The War on Poverty is a War on the Poor

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.

Who's Pulling the Trigger on Obamacare?

Obamacare rolls out!

One of my liberal friends says he feels sorry for his Republican friends because the party "...has been hijacked by the Tea Party and made to look ridiculous."  He says that the Republicans are holding a gun to the Democrats' heads and saying "Give me what I want or I'll pull the trigger." 

And, apparently, that's a bad thing to his progressive socialist way of thinking.

It looks to me like it's the Democrats holding the gun only they're saying, "Give me what I want. I've already pulled the trigger!"

The trouble is, that after the abysmal failure of the Obamacare rollout and the Gestapo tactics by government employees on orders from on high, the Democrats have alienated a lot of people:  

• People whose flights were needlessly canceled.
• KIA soldiers' families who had to get their death benefits from a foundation rather than the US military.
• People locked out of parks and fenced off from monuments that sit by public sidewalks.
• Private business people forced to shutter their businesses because the government says their lease is null and void government workers don't get a paycheck.
• Old people tossed out of their retirement homes because the rangers say it's unsafe to drive on a park road while the government is shut down even though it's being patrolled by more park rangers and cops than usual because they're afraid the old people mike sneak back to their homes.
• Everybody who actually tried to sign up for Obamacare and got the blue error screen of death!

 I think the Dems must have used one of those "Wiley Coyote" cartoon guns with the "U" shaped barrel that always blasts you in the face when you shoot it.

Just sayin'

Tom King 
© 2013

*The title of this article in no way advocates the shooting of any political figure whatsoever. It is an ancient metaphor drawn from the misty origins of television and film. If you are from the NSA, FBI or CIA, please note that I am basically harmless and don't own any weapons more dangerous than an Eversharp kitchen night.

A Tale of Two Bridges

Is Obamacare the Democrat version of "A Bridge Too Far"?

Bernard Law Montgomery

In the Fall of 1944, Allied Command finally gave Monty his opportunity for glory on the continent of Europe. Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery had proposed an ambitious plan to capture four bridges in the Netherlands as part of an attempt to sweep around German defenses into the Reich itself. In deference to Churchill and British sensibilities, Eisenhower and the Allied command accepted Monty's plan and his assurances that the troops under his command would sweep over the old men and young boys who were all that was left defending German positions in Holland. 

Montgomery was wrong.  Operation Market Garden, Monty's complex and intricately timed battle plan began to go wrong almost as soon as it was launched.  As do most battle plans, Market Garden did not survive contact with the enemy.  A lot of men were killed or captured and when the dust settled the key Arnhem Bridge remained in German hands. Cornelius Ryan memorialized the incident in his 1974 book "A Bridge Too Far" which was later made into a surprisingly accurate movie three years later.  It is well worth watch as a cautionary tale of what happens when a leader's ego is greater than his ability.

The President's big plan for social change was appropriately named "Obamacare", tying President Barak Obama's "Hope and Change" legacy to his signature piece of legislation.  If you're going to "fix" healthcare, it was thought, then why not do it BIG.  Some legislators had doubts, but as with Montgomery, nobody wanted to tell Obama his plan had some problems.  Instead they buried it in 2000 pages of regulatory details and pushed it through, House Speaker Pelosi proclaiming, "You'll have to pass it to find out what's in it."

Tuesday was the big Obamacare launch.  Like Operation Market Garden, Obamacare did not do well when it came into contact with the ene......I mean, the American citizens who were supposed to rise up and shout for joy when they found out, "....what's in it."

Obamacare's Facebook page erupted in negativity following it's first bug-filled days of bringing healthcare to the ignorant masses.  Operated by Organizing for Action, a pro-Obama group supported by deep-pocketed members including billionaire investor George Soros and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, Obamacare's Facebook page has a big banner that proclaims "Signed, Sealed and Delivering." As millions of Americans have discovered to their financial discomfort this week, Obamacare is delivering all right, but not anything like it promised to. 

Is Obamacare the president's "Progressive Socialist Program Too Far"?

Perhaps the Republican stand is not ill-advised after all - perhaps something on the order of Concord Bridge.  Hopefully it's nothing like Arnhem.  First the Germans were the bad guys and unfortunately, for our analogy, Montgomery still managed to fall back, recover and roll over them German defenders.  The Reich fell anyway, despite Monty's partial defeat.  That was a good thing for democracy, but I'm pretty sure if the Democrats manage to salvage this "government program too far", democracy is likely to lose big this time around.

© 2013 by Tom King

Top Five Reasons Obamacare Won't Save Us From Big Pharma

"It'll save money. Yeah, lot's of money. It'll save, uh
TRILLIONS of dollars. Yeah, that's the ticket!"

Obamacare is supposed to save us from evil corporate medical corporations, Big Insurance and Big Pharma!  Here's why it won't.

