Well….after reading a poll that showed that 60% of people 65 and older are planning to vote for repubs in three weeks, the only thing I have to say is: are you stupid? What the hell is wrong with you people? Look, I know that most of us depend on Social Security to pay our bills and to stay alive, so why the hell are you voting for people who are going to take that away along with your Medicare? It makes no damn sense that this threat from the repubs that have been talking about doing for months is not even in the top ten things that people are concerned about according to this same poll…old folks are more concerned about inflation and gas prices than losing their SS that they paid for their whole lives…when the repubs take that away, you won’t have to worry about gas prices since you won’t be able to afford any of it…you will all be starving to death but I guess that is less important to you than Joe Biden…something, something socialism. I guess I’ll be going back to work at 70 and be working until I die….thank the repubs for that you old morons…geez…
Tag Archives: Medicare
The anti vaxxers could cost me 5 grand…
Well….when I was on the bike this morning, a thought hit me that really, really pissed me off…with the anti vaxxers getting sick and spreading delta everywhere, these assholes could cost me 5 grand if I get sick and have to go to the hospital…see, even with my Medicare advantage plan, I am on the hook for 5 grand of co-pays if I end up in the hospital and that is pretty damn personal for me…and for the retirees who are still on regular Medicare, the plan only pays 80% of the bill and the patient is on the hook for the rest…and you know that weeks in the hospital with constant care is not going to be cheap…it could run up to half a million bucks and that would leave the patient with a bill of 100K….and I don’t know of many retirees who could foot that bill with leaving them completely broke…so here’s another reason to hate these selfish assholes who are solely responsible for the trouble this country is in…and who are responsible for me and many others masking up again when we did everything right by getting vaccinated to help our country…I have had enough and have no sympathy for those who chose to not get vaccinated and who are killing our healthcare workers…shame on them….geez…
A little surpise…
Well…as I sit here contemplating if I should go out on the bike since the rain has stopped, a little surprise in the infrastructure bill that is getting ready to get passed by reconcilliation, which will bypass the filibuster, made me smile a bit…in that 3.5 trillion dollar bill, the dems have closed one of the biggest holes in medicare…that it doesn’t cover dental, vision, or hearing problems and all of us who have medicare have to pay for all of that out of pocket…even medicare advantage like I have only covers tiny amounts of those…no real dental work…maybe one cleaning a year…but that’s about it for dental….but this bill will cover everything including hearing aids, glasses and all dental care…for me, that is really welcome since I have been putting off the thousands of dollars in dental work I need to be able to eat ice cream again and fix the loose molar I have on my right side….so, I guess I can suffer a few more months if it will save me a couple of thousand dollars…it probably wouldn’t take effect until the next sign up period that ends Jan 1 of next year….I’ll keep my fingers crossed…
This is just damn wrong…
Well…not sure if you read about this but when I did, it spurred a huge outpouing of outrage in me…just last week…and the week before that, and the week before that, and almost every damn week, we see a story about an elderly couple who died by murder suicide because they could no longer afford to keep themselves alive due to the cost of their healthcare…and most of these people have long term health problems that are hard enough to deal with…but, on top of that, they fall into despair as the bills and copays pile up with no end in sight and no way out of the trap for them. As an older person who is now on Medicare, I can understand that…for just routine things like a colonoscopy and some dermatology problems, it cost me almost 3K out of pocket last year as the fees and copays nickle and dimed me and I’m healthy…I can understand how someone with real health problems could be overwhelmed when the bills never stop coming in for treatments that are keeping them alive…so, many of my cohort are taking the only way out for them by ending their lives and there is something just damn wrong with that in one of the richest countries in the world where people like them and me contributed to society our entire lives…and still are. We need to fix Medicare so that, once you pay your monthly payments, any and all treatment is paid in full with no out of pocket, copays or other bullshit…and, before you say “how do we pay for that?” just look at the two trillion dollars that the repubs gave away to the rich and corporations…just a tenth of that would fully fund Medicare so no senior ever goes broke or kills themselves from despair ever again…
First problem with Medicare…
Well…I probably should have anticipated that there would be problems with Medicare but I didn’t think they would start so soon….just today, I got a notice from Medicare that they were not going to cover my “welcome to Medicare” appointment with my new doctor and that I was on the hook for 318 dollars…then the fun started…called Medicare and they said that it was just a coding error and to talk to the billing department of Spectrum to get it fixed…but, they were less than no help saying that because my doctor took my blood pressure and then talked to me about it, the appointment was not covered…well…that put me off on a rant that I am not proud of…I mean, why don’t they tell you that one sentence from your doctor is going to cost you 318 bucks? If you’ve been here before, you know me and that just wasn’t going to stand without me doing something about it…so, of course I couldn’t get through to the doctor’s office on the phone, and the only course of action was to get in the car and drive the 2 miles to the office and talk to them in person…well…I just happened to get a woman at the desk that knows what is going on and she thinks she can fix it…at least she is going to try and get the bill re-submitted and paid…and that was a pretty big surprise…but a good one and now I’m just going to wait and see…
“Socialized medicine”
Well…with all of the repub bleating about “socialized medicine” and that it is the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone, I just wanted to comment a little on that and the difference that it has made in my life. For the past 16 years, I have not been able to afford health insurance of any kind…with the low end cost of almost 1200 dollars a month that no one could afford when no one will hire someone over 50 years old….with that, it was just a crap shoot to put off all of the care that I should have been doing…the check ups and the attention to problems that can happen as you get older but there was barely enough money to eat, let alone spend the thousands that check ups cost. After I turned 65 and Medicare was made available to me at 134 dollars a month, I was finally able to find out where I stand with my health…with covered check ups and referrals that I am still taking advantage of…I was finally able to see a dermatologist for the sore on my neck that has been there since May and found out it is probably skin cancer…and it is going to be treated this week as the pre-cancerous lesions were during the first appointment…over a dozen of them on my face and scalp…and, here’s the kicker, Medicare covered them without any co-pays or out of pocket expenses…as they will for the colonoscopy that I have scheduled for next month…and as they did for my initial check up that found that my cholesterol and BP were a little high and helped guide me to lifestyle changes to lower my risk of problems down the road. Now, who but a repub could argue that Medicare for all is a bad thing, that taking care of everyone in this country and getting rid of the stress of uncertainty is a bad thing? I know in my case that being able to see a doctor for the first time in 16 years has taken huge amounts of stress out of my life…why shouldn’t we do that for everyone? Ask a repub the next time you talk to one….
