How is waiting four years for a vague health care "right to purchase" like working weekends and nights for years for potentially worthless stock options?
During the 90s, some of you older Daily Kos'ers may remember, we saw the Internet bubble. Internet business became what is now known as an economic anomaly, a "bubble", when the normal rules were ignored by many in the throes of a hyped-up artificial mob psychology, Common sense economic rules were ignored and drunk on the possibilities and hope, people wagered their homes, families and futures on dreams and empty promises made by fast talking sleazy crooks, amplified by the media, promises that later, in the cold glare of reality, they realized, could not possibly have come true..
They were conned. And they should have known better.
Sound familiar? It should.. Because thats what's happening with those who would hide single payer (which works) with fake stock options and blanket the country with hope IN LIEU OF REALITY.. Why? To keep their fake, artificially inflated price bubble from breaking, at a huge cost in HUMAN LIFE.
Lets look back.. In the 90s, many employees were talked into what was supposed to be the dream, but which turned sour.. Often toiling long long hours, sometimes for years, sleeping at their desks, sometimes even working for nothing besides "hope" in the form of stock options, often to end up in tears.
Millions of investors were coaxed into wildly overvaluing many companies. many of those companies names are now forgotten. New companies were started and financed overnight, often without a business model that was based on common sense concepts, work, value and sustainability.
Although many viable companies were started during the late 90s, and succeeded, many of the best ideas had already been taken by then, so real creativity was often replaced by fakes..
This phenomenon of investors spending a lot of money on companies without a solid business model was a big problem. Far too many of these companies were set up, in retrospect, to bilk investors. Fast talkers coaxed people out of their real hard earned money promising huge returns on their investments. When it did not work out, a lot of people said "I told you so". A generation became wiser, realizing IF SOMETHING SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT ALWAYS IS.
To get gain, you need pain. To get real change, you need to fight for it. Its not going to be simple. As Gil Scot Heron sung, revolutions are never "televised". Real change isn't cosmetic, its deep. Its, well, real. It can't happen without somebody powerful accepting that things have changed and will never be the same again. In short, its not ever going to happen without a real struggle for it by those who need it. And real struggles can often end up being for the wrong thing, if people don't stay on their toes. For example, individual insurance costs so much that almost nobody can afford it. Is a right to buy THAT, and ONLY that, a "victory" NO.
We've been told, repeatedly by paid bloggers to be happy, "we won". When pressed as to what was won, they will often use that phrase "Right to purchase" implying that we will all be overjoyed to purchase market rate insurance. What is market rate insurance? Its a failure and a lie for many people. Its not adequate coverage.
That phrase, right to purchase should be a clue. It's a phrase used in the sleazy law industry.
For example, in class actions, often a large group of injured plaintiffs are coaxed into accepting settlements that give them next to nothing, often a "right to purchase" something is the "payment" that they receive. The sleazy lawyers take as much as a third or more of the total payout, and the plaintiffs get - a check, no a certificate.. a "right to purchase" MORE CRAP. More of whatever it was you got sick from. More of whetever broke when you needed it. More tears.
When I was much younger, I made a friend at one of my jobs, Omar, who had fled Libya when he was a young man. Before that happened, he had been in the Libyan military and was trained as a paratrooper. He recounted to me how they were given parachutes, but no backup chute.. What about the backup chute? he asked.. His commanding officer said "If the chute failed to operate", he was encouraged, to complain to him.
Ha ha..
Its very similar with heath care in the US now. This is not a responsible government any more, its a dysfunctional one. They have given corporations a green light to pillage. The media is helping them pretend to govern. But its all an act. Empty promises/
Its no secret that the number of scam health insurance policies being sold is on the rise. Even formerly respectable companies have made an art out of denying payment. The latest injustice is blanket statements that a policy "does not cover chronic illness".
Single payer saves a LOT of money by eliminating the whoe insurance layer.. and its waste and loopholes.. Its simple.. They use any complexity to steal. Isn't that obvious? Complex = crooks.
Without single payer, we will keep getting a rawer and rawer deal until we are all dead.
When in his speech last year, Obama in that magical, fantasy world way of his, elucidated a glorious new "right to purchase" insurance. Even those with pre-existing conditions, who had been rejected by individual insurers, would be able to buy it.. (not the millions of sick who had been stripped of everything they own)
It was pure crap.
Anybody who knows insurers tricks could have told us that.
How do we get from the mess we are in now to REAL CHANGE?
The most imprtant thing is KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT CAN BE DONE..
Put that fake public option out of your mind, because its based n the biggest of the big lies..
