until they see something that is like this, “Everyone in the world will have their health care paid for by the U.S. government with no questions asked.” To them I say, go jump into a very cold lake, and wake up. The working citizens of this country are not slaves to everyone else. Here is what I want to see in the new program:

Health care is not a God-given right, it is a benefit. If God had anything to do with it we would never get sick. God does give us free will, and free will dictates the choices we make. Go to any doctor and tell him you have a pimple on your ass and he will ask you if you smoke. Why? Because he knows that smoking has been connected to so many different outcomes that we can not imagine.
Everyone has a choice to buy health care insurance.
The choice is available anywhere in the country.
I get to select the plan I want. If I chose to buy one that covers a pre-existing condition(pre-existing conditions are much like plagiarism phrases as cited above) then I will pay for it. If I am seventy-five and chose a plan with out pregnancy coverage, I will pay for it. Buying cheap insurance is like visiting a casino to gamble. Except in a casino you gamble your money, in healthcare you gamble your life. Since gambling is such a popular activity in the USA this should be an easy concept to accept.
If an employer wishes to cover pre-existing conditions, and kids living at home until they are twenty-five let them be free to do so, but the employer will be in control of how much they will pay toward the plan.
Doctors will not be allowed to invade our privacy by asking me if I own a gun. A gun does not have a damned thing to do with my health care, or a doctor’s treatment decisions.
It will be the choice of the employer to offer a healthcare plan to its employees. If you are applying for a job because you need health care, and the employer doesn’t offer it, go work somewhere else, or buy insurance for yourself.
Kids who are no longer covered by their parent’s policy and are too smart to buy health care insurance, will be cared for at the retail rates of the provider, and offered a plan to pay the bill at the going rate of interest. Maybe they will get smart and buy a plan or to work to cover themselves.
People who have disabilities like Down Syndrome, Cp, MS, etc who will need lifetime care will be covered by a separate plan.
People who choose to continue addictions like smoking, drugs, alcohol will be charged more for care than the un-addicted. Remember it is all about Liberty and freedom of choce.
Each State will manage their health care systems using Federal Guidelines. If you don’t like what your state is doing with healthcare, move to another state. If no state offers what you are looking for then pay for what you want, or move to a country that does.
If the Federal Government chooses to pay for any of the care it will do so equally to all, regardless of their ability to pay.

What people in the USA don’t seem to grasp is that the countries in Europe who offer what appear to be superior plans are also countries where taxes are very high. Sweden and Denmark for example have a seventy-five percent tax on their happy citizens. Think about that folks, that means you keep a quarter out of every dollar you earn.

What ever happens in the course of the next few months we will be having a debate about healthcare. My guess is that whatever the first draft is that we are criticizing today will not even be close to what finally passes. What is different already is that the project is transparent. Unlike the Democrat twelve hundred page plan which appeared out of thin air (I’m sorry for who ever coined that phrase ‘pulled out of thin air’ for plagiarizing ) and the Congress had little to no time to read it much less argue about it. Remember “you have to vote for the plan to find out what is in it.” (Sorry, plagiarizing again)

We live in interesting times. (Sorry again, I just can’t seem to get out of the habit of using other people’s words.)

Filed under: Conservative, family, Government, health care | Tagged: American Healthcare Plan, health care, Insurance, Plagiarizing | Leave a comment »

He Said Two Things To Upset My Day

Posted on 30/04/2013 by Grumpa Joe

This morning promised to kick off a grand day. Peggy and I went to breakfast ready to fortify ourselves for a day of sightseeing. We planned to tour Arches National Park today. It is an amazing place. We walked into the breakfast room only to see King Obama holding a press conference. Ugh! My day was spoiled. Unfortunately, for me I overheard Obama defending his healthcare debacle. I guess I don’t know how good it is working because I am one of the skeptics. A reporter asked a question about the problems his administration has implementing the monster. Obama kept his cool and confidently proclaimed that only 10-15% of the people are having problems. I lost it. During the brainwashing period before the Senate changed the rules to require fewer vote to pass the bill, he and his shills kept telling us that this new system will cover the forty million uninsured residents of the USA. I know Obama’s people are smart because they voted for him twice, but neither he, nor his left leaning voters know their numbers. Ten to fifteen percent of the population is thirty to forty-five million people.

He said two things in this answer: 1.) We don’t know how well the system is really working, and 2.) ten to fifteen percent of people are not insured.

So, what does this mean?

1. It could mean that the system doesn’t work at all because the same forty million people are still uninsured.

2. It could mean that Obama Care works good for forty million who were not insured before, and it doesn’t work at all for forty million people who had insurance through their employer but now do not have it anymore.

Is this the way income re-distribution works Mr. President? Are you stealing from those who work to give to those who will never work in your utopian socialist society?

Filed under: Cartoons, Conservative, family, Government, health care | Tagged: Arches National Park, Barack Obama, Health insurance coverage in the United States, Insurance, Obama, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President, United States | Leave a comment »

Pay For Health Care? I’d Sooner Die.

Posted on 24/09/2012 by Grumpa Joe

Insurance (Photo credit: Christopher S. Penn)

The political argument about women’s health is backwards. Libs argue that Republicans will kill women by repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Yet, when real live doctors begin to read the bill to find how it will affect them the opposite is true. Most people who want the health care act are those who can’t afford insurance, or have a pre-existing condition to make them uninsurable.

I heard a commentator give an analogy last week which is quite accurate but defies human logic. Most of us have car insurance and house insurance. We pay for it. When it comes to health insurance, we want someone else to pay for it. Historically this has been an employer. How many times have you heard someone say they had a car accident, but did not report it to the insurance company because they didn’t want a premium increase? The same kind of logic reigns over homeowners insurance too. When it comes to health insurance we expect someone else to pay, and we use the heck out of it. Why? If we paid for health care insurance ourselves, maybe we wouldn’t be so sick.

Dr. Jill Vecchio speaks in the video about her analysis of the PPACA and the effect it will have on how she will have to treat patients. She makes valid arguments about the law. Watch it and discern for yourself if the Republicans are responsible for killing women, or will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act kill more?

Filed under: Conservative, Election, family, health care, politics | Tagged: Financial Services, health care, Health Insurance, Insurance, Mitt Romney, Obama, Obama Care, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican, United States | 1 Comment »