A few bitches…
Well…no pool today with the bar being closed for Labor Day so I thought I’d just come here for a few bitches…so here goes….you know, I waited over 15 years to be able to get health insurance again…that I could afford…and I thought I’d paid my entire working life for Medicare and didn’t expect the expenses that still come even after paying in for forty years…I mean the basic cost is 134 bucks a month but that is without a supplement policy that would cost me another 100 dollars a month that I can’t afford, or if I had to take part D for prescriptions that would be another 100 a month…so how do people who need this stuff afford the 334 dollars a month on a fixed income? And that doesn’t even cover the co pays which will be 184 dollars for my checkup tomorrow….and that is not even addressing the 20% of any hospital bill that I will have to pay for if I ever end up there…which could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for my end of it….folks, this is why we need to vote for the dems this fall…at least they have promised to increase the coverage so we should be protected from going broke in retirement…can you say that about the repubs? Nope….
Trillion dollar deficits…
Well…who would have thought that cutting taxes for the rich and corporations and increasing spending would lead to trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see? Just every frickin economist that is not a right wing shill. With the CBO report that is coming out later today (and that was previewed over the weekend), deficits for the federal government are projected to be at least a trillion dollars a year…but the report states that this is the most optimistic reading, that the deficits could be twice that and will continue for at least the next ten years if nothing changes. Do you remember when the biggest threat to the economy were the deficits during the Obama years? Yep, just another bit of hypocrisy from the repubs and shows you it was never really about the deficits then…it was about trying to hurt Obama and trying to keep him from being successful. One other thing that you need to remember, that SS and Medicare have nothing to do with these exploding deficits…they are completely separate accounts and SS and Medicare have been paid for by you and me…remember that whenever the repubs say that these programs are “in crisis”….they are not and won’t be for at least 30 years…and that can be fixed with just one change…by making all income subject to SS taxes….and that’s what we’ll do when we take back the house and senate…
It’s gonna be a bloodbath…
Well…just when I thought the repubs couldn’t go any lower in their zeal to give the country away to the rich and corporations…today we had little Marco Rubio just flat come out and admit that the main thing that the repubs want to accomplish with this tax bill is to destroy Social Security and Medicare…by driving the deficits through the roof by cutting taxes, they have an excuse to gut all of what is left of the safety net….and I predict that if they do pass this bill, there will be a bloodbath that will destroy the repubs in 2018…especially since they are attacking one of the only groups that staunchly support them…old, white retirees….what is going to happen when next year they cut 25 billion from Medicare and then tell these same retirees that their cancer treatment is no longer going to be paid for. So, who are the “death panels” in this country? It is the repubs that will be killing people by cutting the Medicare and SS that retirees like me have paid for our entire lives…and now the repubs say “nevermind” we’ll keep the money you paid in and give it to the rich in the form of tax cuts…this is what you voted for you stupid repub voters…impeach,,,
Toxic propaganda…
Well….have been trying to not think about politics for the past few weeks and with some success…but, this morning, a thought came into my head that I wanted to write about so here we go…..after the advent of modern mass media, there have been quite a few instances where the media has been used to spread lies to control the populations of many nations….I’m only going to talk about three today to try to make my point….during WWII, the entire media of Japan was used to make the allies into monsters….monsters that would murder all Japanese and eat their babies….and to such good effect that, while the war was winding down and we were invading Okinawa, tens of thousands of men, women, and children committed suicide rather than let themselves be captured by the “monsters”. In the Soviet Union from the 40′s to the 90′s, the propaganda machine there kept the people in a constant state of fear of the US invading…allowing the government of dictators to keep the people poor while spending most of their GDP on themselves and the military. And now, here in the US, the Fox news propaganda machine again has tricked people into voting against their own self interest….they elected Trump but never once reported on what the repubs were going to do to the old, white people who voted for them….SS and Medicare will be gone in the next few years and all of these people who depend on it…and who overwhelmingly voted for the repubs will be screwed..but the propaganda was so effective they just don’t care….and half of the 30 million people who will lose their healthcare gained under the ACA who voted for the repubs just didn’t care either….or didn’t believe what the repubs are going to do since they have been brainwashed by Fox to only believe Fox…just like in Japan and Russia….and are now going over the cliff….geez…