Learn about how the rest of the world saves so much more than we do, how they got there, and why, and discuss it. Don't let the paid bloggers drown you out with their "bury brigades" and echo chamber noises..
We need to start looking at the differences between the security and equity that a middle class Canadian family can expect, EVEN IF A FAMILY MEMBER GETS SICK.. and the nightmare suffered by Americans.
Look at that with consideration especially of the TIME VALUE OF MONEY. This difference adds up to huge differences over time. Look at how much money even those with insurance must often pay if they get sick, versus the healing people receive elsewhere.
For an average family, with several members, looking at the reduced costs to the Canadians, the slightly higher taxes, but dramatic reduction of risk, that four or five or six or seven thousand dollars a year per person multiply over a generation and can easily amount to millions of dollars.
Americans have been conned. In exchange for allowing the corporations to give America a handful of magic beans in exchange for the family cow, we will get nothing of real value, only an empty promise that is likely to be meaningless in the context of its lack of affordability.
If you are poor, and remain poor for a long time, (a tax year) you will get a subsidy, But, like many low paid Federal employees, its a subsidy you may well not be able to afford to take advantage of..
You still will have such problems whe you go to the doctor you may well not. When you get sick, you'll still have to tough it out and pray, or risk missing the month's rent.
They are promising, a new, nebulous "right to purchase" instead of real reform..
They do that by lying. They try to make paupers feel like kings.. All we need is competition, to make the obscenely expensive healthcare affordable..
That is a shameless lieand its one they need to stop making.
They should be called out on it. Just look at the high risk pools. Has competition made them affordable? NO.
On their incomes, the middle class will end up being forced to buy something they can't afford. When they get sick, the rapid escalation of extra costs the lack of controls on premiums and the lack of a cap on out of pocket costs will leave them eventually so broke they wont be getting care.. The free market extremists insisted.. To give them help would be to admit the system is inherently failing, so they cannot offer them any help at all.
"Right to Buy" is the same as "Option to Buy". Most of us would recognize that phrase from the sleazy world of the payday loan industry and rental i.e renting to own stores.
Its a sorry comment on the political elite that they would borrow financial tricks from the predatory lending industry..
Its a similar way of taking advantage of the unequal relationship between the Ivy-league educated hereditary financial elite of this nation, who value money manipulation more than real wealth and its increasingly debt-burdened people, a lawyers phrase borrowed from the world of class action settlements and real estate speculation.
How much is a "right to purchase" worth? Like a coupon, its cash value is next to nothing.. Likewise, if your stock options are "underwater" or if you can't afford to exercise a "right" and its not transferable.. its worth nothing.
If the GOP wins because a tiny percentage of people see through the lies..and simply don't vote.. its worth nothing. barring the Democratic voters writing them letters demanding the real change they voted for, they might have already won..
Regardless of which party is in power, as things currently stand, most people wont be able to afford care without help. For those without jobs, unless they become long term unemployed with lots of money in the bank, the only help they will get, and that, only after spending everything they have on bills FIRST, is Medicaid. Thats what the insurers demanded. They wrote the bill.
Stock options.. We traded our election winnings for stock options.
For many, it was easy in the wild 90s to imagine one's stock options becoming worth a lot, after all, "this is America", but in fact, they often were worth less than nothing because the REAL VALUE of the stocks was "underwater" meaning lower than the "option to purchase" price.
When you look at the bill of goods that America is being offered to give up the hopes, after one clearly fraudulent election and a nightmarish eight year long wait.. the NEEDS expressed in the 2008 election in exchange for a fast talking candidate's wispy promises.
Look at COBRA.. COBRA is exactly that, a right to purchase.. But, at least for those who had generous employers and decent insurance, their purchase would buy GROUP coverage thats usually around an 80% value or higher, not the 65 or 70% Bronze pan that is supposed to guarantee sick people's failure be affordable.. and being group insurance, not individual, its far cheaper..with no subsidy than the high risk pools subsidized often at 50% or more.. Did you understand that?
"Right to Purchase" is what COBRA, based on group insurance prices, ends up being. Unsubsidized, only 17% can afford to purchase it.. And COBRA's group rates are far lower than the individual coverage that will be available to the self employed and unemployed in the state exchanges.. Buying something you can't afford is not a right if you are unemployed.. Because you can't afford to USE it and they know that.
To get a subsidy, you will have had to have been unemployed for long enough for your taxable income to drop below the threshold, and remain there for quite a while..(until you file, I think)
Similarly, to be able to buy into the Federal high risk pool, a sick person will need to have been uninsured for six months or more.. again, a recipe for financial disaster and the probable inability to afford anything as expensive as market rate INDIVIDUAL insurance. Individual insurance is a rich mans game.
