Your Health Care

Wake up, people ! Single payer, Universal Health Care for every American, is the most effective way to pressure "Big Pharma" to price all prescription drugs at the lowest unit cost possible. Further, "Big Pharma" would also have to compete with drugs possibly coming from foreign countries. 

As I find in my own circumstances, drugs make up at least half of my costs for insurance coverage. Savings there are huge in overall premium costs figured to enhance your coverage for your health care insurance. Medicare for all is the proper path for Universal HealthCare coverage to take.

Those with vested interests in no change will want to pressure congress not to change how we in the USA provide for and pay for health care. Keep your eyes open to see how the professionals grease the palms of our representatives so they vote for the status quo. Professional lobbyists will swarm over the halls of our lawmakers like flies on a manure pile because there is just so much money awash in our present system. The problem exists, though, that this money goes into someone's pocket rather than insuring the public against disease and other medical problems.

Universal Health Care, "Medicare For All", is coming down the tracks. Hop on and finally give Americans what the rest of the industrialized has. 

Ronald C. Downie

Universal Health Care 

It's about time ! The time has come for Bernie's proposal to cover every American with Universal Health Care, from birth to death coverage of everyone, because it is your right by being an American.

When legislators begin to warm to this ultimate solution for health care they will hunt for offsets, income sources to replace new costs. I suggest, using child tax deduction value as a source of offset dollars. Since at birth a child will be guaranteed health care for the rest of his or her life, it seems parents could be persuaded to forgo some of the dollar value for income tax deductions on their annual fillings. 

Approximately four million babies are born in the USA yearly. This year each child brings with it's birth $4,050 of income tax deductions for the filer. Multiply four million babies by the value of four thousand of gross income in tax dollars and the IRS will have a sizable amount of money to work with. 

For the next 25 years these relatively healthy, young bodies will populate the healthcare insurance population and become the backbone of a universal system. Many may still be on their parents insurance policies until, at an age, when they become an adult.

Universality relies on 100% precipitation of all people to make it work. It also relies on having a monopoly so costs and income can be structured to cut out the middle men who, in the present system, suck out far too much capital which should be dedicated to actually caring for Americans. 

It is amazing that in the USA : the preeminent country of this World, the richest country, and the strongest one too, that our government has never implemented Universal Health Care for her citizens. Every other industrialized nation in this World has done for their citizens what America has refused to do for their's ; foreign countries have Universal Health Care for all their citizens by making good health care their right by birth. 

Ronald C. Downie

Health Care at What Cost

There is nothing like a good discussion to focus your mind to digest relevant financial facts normally over looked by you. Like, just how much do I pay for health coverage today ?

I've been on social security ever since I retired 8-10 years ago and, since I'm now 82, it means I payed into SS. for about 55 years starting around 15 years old when l began getting a check for my work. In 2016, 1 received a gross amount of $15,790.80 from SS of which $1,258.80 was deducted to pay for Medicare part B. I imagine 2017 will not be too much different. 

Now add to this, $ 4800.00 which I pay for Supplemental Insurance and add on the amounts I pay to pharmacies each time I get my prescriptions filled. The yearly total is somewhere in excess of, "oh my goodness" ,$ 7,200.00, or about half of the total of my monthly SS insurance checks. 

Review starts one to wonder, when is the time to choose between pills or food ? I bet, many my age have had to make that decision. In the richest nation in the World, yes, in this nation of inordinate abundance for some, pills or food should be the last thing on people's minds. Sadly this is not the case, far too many people have this choice to make. 

Don't get up a " Pity Party" for me, I'm ok and so is Connie. We have a loving family and some supplemental reserves. The key will be when, if at all, either Connie or me will ever have to go into a home. The story I've heard is that most elderly care homes are huge vacuums sucking in every dollar available. 

"Just keep on ago'n till you can't go no more" must be words to some song, somewhere. 

Ronald C. Downie

  

Trump Care

"Proof of the pudding is in the eating" quickly jumped out of the TV an hour ago. When is the date that Congress will cancel it's present gilded healthcare insurance and shift over to the new - "Trump Care" -rolled out today for the rest of us citizens ?

If the Republican plan is to be the ultimate healthcare solution for all Americans, wouldn't this gesture be the "cats meow" showing the World just how our Congress works ? If they won't ! That too would show what hypocrites we Americans vote into office to lead our country.

From one who cares,

Ronald C. Downie

Golden Years

I'm toast ! At 82, I am expendable, too damn old to do any good for society, so what Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell pulling the strings for Donald Trump want done is to punish me for living too long, I'm here, I'm vulnerable. It seems these three will price me out of basic health care needs so Big Pharma along with the rich and powerful can sing they squeezed the last dollar from me. 

All my life, I worked and paid my taxes thinking I've done my share, done my duty, and when I get older social security and any savings I've accumulated will provide for my wife and I until death takes us. But now, in light of "Trump Care", I worry. Soon the old will be offered an out. 

Do you remember - grandmother being pushed in her wheelchair off the cliff ? Bet you do ! Well, accept this in its current context of "right to die laws". Costs that are pushed onto the states will rapidly rise and state legislators in an attempt to control costs will realize the elderly are soaking up health care dollars too rapidly. Yes, they'll say - first - we will allow the in firmed to dignify their lives by assisting their quick death with appropriate pills. Next - states will be allowed to liberalize these laws in both age and method until crematories can't keep up with the ashes. 

The Grim Reaper lies among us just biding his time. The golden years lay strewn about each day tarnishing more and more as we elderly no longer can see any luster. 

Old and Weary,

Ronald C. Downie