1. The Locus of Evil:  If big medical, big insurance and big pharmaceuticals are all evil, why is big government miraculously not evil.
2. Depantsing the Consumer:  In one stroke Obamacare turns the consumer from a customer into a commodity. By removing free market forces the government takes away the only tool consumers have to control prices (voting with their feet) and replaces free markets with top down price controls.  Historically that never works. Nixon tried it and nearly killed the economy. Carter tried it and did!
3. Empowering the Big Guys:  It is far easier to bribe government officials than it is to bribe 300 million consumers.  Now that we are being forced by the government to buy a product (medical insurance), the giant corporations that are supposed to be so evil don't have to do marketing studies or offer deals to attract customers.  They merely have to offer trips to Tahiti and all expense paid conferences in Las Vegas to the right government officials to get the price protections they want.
4. DeCapitalizing Healthcare:  By killing free market forces altogether, medical providers no longer have to make their customers happy.  Their customers have to make the medical providers and their government handlers happy in order to get services.  This was explained to me once by a public transit official as the difference between private and public transportation. The same principle applies to "public" healthcare.
5. A Falling Tide Sinks All Boats:  The idea that forcing everyone to pay for medical "insurance" will cover anecdotal problems like pre-existing conditions and unusual medical problems is simplistic and wrong.  Forcing everyone into the insurance market merely covers the cost of all that government supervision that will be added on to the cost of medical care.  The continued problem of unusual and expensive medical conditions will merely force reductions in the quality of care of all consumers.  Socialism's great strength is in its ability to share misery equally among everyone (except of course for the leaders who get a better deal because they are smarter and wiser and we couldn't get along without them or at least that's their story and they're sticking to it.

And like this post which promises ten reasons in the link, but delivers half what it promised, Obamacare is pretty well guaranteed to deliver far less than it promises too.

© 2013 by Tom King

How Did Healthcare Get Into this Mess?

It's time to unload the paperwork burden from doctors

Okay, I know if I say Obamacare is a bad idea, my friends on the left are going to jump me and say I don't understand what it's like to be without healthcare and I hate the poor and want children to die.

First, I'm the poster child for the person without healthcare.  I have to get mine through the few doctors who will even accept someone without health insurance.  I have to pay through the nose so they can afford the two clerks and the confiscatory malpractice insurance and they can't tell their insurance guy they even treated someone like me or they could lose their malpractice insurance. Someone like me who is poor is expected to be lawsuit happy.  I don't sue docs for honest mistakes, but they don't know that, so I pay the price for the greed of others.  I should be singing and dancing over the coming of Obamacare.  I'm not!

How in the world did we get into this mess?  Once upon a time you could go down to the doc, pay for what you needed and move along.  Sometimes doctors took pity on patients who were in financial trouble and gave them free treatment to tide them over.  An OB/GYN once saved my wife's life by donating his services to do a surgery that removed a volleyball sized tumor when we were temporarily without health insurance.  He can no longer do that. It's against the law because it's seen as a discriminatory practice for the doctor to choose to not charge some needy patients and charge others patients who can pay. Apparently only the government is allowed to give things away these days.

That's unfortunate because it prevents physicians from doing what they studied all those years to do - help sick people.  The problem with health care started in two areas. 

•  First, as a wealthy nation we were able to treat ourselves with all sorts of evil delights from fried Twinkies to five nights a week fast food. It's little wonder our lifespans didn't climb as fast as we thought it should, even though it's nearly doubled over just the past century. 
• The second problem was that we expected medical science's technological miracles to keep up the pace they started out at with wonder drugs, penicillin and amazing new surgeries. If they had no answers, we didn't believe them. If they tried something and failed, we assumed they were being malicious.

What happened next was we got mad if the doctors couldn't cure us of everything simply because we expected them too. After all the media made the new medicine men seem like magicians. If they failed us, we sought a way to punish them. A burgeoning crowd of newly minted lawyers looking for work obliged. Juries decided to give lottery level winnings to people who sue hospitals and the race was on. With more lawyers than a society could afford, they started going into politics until the legislatures and congress were so full of lawyers, you couldn't throw a lobbyist without hitting one.

Lawyers passed laws or refused to pass laws in order to protect their quite lucrative business of suing doctors and hospitals. To protect themselves, everyone in the medical business got insured and, as everyone knows, the medical systems circled the wagons and got themselves another bunch of lawyers. Then the government got into it and instead of making things better added a lot of paperwork and whole new federal agencies stuffed with bureaucrats, lawyers and poli-sci majors.

With all these lawyers and bureaucrats to feed, guess who paid at the pump for their fodder?

That's right. You and me. So tell me how adding more government and more trained lawyers and politicians to this mess is going to make it LESS expensive. The meme is that evil insurance companies shouldn't make evil profits off sick people. One guy even told me NOBODY should make profits off of sick people.