Why the stupidity? Why the apathy? Because people have been beaten DOWN. Its like a bad joke on America.
There are a lot of similarities between the paper victories in civil rights and desegregation of education..and this issue..
Sure, its a big victory to no longer be forced to use separate facilities that are blatantly inferior. But, American schools are still segregated.. now by money.. supposedly not by race.. But the effect is the same, perhaps even worse..
Many Americans are rightfully proud of the accomplishments of the civil rights movement during the 1960s, when millions of Americans of all races stood up and said, NO, we are not going to allow racism. We wont allow the destruction of people's lives by race or "color". We will only allow it by money!
Some laws that previously were written to force so called "colored" people to be treated less than human were re-written to discriminate by money instead.
And victories were won.. Important victories. For example, a right to purchase housing in any neighborhood was won. A right to go to the schools in those safe, expensive neighborhoods was won, AS LONG AS ONE LIVED THERE.
Health care is the same.. If you can afford to have an address, but are still poor. you'll even get help. If you can keep that roof over your head.. (good luck!)
If one could afford to go to the nice school, you can go. Likewise with insurance.. No longer will your medical status be the bar.. (Age will! Income will. Employment - whether you are in a group, will)
Now, do we see as many young black men and women from non-immigrant families going to those schools as we would like to? NO. Have the victories in civil rights brought the economic equality and an end to the shameless exploitation of the poor by every corporation and crook who was able to? No, in fact, the last decade has seen the rolling ack of gains made in many areas and the enlarging of a growing undercass to include a great many formerly middle class working people of other races. Poor is the new black. But black people still have an incredibly hard time getting jobs and building equity. (Its a completely different situation for black people and indeed, the working class in Canada, because the #1 destroyer of families in the US, healthcare costs, is a non-issue.)
As 101,000 Americans die each year of preventable causes in hospitals because even when they bought "insurance" it didn't stop a disaster for them financially when they got sick.. They missed a payment and became uninsured.. and then fell into the abyss.
This situation is a genocide in slow motion.
NOT
"Of course, they made the wrong choices.. If only they had bought that $2000 a month group plan or that $4000 a month "gold" individual plan that offered "complete protection".
Choice.. They chose to be the hated "free riders" (who are of course, another scapegoat used to divert attention from the profit taking)
Lets admit it.. The Obama administration is doing everything it can to keep those prices HIGH, not lower them.
An option to buy insurance nobody who is sick can sustainably afford is no option at all.
Fake stock options, fake healthcare options, its the same thing.
Even if we could afford to pay what is going to be a huge amount, its SO much more than we would pay under a single payer system that there is no logical or moral justification for it in this present era.. People need to be investing in their own educations and in saving for the day, nit far in the future, when unskilled jobs are no more.
Even short term, a lot can happen in four years. These efforts to maintain these obscenely high prices for healthcare - 'healthcare everything' in the United States's is the most expensive anywhere, ALREADY- are morally wrong and the costs, whether some people can afford them or not, are, completely UNSUSTAINABLE for rich and poor. We all are getting increasingly abbreviated health care while the rest of the world moves forward,we remain in a fairy tale frozen world where everything that happened since 1980 in health remains an "experimental therapy" that isn't covered.
Their experiment in feeding the nation crap should not be covered. Even in step therapy, there is a step up if it fails. These public private fiascos keep getting resurrected, and keep failing. Let the insurance lie die!
Our aging economy can not sustain the obscenely high prices, completely out of proportion to global norms, that its people still pay for heath care, without destroying itself and its future.
People cannot even comparison shop among doctors or hospitals for the best deal, prices are secret. Think about that. That makes lowering those prices impossible. And soon, ALREADY embattled people will be forced to either buy insurance or avoid accessing healthcare services altogether. The result will be a trend to not register to vote. To hide. There is no middle ground. Is this another hidden agenda? Of course.
This administration isn't just dropping the ball. They are stealing it. By their actions, they show that their real allegiance lies solely with the drug, hospital and insurance corporations, even if that means that the poor's and chronically ill's productivity and working lives, economic lives are ruined by price hike driven layoffs and then, soon the resultant, predatory, unsustainable costs. Does this bother them? It SHOULD.
Thanks to a policy designed to remove even the healthy (who might have some minor issue) from the work force- thanks to the elite's 'pillage is for me too' mentality, the middle class's future, is increasingly being destroyed by the blood sucking insurance tax and its mandated low quality "health control" not health care, and debt.
Would you stake your future on stock options, pie in the sky, instead of asking for a fair wage?
Thats what people are doing by not fighting for real healthcare now. This may be a death march, but it is not the time to lie down in the snow and die.