You're born, you go to school, you go on to a job doing _____, you get married, have kids, and you climb the career ladder, making more $$$ at every step. You have a house, 2 cars, a retirement plan for later on, and finally you hang it up and relax to a nice life bouncing grand-kids on your knee and traveling the country in your RV. Oh, and you'll never get sick. SWEET!
Except you forgot to figure in "reality".
Here's the more likely scenario: You're born (so far, so good)....then the wheels come off. Too often kids find themselves without two-parent influence. The cost of higher education means many kids/parents can't afford it, except with massive student loans that can take decades to pay off. Jobs seldom have the security of lifetime employment like they did 50 years ago. Changing technology means you'll constantly have to reinvent / retrain yourself and start over again, which likely means a pay cut. Which in turn means you'd better think twice before buying that big house with the 30 year mortgage. It's hard enough seeing 2 years into the future, much less 30.
More and more, new jobs are being created by small companies, as opposed to the big Fortune 500 companies, and small companies often can't afford all the perks such as family health care and retirement / 401K plans that were common not long ago. Statistically we're having smaller families since, for one thing, it costs so much to raise kids today....about $250K to raise one child to the age of 18 they say. Ouch! And if that big house is questionable, an RV is even more of a dream.
And the odds are great you WILL eventually get sick. I was healthy as a horse until my innards decided to rebel at age 64. (Maybe I should come back in my next life as a horse?) Luckily I had good health insurance. Many of us, however, find ourselves having to pay more for our health insurance than we do for our house payment. Will it soon be an either/or proposition? Copays and deductibles are up, yet the percentage insurance pays is often down.
Our personal "plans" are increasingly diverging from what life is actually dealing us. The trend lines are moving in opposite directions.
The status quo isn't working for us. Day after day, year after year, we're losing ground. This isn't meant as a doom and gloom post. It's just a wake up call. We CAN turn things around IF we put aside the idea that "we've always done it this way" is the only way.
We're at a crossroads. Are we going to stick with our "plan", or face reality and consider things that don't fit our stereotypical boxes?
S
The Republican Convention 2016 is history. Hurricane Trump has moved inland, the Lake Erie coast has been spared. No riots, no attacks. Now we just have to slog through the usual follow-on storms and the eventual cleanup.
What I took away, first of all, is that Donald Trump has a set of World-Class vocal chords. I watched and heard him scream for 75 minutes during his acceptance speech. Some say his screams were scary dark, that he dwelt on doom-and-gloom. The media called it "midnight in America". Others say he was just telling it like it is. I heard a bit of both.
These are scary times. Domestically, race relations are tense. Many cities are potential powder kegs. Too many cops have itchy trigger fingers. Too many of our citizens need anger management. The average Joe is falling behind. He/she hasn't had a raise in 20 years (after inflation). Too many good jobs have gone overseas.
Too many educated young people with staggering student debt can't get a job commensurate with their smarts. We're flipping far too many burgers. Too few Ivory Tower dwellers pull too many strings and are too far removed from the country the rest of us have to live in. Fact. (Bernie and The Donald can have a lovefest on that one!)
Internationally, it's a pretty f__ked up world out there, and it gets more f__ked up every day. Look at what's happening in previously stable, vibrant Turkey. We have a tiger by the tail and we don't know how to turn loose of it. Our attempt at "nation building" has NOT worked. Fifteen years and a TRILLION dollars later, all we've managed to do is stir up a fire ant pile. Islam has proven to be an apparently easy religion to subvert. As one of the convention speakers pointed out, while only about 10% of the world's Muslims have any sympathy for Islamic terrorism, 10% of 1.6 billion Muslims is 160,000,000 potential bomb chuckers!
The basic premise of Donald Trump's grievances are true. The issue is, can he and he alone fix it? Lemme think....*one nanosecond later*....NO! Like all politicians, he's over-promising. ISIS will not crawl back into its hole on January 20th. Ronald Reagan might have backed down the Iranians back in 1980, but the Iranians were sane. ISIS isn't.
The underlying racism that exists here at home can't just be legislated away. Crime will not instantly vanish on inauguration day. His wall isn't going to build itself. American companies* aren't just going to put their greed aside and move production back here. (I see a Trump Presidency as being an absolute gold mine for lobbyists!)
*Is there such a thing as an "American company" any more? IMO their loyalty seems to be to their money, not their country.
So if Donald Trump is just blowing smoke, does that mean that Hillary Clinton should have an easy time exposing him as a 21st Century Don Quixote? I'm doubtful. It will be difficult for her to say she can bring us the change (now where have we heard that before?) that will right all our wrongs. Why? Because SHE IS THE ESTABLISHMENT! The Establishment with the lowest approval rating in history. Want proof?....look who the big financial interests are throwing their money at this election year. They are the ones who have the most to lose if the status quo should implode.
And as I've said forever (and you know I'm never wrong *wink*) Hillary has too many skeletons in her closet. Too many people just don't like her. There isn't enough lipstick....no, I won't go there. Hillary will have her week, we'll hear her tell us how she'll fix things, and then it's up to us to choose.
