I am a card-carrying member of "the poor" (or at least I was till a few days ago). They've apparently revoked my card. I had a Medicaid card which I used three times last year because I couldn't find a doctor who would take me without either that or insurance. In February and March, I got a contract job which paid me $1400 over a three week period. My Medicaid was canceled because I made too much money that month (my wife is on full disability too - $700 out of which they take a goodly chunk for Medicare).
The Washington State Healthcare Exchange informs me that, now that I've been on Medicaid, they have my medical records (and by an interesting coincidence, so does the IRS). But never fear. The WSHE tells me I can now get an affordable health care plan through the exchange for a mere $1,154 per MONTH - a good $500 more than I made in May. I can, they assure me, use an earned income tax credit they are sure that I will get from the IRS as a partial payment for the insurance.
Oh, joy! I may, if the IRS cooperates, be able to get a health plan for only $200 more than I make (not including the deductibles I'll have to pay, if I actually use it). As a 61 year-old type II Diabetic with high blood pressure and sleep apnea, I can't just go pay a doctor to prescribe my meds. I can't buy a CPAP mask to replace my old one that's beginning to spring leaks unless I have a doctor's okay and I can't get that without health insurance and if I buy health insurance I can't afford to buy the mask anyway....................or food or keep the lights on or the Internet which is my lifeline because the little I make is all done online - the last free market on the planet. That probably won't last for long now that the FCC has declared the Internet a public utility, but I should be dead before that happens anyway (see scenario below).
The War on Poverty isn't working anyway (see the chart above). We're not shrinking the number of poor people. We're maintaining it at a more or less constant level, unless there is an election coming and then, somehow, there are suddenly more of us and to my horror, I found myself one of them.
I did not get to be a member of the poor on purpose. It sneaked up behind me and grabbed me. I am the principle caregiver for my wife who is disabled and I can't safely leave her alone while I hike 3 miles to and from the nearest bus stop to ride for another hour on the bus to get to a job somewhere that I can't even find and gave up trying to find a long time ago. I can't leave home for 12 to 13 hours a day and leave my wife alone.
I am one of the millions of uncounted "unemployed" workers. To survive, I'm working off the grid for myself. Like other uncounted workers, I am no longer even trying to find regular "countable" employment anymore and therefore I am no longer being counted by the Obama administration Labor Department; a fact which accounts for the falling unemployment rates.
So much for "Obama is for the poor." I is one and he ain't helpin' me a bit.
If you are a card-carrying member of the poor, it is a full time job, just filling out the paperwork and being careful not to make too much money so you don't inadvertently knock yourself off the poor list and lose your benefits. I'd burn my card, but it won't do any good. The IRS has a record of it and they never forget anything. It is my contention that the so-called war on poverty is not about curing poverty. It's about maintaining the poor as a reliable voting block for Democrat Party. Nothing cures progressive socialism like making money on your own hook. Of course, progressive socialism contains within it, some rather dark tenets.
They say Obamacare doesn't have death panels, though it has been suggested that the end-of-life planning element of the Obamacare scheme is precisely that. Differences of opinion notwithstanding, whatever they have seems to be a quite effective way to kill off the aged and infirm. Take me, for instance. In my current Obamacare predicament, I can't afford health care insurance. It's astronomically high now, probably because its mandatory now that you have health insurance. It is also FREAKING MANDATORY! It is, therefore, better for me to just not go to the doctor at all and pay for the meds that I can afford, at least until the prescriptions run out. Of course, the IRS is going to fine me for having no health insurance, but if all works out, I'll be dead by then.
If I stop using health insurance at all, I won't spend more than I make. Then, I can go ahead and die from my various diseases at least at a slightly slower pace than I would if I paid everything I make for health insurance and die more quickly from starvation and homelessness, which would be the case if all of my money and then some is going into health insurance.
By dying more quickly, I will make a place for the young and far more useful members of the proletariat, who are, generally, a lot less trouble to the dear leaders than useless people like me. That was an idea favored by George Bernard Shaw, an early adopter of progressivism. His favorite method of dealing with useless people was a "humane gas" - something to put you down once you were of no further use to society. He, in fact, suggested that you have to report to and justify your continued existence every 5 to 7 years to a panel of community leaders (see the video in the link above if you don't believe me). If you weren't producing more than you were using, you'd get the gas. Sounds like a death panel to me, but who am I to have an opinion on the matter when my betters have it all worked out they tell me.
They should probably take away any guns I have at this point. While I don't actually have any guns because of the high risk of suicide among members of my household, if I did have guns, I'd probably be on the NSA's list of potential domestic terrorists. After all, I do write a lot of stuff critical of the government and you know how easy it is for people who criticize the government to whip up a fertilizer bomb and become terrorists.
I don't have a gun, though I do have a sword. I plan to go down swinging. I'm not doing the gas thing, however humane they make it.
(c) 2015 by Tom King
*Warning: Read this at your own risk. This post contains at least 25 words which act as flags to trigger NSA scrutiny. Visiting this site may bring you to the attention of the FBI, NSA, CIA, Secret Service, NCIS, MI5, CSI, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the Illuminati, Freemasons, The Rothchild's and the French Foreign Legion.
No comments:
Post a Comment