Tag Archives: America

MS AMERICA AND THE COMING ATTACK ON YOUR DISABILITY BENEFITS

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Newspaper article about disability

The positive effects about disability laws.

     If you haven’t heard yet, the government is saying that social security disability will run out of money by the end of 2016. There are a couple of things that have been discussed to deal with this problem. The first would be to blend social security disability straight into the social security trust fund which is sound financially, at least, for the near future. The second would be for Congress to make a one time cash infusion making it sound until another plan can be worked out. And the third, and the one that seems to be the most preferred by Congress right at the moment, is to just let it go bankrupt forcing a 19% cut in cash benefits across the board for every one on disability including veterans.

     And if that wasn’t bad enough, there are also many members of Congress who would like to dissolve the Medicare health care plan that retirees as well as people with disabilities depend on for their health insurance needs. And replace it with a voucher system where you would be required to go out and purchase your own health insurance on the open market. And I can almost assure you right now that whatever voucher they plan on giving you it certainly will not be enough to cover your health care coverage.

     I’m not sure how this would affect each of you personally? But for me a 19% cut in my cash benefits means that I will have to put my house up for sale next summer as I would no longer be able to afford both my health insurance premiums as well as the mortgage payment on my home.

     In America one in six people are considered to have a disability. And that makes us a very large and powerful voting block with a National election coming up in 2016. I worked all of my life before multiple sclerosis invaded my body and I have no intention of going down without a fight on this. And just as I have written this article I will also be writing letters and making phone calls to Senators as well as members of the House of Representatives letting them know that this is not acceptable.

     And that’s something; you should consider doing as well!

 

GUNS MEN AND VIOLENCE: A question that needs asking.

     What do Charleston, S.C, Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and the Navy Yard all have in common, along with all the other mass shootings over the last few years? A American Flag at Half Mastgun was used in each place to commit these heinous acts of terror. However, there is one more thing that each has in common, and it’s just as obvious, at least to me, these shootings were all committed by young to middle aged men, not a single woman among them. Which begs the question, why?

     Don’t get me wrong, I do feel that America’s gun laws are far too liberal, but it’s obvious that there are more issues than just our gun laws at play here. And putting the blame on mental health problems also falls willfully short of an explanation. Women have just as many mental health challenges as men do and they seem far better at controlling the urge to grab a weapon and act out on their uncontrolled rage.

     Is this the fault of society in general or is the American family dynamic so miscued that we are blind to what male children and young men are learning as they grow up, or would it be better to study how we raise are girls and young women to see if an answer to why they are less prone to violence when they reach adulthood?     

     Just where does the answer lie? And is it possible that if we find that answer might we also discover why rape and sexual violence are also so prevalent, not only in the United States, but also throughout the world?   

It’s certainly something to consider, in my opinion!       

MS and Single Payer Obamacare

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100_0420

Sunset in the Pacific Northwest

Many people have complained about Obamacare and how it adversely affected their current healthcare coverage. It’s unfortunate, in my opinion, the one thing that could have saved a great deal of grief and made the entire system cheaper and fairer for everyone was a single-payer program for all. And yes, I’ve heard about the people who fly to the US from Europe or come from Canada for their operations, but you have to remember that these are the richest, the top one percent, of people who can afford to pay cash for their procedures because they don’t want to wait for their procedure to be scheduled in the future. It’s not that our healthcare system is so much better, it’s because they just don’t feel that they should have to wait if it’s not an emergency procedure. A single-payer healthcare system is fair for everyone!

     SINGLE PAYER BEATS WASTE AND FRAUD

     Healthcare in America is a $2.6 trillion dollar a year industry. Of that, $750 billion is estimated to be spent on procedures, medicine, and equipment that was unnecessary to begin with and only done to avoid law suits or increase the bottom line of a greed based medical and insurance industry. And another $60 billion is lost thru Medicare and Medicaid annually because of fraud nationally.

     Until the Affordable Care Act, the average administrative cost to provide you with insurance was 37 percent of your personal or employer based  insurance policy. Under the new law that drops to 20 percent. But in the cases of Medicare and Medicaid they cost only three percent for the government to administer your coverage.

     O.K., let’s do the math: 37 percent of $2.6 trillion dollars is roughly $957 billion for administrative costs and profit for insurance companies and their investors otherwise known as Wall Street. At 20 percent, the amount is roughly $520 billion dollars for the same administrative bottom lines. Now if we had a single-payer system that cost only 3 percent for administrative costs, then cost would drop to roughly 72 billion dollars.

     The Obama Administration currently has budgeted $250 million dollars a year to reign in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. My question, why not a billion dollars in an effort to reduce $60 billion dollars a year in fraud, down to maybe $5 billion or more?

     Even without reducing the unnecessary costs mentioned above, that leaves almost a trillion dollars to cover all of the Americans who don’t have insurance under the old way of doing things. It saves money, and covers more people, so why not single-payer coverage? 

     Think about it and feel free to comment. As Pat Benatar once sang, “Hit me with your best shot!”