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…
Tag Archives: suicide
Why not just give people the money?
Well…you’ve heard me talk about the stupidity of states bidding for manufacturing plants with tax breaks that cost more than the state will ever get back…now there is another one that was just announced…that Foxconn, the Chinese electronics manufacturer has just announced they are going to build a plant in Wisconsin and trump and walker are crowing that it is repub policies that got the plant to locate in Wisconsin. Yeah…I’d like to differ with that…Wisconsin is on the hook for over a billion dollars to bribe Foxconn to locate there…and as I’ve said many times before, why not just give people the money? With that tax break, each job is going to cost Wisconsin taxpayers from a half to a million dollars each…yep, you heard it right…walker and his cronies just paid Foxconn almost a million dollars each for each job…I wonder how many small businesses that are owned by Americans could have been helped by that billion dollars? You also have to look at Foxconn as a company…they are widely reviled as the worst company in China and even have anti-suicide clauses in the contracts of their executives…yep, you heard that right…the conditions at Foxconn’s Chinese factories are so bad that they have to give bonuses to keep people from killing themselves and have installed suicide nets at their factories to catch the workers that jump off the roof trying to kill themselves to escape the horrendous conditions there. Okay, now I get why the repubs just love Foxconn…they hate workers just as much as the Chinese do and find them to be disposable….can the repubs get any worse? Impeach….
Suicide birds….
Well…I have been trying to remember to do a trail weirdness one every week but my memory has not been doing it’s job lately…today there was some weirdness that I really want to report before I forget it, though, so here goes…as the title says today was suicide bird day on the trail…with all kinds of birds just darting out in front of me all along the trail…and not just one type of bird, either…there were blue jays, sparrows, goldfinches, and one robin who cut out of the trees, turned right down the trail and flew just in front of my bike for at least 20 feet…close enough that I could have reached out and caught it if I was just a little faster….not behavior that I have seen in a while…or maybe ever….that, along with the female red-tailed hawk who sat about 6 feet away from me while I had a water break the other day…birds are going crazy and I am not sure why….