The rich have blinders. They don't "get it."

"Just wait until you are dribbling and shitting your pants after you deplete your nest egg. You are out of touch, Peter."

                         Ralph, discussing the situation of employees of small businesses

                                              

A regular reader of this blog sent an email, reflecting a perspective from the world of small business people. He noted my comment that a great many people have the security of health insurance based on working for a large corporate or public employer, or are on Medicare, and who therefore feel no particular urgency about changing the health care system. Indeed, they may oppose changing it because, after all, they have theirs.

Lucky for you, he said. You and people like you are out of touch with reality. This blog has been describing the health care situation, both before and with the ACA as a policy debate. It needs to be understood as a crisis. It is frightening and degrading to be negotiating the wilderness of haphazard health care coverage. The ACA is an improvement, but it is expensive for some, unavailable to others, and complicated.

Meanwhile, some people are trying to repeal even the ACA. My blog posts, Ralph has written me, misunderstand the situation. I need to be describing this as a moral crisis. Americans are being hurt, people are suffering because of something out of their control, sickness or accident. The correct emotional response to the situation is fear and anger. Congressmen and Senators and prosperous people with secure health coverage sit in their bubble of security. 

They don't feel the pain, so they don't feel the urgency and necessity of change. And he includes me.

Ralph, from Grant Pass, Oregon, sent me this message:

     "Dear Peter, So happy and your buddies are doing just fine. 

     Now go to your dentist office and ask the employees about their large $1,000 deductible which prevents them from ever going to a doctor. None of them have eye coverage and teeth coverage. Who’s got a $1000 lying around? Better have. 

     You are out of touch , Peter. Every doctors' office has someone who knows how to wade through the myriad of insurance rules , co-pays, and right addresses to send the bill to. Joke on the small business man who wants to offer a benefit and then has to hire an insurance specialist ( the owner's Wifie).

     Another example: if you get a divorce from your telephone employed husband, you have to figure out how to cover yourself with your preexisting condition, and oh yes your sniveling two year old child and face the humiliation of going on food stamps and the Oregon Health Plan where you are really limited as to what doctor will accept you. Just wait until you are dribbling and shitting your pants and you are offered a room, a small room under Medicaid, after you deplete your nest egg with a $6,000 bill every month for assisted living. 

     Or go to work for a car lot, get a tumor in your neck, enjoy chemo which makes you so sick you can’t sell, go on unemployment dole, watch the bills pile up until you declare bankruptcy and destroy your credit for about three years and longer. (All examples from relatives). 

     This is reality and maybe if L.B.J. were alive he would hear the cries if the public and amend the Medicare program to prevent the doctors , pharma, and hospital hogs from ripping off Medicare. I say no one loves their health care premiums which go up up up, they don’t enjoy co-pays, they don’t enjoy being in or out of network, tier drugs, and rural lack of coverage and loss of hospitals and Drs who disappear to city money. 

     Get real, Peter. The people must overthrow the Medical Industrial Complex and pay an affordable basic premium for unlimited service provided to all everywhere supplemented additionally with my tax payer money. 


     Join the rest of the world.

     Ralph"