And why not? Lawyers do. Doctors do. Hospitals do. Even the government does - how else do you think they'd be able to pay all those new Obamacare bureaucrats. It would be a lot cheaper if healthcare was between you and your doctor, but that ain't happening anymore. It hasn't happened since the days of house calls and paying for a doctor's visit with live chickens. Too many people have stuck a hose into the medical industry and are siphoning off consumer dollars.  Like pirates driving up the cost of shipping, these medical industry parasites drive up the cost of healthcare year after year.

For every doctor and nurse actually practicing medicine, there are 50 clerks, administrators, managers, lawyers, politicians, IRS agents, bureaucrats and hangers-on taking a piece out of the sick person's wallet. They are all making a "profit".  Don't believe it?  Ask any of them if they are working as volunteers?  The bureaucrats know the cash cow is nearly drained, that's why they have gone to the government for funding.  Like one liberal told me once, if a government program runs out of money, they just go get more printed. That's why the IRS is being given the power to reach into your bank account under Obamacare and withdraw money without your permission to pay for your healthcare. Where else did you think all that money was coming from for the hundreds of thousands of new Obamacare bureaucrats?

They tell me that Conservative's don't have a plan to fix healthcare.  We actually do.  The plan is to QUIT TRYING TO FIX HEALTHCARE!  Butt out. Get the government out of the healthcare business as much as you can. Make lawsuits less lucrative. Restore the ability of doctors to do pro bono work and to manage their own practices without interference.  How's that not a plan?

Government is not the solution to every problem, especially when it comes to healthcare. I should be able to go down to my doc's, pay 30 or 40 bucks directly to him and get my blood pressure meds re-upped. After all, I can go down to that evil Wal-Mart and buy three month's worth of my prescriptions for ten bucks apiece. But nooooooo. My doc has to charge me $125, do a lot of unnecessary tests to protect himself in case I decide to sue him and pay two extra clerks to do the paperwork on my "case". The tests themselves can cost me another $250. I can't afford that. I have a friend who's a doc who absolutely retired in sheer frustration at having to charge his patients so much money when he knows he could do the same job for a third the cost or less.

And the leftists who love Obamacare, all seem to want to shut down my WalMart to boot. That's stupid! Wally World's $4 generic prescription drug program has done more to help poor people like me with their prescriptions than the federal government ever did‼

If the feds would stop meddling and let docs go independent and make their own decisions about how to care for their patients, you'd see a huge change. It'll be painful for folks to have to start taking responsibility for their own healthcare, but it just may inspire them to get off their duffs and do a little roadwork or eat a vegetable once in a while. There's nothing for bringing a little frugality to healthcare like having to pay for things out of your own pocket.  Best way in the world for stopping waste and fraud - to let consumers make their own decisions about which doc and which healthcare system they want to patronize.

Sheesh!
 

© 2013 by Tom King

You're Money is No Good Here, Pardner!

Can you say "Mark of the Beast"?

 And so it begins.

I got a notice in the mail today.  My wife's HMO will no longer accept cash in payment for services.  Apparently it's a money-saving measure designed to reduce the insurance provider's costs.  When they doubled her premium in January, I called the customer service lady and asked about the higher bill.  She told me flatly that they had raised her rate.

"Is this some of that ObamaCare savings we've been hearing about?" I asked.  I heard a sound like someone dropping their coffee cup on the other end.

"Why no," she sputtered amidst the noisy shuffling of damp paperwork on the other end of the phone. "You see," she explained, "Your wife did use the insurance last year."

"Uh, huh," I shrugged.  You can't argue with logic like that.

Now her HMO will no longer take cash when you pay your copay at the doctor's office, lab or pharmacy.  They say it's in order to save themselves money.  You may only use a credit card, bank debit card or write a check which will be instantly verified electronically and debited from your account.  Of course that makes it difficult for anyone without a bank account.  I had that happen once when a client stiffed me for $1800 at a time I had no cash reserve.  It took me three months to find another project and pay back every cent that I was overdrawn at the bank.  The bank canceled my account and blackballed me so I couldn't get another bank account for the next 2 years and had to leave the state to do so.

"Ah, but never fear," says the HMO.  "We've thought of that."  All you have to do is go down to the Wal-Mart and buy one of those bill-pay debit cards and bring it with you to pay your bill. 

So let me get this straight. I have to take an extra trip to Wal-Mart, pay for a debit card that will necessarily be for more than my worst guess for how much my doctor bill will be and pay a fee for buying the card in order to pay my bill and save THEM money.

Even more interesting is an experiment Wal-Mart is conducting where you get these special bags and an electronic shopping card which you pay for with your debit card or you can use your debit card straight up and then you shop around, fill your basked and then skip the checkout. This machine up front scans your basket, automatically debits your card or bank account and hands you a receipt as you roll out the front door. You can refill the card next time, no cash needed. I don't know how it handles produce because I haven't tried the system yet.  Truth is, I'm a bit nervous about it.


