The Shears Are A Comin’ [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

“A concept of a plan.” Buckle up. Our already exploitative healthcare system is about to become a full-on-rodeo of fleecing.

Consider this: In the United States of America, medical bills account for 62% of all bankruptcies. That’s up from 40% in 1999. Even the advent of the Affordable Care Act – an act that made healthcare more available with government assistance – yet an act without regulating the amount healthcare providers can charge – has created what Horatio aptly named, “A money-gouging-machine.” An unregulated market was born; skyrocketing costs by design – a surprise to no one .

“As it turns out, medical bankruptcy is almost unheard of outside of the United States.”

It’s no wonder. Our healthcare spending per capita is “almost twice the average of other wealthy countries.”

The night Kerri broke both of her wrists we stood outside the medical center debating which door to go through: The Emergency Room door or The Urgent Care door. The question we debated while she writhed in pain: which door would be a slower path to bankruptcy. We had a healthcare plan with exorbitant premiums but like most Americans were afraid to use it.

And now, as if the exploitation were not egregious enough, coming down the pike is the great maga-republican repeal of the ACA on the promise of a concept of a plan. I feel the shears-a-comin’.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEALTHCARE SEASON

smack-dab © 2024 kerrianddavid.com

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Do A Bit Of Reading [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Yes. It’s true. I’ve been paying on my student loans for 22 years and I currently owe more now than the original loan. That little statistic is not an accident. I am not alone. There are so many of me, in fact, that our economy will teeter when payments resume.

The mechanism was set up in the Reagan years, a mechanism that has more recently been echoed in the Affordable Care Act. What seems like a good idea at the time, accessibility to education, accessibility to healthcare, is in actuality a shell game. The government provides a subsidy-or-loan-program for an industry yet places no cap on what the industry can charge. It places little regulation on how the loans are structured and serviced. It’s a money-making-machine in the guise of a social program. Tax dollars to corporate pockets. Compare the cost of an education in 1988 to what it is today. Compare the cost of healthcare in the USA relative to other developed nations. Once in the trap, it’s nigh-on impossible to escape it.

Do a bit of reading before you weigh in on student loan forgiveness. For extra credit, compare the amount of recent loan forgiveness granted to businesses (not to mention the amount given to large corporations when the economy melted down in the Bush years – due to bad corporate/market practices) relative to the amount proposed for student loan forgiveness by the Biden administration. Student loan forgiveness is peanuts in comparison though the impact on real people would be profound.

For extra-extra credit, keep in mind that humor is often the result of other people’s pain… it’s possible that this cartoon will strike your funny bone since the pain for us is real. We hope it strikes a slightly different bone.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PREDATORY LOANS

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smack-dab. © 2023 kerrianddavid.com

Stack Your Nickels & Pennies [on Flawed Wednesday]

From the school of if-you-are-sitting-on-the-mountain-you-can’t-see-it comes the hot mess we call healthcare in these un-united-united-states. Insanity never looks at itself and says, “I’m insane.” Our system of healthcare – and I use the term “system” loosely, is insane. In my sordid past as an organizational consultant I facilitated an experience called reverse design: ask people to design the worst system possible. The worst product imaginable. Hilarity ensued. None of those mad-mad sessions could have concocted what we call healthcare in the richest nation on earth. It seems the money has both blinded us and made us batty.

I just asked Kerri how much a postage stamp costs. “58 cents,” she grumbled, “And we got three mailings.” We finally achieved our get-out-of-jail-free card: a job with benefits. We canceled our ACA prison policy but, apparently, there was a one-day crossover in the billing cycle. I know a computer sent us the three-times-nasty-gram and spent $1.74 in postage to collect $.27. No human was involved though, having spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with people paid to try and make sense of the nonsense, we’ve learned how numb the human mind can become when sense-making in a swamp of gobbledygook. We paid our debt online.

No human involved. De-human-izing. The Turing test is…a test of intelligence in a computer. Is the machine’s behavior indistinguishable from that of a human being? Hubris is a human quality that imagines the computer will become more like us while not recognizing that, in the process, we are becoming less like us. I doubt the computer will ever evolve to that point of pomposity. I suspect that the computer will someday recognize the folly of attempting to model itself after something so flawed as human intelligence. What intelligent machine would model itself on beings that seem incapable of creating a competent system for the care of its own health? No advanced intelligence would submerge its prime directive for the secondary intention of stacking nickels and pennies.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEALTHCARE

Do The Double-Double [on DR Thursday]

Kerri moved through the gallery as if on a photo shoot. Capturing light, shapes in architecture, I loved that she turned the opening into something other than a stuffy social event. For her, the art-occasion was an opportunity to make art. Double-double.

Since moving to Wisconsin I’ve not shown my paintings – other than online. I had paintings splashed across Seattle every day for over a decade. Showing had lost its luster. Plus, my paintings tend to be large; they require a truck and some serious effort to move and hang and remove. Plus, my Seattle studio was on the 4th floor. Large paintings didn’t fit in the elevator.

Also, I couldn’t show. There’s a harsh financial cliff to monitor when your healthcare is through the ACA. Go a single dollar over the allotted amount and we’d have been taxed into oblivion. So, to show was to court bankruptcy. It was best – safer – to roll up the canvas and hide the paintings in the basement. When friends asked, “Why don’t you show your work?” my pat response was, “I live in the United States.” A conversation stopper every time.

It was a symbolic gesture that I needed to make when I was finally free from the ACA cliff. I entered a painting in a local show. We went to the opening to see one of my pieces, too long in the basement, hanging on a gallery wall. And, my favorite symbolic-detail? The painting I entered is titled Unfettered. Double-double.

unfettered © 2018 david robinson

Know The Matter [on Flawed Wednesday]

healthcare.gov copy

I’ve had this conversation twice in my life. The first time I was working in The Netherlands. The second time I was working in Canada. The conversation, both times, started with exactly the same question:  What’s the matter with you Americans?

It is an irrefutable fact: we (Americans) pay more than 7 times what any other nation on earth pays for healthcare and we provide poorer coverage for less people. Our life expectancy is shorter. We are an obese nation. Our infant and maternal mortality rate is higher than any other developed nation.

What’s the matter with (us) Americans?

Here’s another irrefutable fact: the top 1% of households owns more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. The gap is, in fact, growing.

We are being force-fed the fear of socialism* but, if you dare, take off the blinders, plug your ears to the noise of heated misdirection, and look at the data. It’s clear that our fear should be of the oligarchy.

What’s the matter with (us) Americans? We are too easily led, susceptible to diversion by division, and extraordinarily fact-averse. We are too lazy to question, research or otherwise investigate the easy tribal narratives of red or blue. We are (to borrow a great book title) a confederacy of dunces.

The stresses of “healthcare” are making most of us sick while making a very, very few of us as rich as Croesus. That is another irrefutable fact and is the crux of what is the matter with (us) Americans.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about HEALTHCARE.GOV

 

*try this experiment (I have and it is eye opening): To everyone who screams in fear the word “socialism,” ask them to define the word “socialism.” You will find, as I do, the screamers can’t define it. They don’t really know what they are screaming about. They (we) also are inordinately incapable of defining “oligarchy.” That is (sadly) why I’ve provided links. It is also an alternate answer to the question, “What is the matter with you Americans?” I decided in the final moment to exclude a link to the words “representative democracy.” Given the irrefutable but too often denied facts, it begs a whole other set of questions.

 

footprints in sunlit snow website box copy