Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:03:16 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Tackling Concerns of Independent Workers
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On 03/30/13 00:10, Mike B. wrote:
> On 3/29/2013 10:23 PM, mark wrote:
>
>> Americans have been *trying* to get some kind of national
>> system for scores of years, and the insurance co pays off the
>> politicians to stop it. Go ahead, tell me that's not the case.
>
> That's not the case.
>
> *SOME* Americans have been trying to get that.  Others have been trying
> to keep it from happening.  Some of them because they've seen what a
> great job the government has done with other things it's been given to
> take care of (respecting Constituional limits, border security, crime
> prevention, administration of justice, and getting us off the planet,
> just to name a few), some of them because they can do the math, some of
> them because they are well aware that corporate interests aren't going
> to evaporate if you put the government in charge...they will just have a
> much better lever to use to move everyone where they want them.

I need to run out - going to a wedding today - but I've been thinking
about this, and I think we need to reframe this discussion.

I grew up *poor*. I remember about three years in the late fifties, when
we were living on my dad's unemployment (his steel plant ran away to the
South for cheap labor) and my mom's pay as a secretary. I grew up in the
slum of north Philly.

I've also been on COBRA several times. I spent the first half of '01 in
chemo. When I was out for five years, during the Bush depression, in
'02, I called BC/BS of IL (I was living in Chicago), and was told,
presumably "recorded for quality control", that "no company in the US
will talk to you until at least five years after the end of chemo", end
quote. In '03-'04, living in FL, when I ran out of COBRA and went to
"individual", in two jumps, in 13 mos, they increased my premiums ONE
HUNDRED PERCENT, from $373 to $525 to $753, at which point I couldn't
afford it, and had to drop, as they intended. In late '08, on COBRA
again, I checked around, and two companies (Cigna? Aetna? and something
else) REFUSED TO COVER ME AT ANY PRICE.

And there are nearly 50 MILLION other Americans in the same boat.

My late wife told me, more than once, that after her/my son was born (I
moved in when he was 3; he's *mine*), that she was incredibly glad for
the ->governement-run<- WIC program.

So when you say the above, I find no way to interpret it other than
"I've got mine, fuck you, jack, go off in an alley and die".

mark

--
"Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest,
educate our children and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done a
fine job
of getting government out of our personal lives." - seen in the Oregonian