I've watched too many episodes of NCIS. If Abby Scuito wanted to find a lacto-ovo vegetarian in the Puyallup area who has high blood pressure, wears contacts and spends a lot of money on antacids, she could hack into Wal-Mart's sales records and find my bank account number, address and be able to tell Gibbs I have dandruff and a medium-sized dog.

The technology already exists to implant an RFID chip into you with links to your complete medical record, bank account record and probably your criminal history which would be a handy tool for identifying potential shoplifters and enemies of the state. They've talked about planting it in two basic places - your hand and your head.  Someone suggested some place inconspicuous like your but, but some wag pointed out that you would probably have to call a CSM and pull down your pants in the Wal-Mart checkout line because the sensors had gotten dirty and weren't working right.

I know what they are planning. I worked with a tiger rescue group for a while.  We were talking about implanting such chips in tigers to track them anywhere by GPS and satellite tracking and to identify them, their birthdate, birthplace, medical history and DNA. Once we got the chips into wild tigers, we'd know exactly where they were at all times, where and with whom in the jungle they were having intimate relations. If you can do it with tigers, how long will it be before we get a chip at birth the way we used to be circumcised at birth (and I prefer the idea of circumcision).

I wonder if a tiger with a chip ate a man with a chip, how confusing would that be at the Wal-Mart checkout and would the tiger have to pay taxes?

Okay, I admit it.  I've read Revelation and it freaks me out a little.


I'm just saying.

Tom King:  ID# 41923-484tc89333-00y33

Told You He Was Gonna Tax You!

by Tom King (c) 2012

Today's Supreme Court Ruling upholding Obamacare feels like a loss for conservatives.  Actually, Judge Roberts may have done us a favor. He voted with the libs because of one thing that conservatives have been harping on since the so-called "Affordable Healthcare Act" was passed.

Obamacare is a TAX.

It is a tax on the middle class. It is a tax on the lower class. If you can't afford health insurance, you'll just have to pay 1% of your income to the IRS. 

Obamacare, therefore, is a tax on the very poorest among us and the middle class.

Don't expect the Democrats to rush to repeal Obamacare simply because it breaks a campaign promise. They talk a lot about unfare taxation of the poor, but apparently it won't matter.  Of course, since most of the poorest don't pay taxes it probably won't matter.  They'll just get a smaller tax "refund" (which might be considered a tax, mightn't it?).  The middle class will certainly get nailed by this tax by being forced to buy health insurance.  If they choose not to, they'll pay a tax to cover part of the administrative costs of Obamacare and what good with that do for healthcare in America.  If the middle class all buy health insurance, they won't pay the 1% tax and then who will pay the Obamacare admin costs?

Watch for new taxes in other places or increased healthcare costs to cover the massive government bureaucracy that must arise to make Obamacare happen.

Meanwhile the rich, who have already paid protection money to the Democrats in the form of campaign contributions, will continue to pay for their healthcare out of pocket change and their lives will be affected not at all.

It's too bad the government is getting into healthcare.  The costs can be expected to skyrocket just like they did for college tuition when the feds got into the business of paying for that.

Too bad too.  Medicine had actually begun to respond to surging healthcare costs to address some of the gaps in the system through entrepeneurial and philanthropic means - quite without the help of government, thank you very much. There is actually a developing segment of medicine that has begun offering lower priced out-of-pocket healthcare for people like me who can't afford $300 a month for health insurance. These low cost clinics are probably doomed to be closed, because most of them achieve their low cost by NOT taking health insurance or medicare reimbursement.

I paid $200 total for my healthcare last year including meds. I'll pay less this year because I was a new patient last year and had to pay for all the new patient startup costs. The place I went to was a PA clinic. They gave me a checkup and re-prescribed my blood pressure meds.  I got the Wal-Mart generic meds (my doc has their list) and I only paid $10 for a three month supply.   

I can afford that.  Under the Obamacare Tax, I'd have had to pay an additional $1,300 for the same care, would still have paid pretty much the same but it would have been called a "copay" and for fun, I would have had to file a bunch of paperwork to boot.

Oh, how liberals love their paperwork.

Okay, gang, here's your mantra:   "Obamacare is a tax on the middle class."

Keep repeating that till November!*

Tom

*My friend Atom Ant also pointed out this little poison pill for the Democrats lurking in this Supreme Court Decision.  "By calling it a tax it now only takes 51 Senate votes to remove the law... Roberts is a genius! If it was not a tax it would require reconciliation... 60 votes."

In other words it only takes the Republicans winning a one vote majority in November to have enough to repeal this turkey.  Don't forget to vote!