Just to stir the pot a bit (more), have you looked at the Libertarian candidates? The Libertarians are an odd mix....fiscally conservative like traditional Republicans, yet socially liberal like traditional Democrats. Their poll numbers this year are up into double digits, very good for them. They won't win this year, but they just might build themselves into a viable third party, one that might temper the other two some day. Give them a look-see.
Enough of my bloviating. Your feedback, either (politely) positive or negative, would be welcome.
S
Yep, it's almost here. October 1st is tomorrow, the date Obamacare goes into effect. Some are dancing in the streets, some are jumping out of windows. So where does 'ol Lowandslow stand on this, you're asking?
I think it's gonna be an absolute mess. Here's why: Anything that comes with a 2,700 page users manual, written hastily by a bunch of bureaucrats (who probably have a government job only because they were too inept to get a job in the private sector) and industry lobbyists (who you know are making damn sure their clients are protected one way or another), is doomed to fail. This is going to be a cluster f__k of epic proportions!
So then I'm for the status quo, right? Nope, not at all. The status quo is a runaway train carrying us all in slow motion straight over a 1,000' cliff. I firmly believe we need some sort of, for lack of a better term, "universal health care". Consider this:
Only 51% of US businesses (pre-Obamacare) offer health care coverage to their employees. That is down roughly 10% in a decade. And of those who do have employer paid / subsidized coverage, more and more are seeing higher deductibles / cash-out-of-pocket maximums ($5K-$10K is not uncommon) and co-pays.
Private insurance? Fuggetaboutit. One middle aged friend of mine, for example, who has had two back surgeries and a wife who is a breast cancer survivor, is paying $1,500 per month for just himself and his spouse. And that's with a $10,000 deductible. Another friend (with insurance) told me if his wife has any more issues, their only recourse will be bankruptcy.
Speaking of: There are 1.7 million personal bankruptcies +/- filed in the US each year. Medical bills and lost income due to illness are responsible for 62% (or roughly 1 million) of those. That's more than due to crushing credit card debt or unaffordable mortgages. And of those 1 million filings, 78% HAD HEALTH INSURANCE.
When the average working / insured American has an income of about $50K and gets a medical bill for $5-10K, they're screwed. Unless it's for use to cover a catastrophic accident or illness, do they really even have insurance? If they can't afford to use it, is it really there?
And talk about inefficient....somebody explain to me why there are 50 state insurance commissions with 50 different sets of rules and 50 different insurance company and state bureaucracies? Why aren't insurance companies organized around one giant nationwide group policy with one set of standards?
Pharmaceutical costs are out of control, too. Consider this: In all countries I'm aware of with some form of national insurance, the government determines how much drug makers can charge, and it's always just enough to cover the cost to manufacture the drug.
All the costs to cover R&D, which can run up towards a billion dollars, are charged to AMERICAN consumers. That's because our "free market" allows Big Pharma to charge anything they want here. This is true. I've had it confirmed to me by a friend in the pharma bidness. *you're welcome world*
And how about all those not-so-visible costs we pay to cover the uninsured? Several years ago I heard a spokesman for the Baylor Hospital System admit they charge 150% of cost to INSURED patients in order to cover the write-offs for those who couldn't / wouldn't pay.
Just last week I heard the Dallas County Judge say the County spends more supporting their county (charity) hospital than it does on ALL other county functions combined. This would include running the jail system, the sheriff's office, the courts, the road and bridge districts, etc. (I haven't researched that, but I take him at his word.)
So then doctors make too much, right? IMO, no. Consider this: Docs go through 10 or more years of college, med school, internship, residency, etc, and usually accrue $250K or more in school debts, before they can enter practice. For our best and brightest, I don't think their income is unreasonable. (Compare this to a Wall Street banker who might make 10-times as much selling fraudulent securities.)
Oh, here's a thought....how about getting all the blood-sucking trial lawyers out of the game? Bad docs need to be removed, no doubt. But in waaaaay too many malpractice cases it's just a money grab. The legal profession has become a parasite on the medical profession. Why are they allowed to do that? (Because trial lawyers as a group are among the largest political campaign contributors, that's why.)
I could go on and on, and maybe I will at a later time, but suffice it to say the status quo is becoming less and less workable, even for those of us who are fortunate to have insurance and can afford to cover high deductibles and co-pays. Long term the status quo is simply unsustainable.
Let's review: The health care crisis is becoming more and more acute and is swirling down the toilet. Obamacare will probably be a mess. The status quo will someday eventually fail us.
So what do we do? Beats me. It's going to take someone smarter than me to figure it out. BUT WE MUST FIGURE IT OUT. Removing the spectre of instant family bankruptcy due to whopping medical bills from the national conscience is bound to be good for the country.
We need to be concentrating on becoming more competitive, stronger, and more resilient in the new world economy, not losing sleep worrying about how we're going to pay for grandma's festering sore.
S
