ObamaCare 101

I wrote a long and detailed thing about what Obamacare is and how it applies to people. The bottom line is it mainly is a way to give the working poor insurance without calling it Medicaid. They are still going to not pay the co-payments, not pay significantly for insurance, and use the emergency room when the providers cut them off for not paying copays.

Those with chronic illness and those who have recovered from major conditions may see a more affordable scenario, but for the group who pays the largest part of their expendable income on taxes, it will just amount to a new tax even if we call it an insurance premium.

How to enforce that congress does its job.

Congress has it all backward. They made sure they get paid when the rest of the government shuts down. They should only fund themselves until June and then go without pay until they get the budget completed. To be fair, the office of the President should follow suit a month later if he has failed to sign the budget presented or a submitted a revised one in compromise. So both are on the hook until upcoming fiscal year's budget is signed into law.

Gridlock!

look at all of the political rhetoric on here and wonder what are we thinking. Here are two simple things we should all see. Whatever our stance on spending is, the debt ceiling has to be raised to pay for what we have one way or another already spent or committed to spend. Raising the debt ceiling isn't about new spending, it is about paying for what we have already spent.

The answers to this is simple. We need to make budgets and approve them far in advance. We shouldn't be making budgets in September (October) . We should have the budget finished and the rule-making done before the fiscal year begins. We certainly shouldn't make a budget then wonder how the debt we created in the budget got there. Pay the debts we made.

How to decrease spending? That one is easy too. YES EASY! If we ask the executive departments to reduce their demands by 15% and let them actually make the cuts, they can and will live off of them. The problem is congress wants to decide where the cuts are made. They want to spend on programs that are advantageous to their districts even when the department (especially defense) has the project at a lower priority or even doesn't want it at all.

The bottom line is both sides of the aisle voted for the budget. Both sides of the aisle made it into what it is. That brings us to the second thing: Congress. They have a 5% approval rate. Why don't we throw them out? The bottom line is that a couple of things happen that keep us from it. The first is that we believe that the ones that we would replace them with wouldn't be any better than the ones we threw out. The other is that there is far more power in incumbency that anyone wants to admit. To the political parties it isn't about America, it is about the balance of the aisle. You would keep anyone as long as they were usually dependable to the cause of the largest donors and partisan media.

The whole problem is simply that NO ONE is accountable. As long as we have a permanent congress who doesn't have to come back to their district and live as one of us, it is NEVER going to improve. I have lots more where this came from. This is too important to ignore. The problem is congress from both sides of the aisle have failed and now they are all blaming someone else.

Voting

Why do you suppose the founding fathers created the Electoral College  and had the US Senators selected by the state legislatures?  The idea was you weren't supposed to vote for someone you did not know or at least were able to meet. The legislature could meet the Senate candidates and you would have sent them (in our case to Austin) with our trust as they should have been part of our greater community. Every four years you would send a qualified elector from each congressional district to the electoral college to select a President and Vice-president. In a nutshell you sent someone you knew to make a reasonable choice.

Today, vote for people we have never met, likely we don't know anyone who has ever met them in an informal setting, and trust what they or their backers (who have an agenda) choose to tell ./ not tell us!

Frankly even the electors at the electoral college (and members of the US house which basically mirrors their number) are going to be beyond our knowing them. We have to figure out how to send people who actually share our values to congress and the presidency and I don't mean those that build coalitions since we agree on a few items.

Health Insurance

Health insurance reform is a bane to everybody. Small businessmen and the self employed see it as yet another regulation by government. Businessmen who insure themselves and their employees see it as a not insignificant expense. Health insurance costs begin at around $6.00 per hour worked. In some circumstances it is as much as $15.00 per man-hour. Many employees forgo health insurance because the premium cost is often half or more of their take home pay.

Some claim the employer fails to pay more out of greed, but in most cases, he is paying about as much in wages and benefits as he can afford. The simple fact is his goods and services could become priced out of the market. It is one of the biggest reasons why we are losing manufacturing and even service sector jobs to overseas providers. They work with a lower wage and benefit cost.  We decry the use of slave like and child labor, but we continue to buy the products they produce.


The problem is that we argue for "free trade" but honestly we want it by our rules. What are our rules?  First we have a minimum wage. How do you compete with the minimum wage. I think everyone believes the minimum wage we have here is too low to live even frugally on. This is not an argument against the minimum wage, honestly I think it is too low. This said, it is way higher than the international market we are competing with.


Most wage earners who make near the minimum are uninsured or using public means such as Medicaid, CHiP, and Medicare.  When we move people off the public assistance insurance source we send them onto the public hospital route. This is unpaid care. What do I mean hospital route? It means using the ER as their primary care provider. In some cases hospitals provide this care by certifying the patient as needy. In other cases the patient is given care (some places give full care and others give only immediate necessary care) and the patient is billed and bullied for payment they cannot or will not pay for. This makes a mess of our emergency care system and is much more expensive than routine primary care.

I wish I knew how to make this happen short of large-scale government support or worse so government mandates that raise the expense he pays for labor (through insurance premium cost) with marginal if existent increases in income.

If anyone has a suggestion, it would make for great discussion even if it gets shot down by the realities of it all. I am looking for your suggestions or comments.

If I had a Billion dollars...

What is a billion dollars? It is a thousand million. The one hundred-seventy-three billion we (the US treasury) loaned the AIG group is nearly six hundred dollars for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A. The federal debt is over $7.000 for each of us. Where does it stop. Put into perspective, the federal debt is $45000 per family of five. If that were a car at 5.0% interest the monthly payment would be $850.00 per month for 5 years put over 20 years it still be would be $300.00.If we did no more deficit spending or borrowing.

I need a job

Eight years ago someone told me to get anywhere i needed a degree. At forty-two, I went back. I finished a degree plan from my twenties. Political Science. It was the quickest way to finish (4 long semesters) while working forty hours a week. I did OK. 3.0 Wish I could have done better, but time was a killer.

In the meantime as the economy soured, the demand for degrees became more in the realm of a specific degree. I looked mid career to those hiring entry level people and lacked true management experience to those who would be considered mid-career.

Update,... I have a job. I need a special purpose......