I'm scared and I'm sure you are too.
I have had a few dollars in a very conservative stock and bond fund, it's disappearing before my eyes.
Yesterday was September 15th. You know what that is, don't you? For those of us who are self-employed and made a small income the preceeding quarter, we had estimated taxes that were due. So we took a deep breath, looked at all the bills staring us in the face, but paid the government.
Paying taxes to fund the invasion and occupation of Iraq is the big luxury in my life all of our lives. I forego many things in order to pay the government. I forego a medical appointment, so I'll have the money to pay the government. Many Americans probably forego filling a prescription so they'll have money for gas, heating oil, food and yup, to pay their taxes.
In the rest of the industrialized world, tax money is used to one extent or another, to benefit the citizenry. Not in America, though.
I'm a happy informed taxpayer. Most of us know that not enough of our money is being used for things like healthcare, education, Medicare, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, the list is endless. When our small savings are being wiped out, when we don't know where or when our next dollar will appear, when jobs are disappearing, when the unaffordable health insurance premium is due, you do tremble in fear as you write a check to a criminal government with money you don't have. Yes, a criminal government.
But this isn't about taxes. It's about John McCain's on-your-own America. And since I'm one of those on-your-own Americans, you need to know what it's like.
In a word, you don't want to be me. But you will be, if John McCain is elected.
If Palin/McCain gets elected, they're going to throw millions of Americans into the private individual insurance market. Some estimates are that twenty million additional Americans will be on their own. You'll do as I do, you'll tremble as you write a check for junk insurance. You'll know if you get sick, you'll be at the mercy of a criminal industry, protected by a criminal government.
If you think you're hurting now, you don't know what hurt is unless of course, you're in even worst straits then I am, and you're one of McPalin's "so-called uninsurables".
Here is McPalin's rambling, disjointed and utterly pathetic response to a woman who had to bring her husband to Spain to die because he was one of McPalin's "so-called uninsurables".
This video is painful to watch. But since the traditional media didn't see fit to make it public, you should do yourself a favor and look at the man shameless con artist who hopes he can lie and three card monte his way into becoming the 44th President of the United States.
Let's return to the individual health insurance market crucible.
Trust me, you don't want to be in the individual insurance market. When Barack Obama talks about being "on your own" if God forbid McPalin is elected, heed his words. Having individual insurance is the purest definition of being on your own in America.
This morning Bob Herbert explains what being on your own will look like.
He likens the individual insurance market to the crucible. Now that's some powerful imagery. [Definition of crucible: A test of the most decisive kind; a severe trial; as, the crucible of affliction.]
McCain’s Radical Agenda
Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?
These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.
A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.
[emphasis added]
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Twenty million Americans, just like me.
"It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money," said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs.
According to the study: "The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now."
The net effect of the plan, the study said, "almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care."
So if you're not hurting enough today with the collapse of the U.S. financial system, then there's tremendous more hurt coming your way if God forbid McPalin gets elected.
The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)
. . .The upshot is that many more Americans — millions more — will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As Senator McCain has said: "I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health care system to the patients themselves."
. . .This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.
And if you don't want to believe Bob Herbert because you think he's part of the "media elite", then take a look at how the Wall Street Journal describes how McPalin will destroy the remains of the U.S. healthcare system.
Less regulation, so Main Street can really taste what's happening on Wall Street. The unfettered free market will take care of us. You bet it will.
THE McCAIN PLAN:
Sen. McCain would reduce both state and federal regulations and give consumers more choices about where to buy health insurance.
. . .The Health Affairs article, whose lead author is Thomas Buchmueller of the University of Michigan, finds other problems with the McCain plan. Because administrative costs are higher on the open market, where insurers evaluate customers individually, he predicts that coverage would be more expensive but less generous.
The McCain plan would allow consumers to buy insurance across state lines. That would give people more choices, but it also would undermine state laws that mandate certain benefits and provide various consumer protections.
http://online.wsj.com/...
And another opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal.
In contrast, Sen. McCain, who constantly repeats his no-new-taxes promise on the campaign trail, proposes a big tax hike as the solution to our health-care crisis. His plan would raise taxes on workers who receive health benefits, with the idea of encouraging their employers to drop coverage. A study conducted by University of Michigan economist Tom Buchmueller and colleagues published in the journal Health Affairs suggests that the McCain tax hike will lead employers to drop coverage for over 20 million Americans.
What would happen to these people? Mr. McCain will give them a small tax credit, $5,000 for a family and $2,500 for an individual, and tell them to navigate the individual insurance market on their own.
For middle- and lower-income people, the credits are way too small. They are less than half the cost of policies today ($12,000 on average for a family), and are far below the 75% that most employers offering coverage contribute. Further, their value would erode over time, as the credit increases less rapidly than average premiums.
Those already sick are completely out of luck, as individual insurers are free to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Mr. McCain has proposed a high-risk pool for the very sick, but has not put forward the money to make it work.
http://online.wsj.com/...
So if you're one of McPalin's "so-called uninsurables", you out of luck in John McCain's America. Pretty soon, we uninsurables will be discussed with the same hostility that is now reserved for undocumented workers.
And this is the reason why McPalin wants to talk about flying pigs and lipstick.