I was sitting in the waiting room at my eye doctor's office this week having a conversation with another patient when he started in on the old saw about how "Obamacare" was going to ruin America, and soon most doctors would be quitting the business (sounds like an idea he picked up on Faux News). The reason I was there to begin with was that this is to be my final month with health insurance and I thought I had better get everything checked out while I could. This idea of spending the next 3 1/2 years without any health coverage makes me more than a bit nervous to say the least, but no more than spending over half of each unemployment check for health coverage that I seldom use.
I have been paying for COBRA coverage since being laid off in 2009, but I got a letter from my former employer yesterday informing me of another huge rate increase and I have to draw the line somewhere. There had been a COBRA premium reduction for part of that period thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), but that was limited to 15 months, which I have now exceeded. The new rate will eat up over half of each unemployment check, leaving me with little else to live on and since I will soon be a 99er, I have bigger financial issues ahead of me.
I know the Repugs like to rant about how high unemployment is caused by people who are trained for the wrong jobs or by lazy bums who should learn to accept lower salaries, but wasn't tech supposed to be the future in this country after all of the manufacturing jobs went away? I have already reinvented myself several times through the years but somehow the path this time is not so clear. I had originally done a 4-year apprenticeship back in the 70s to become a journeyman machinist, only to see those jobs quickly evaporate after the oil embargo-induced downturn of that decade. At that point I went back to school and earned a computer science degree, which everyone agreed at the time was the holy grail of education. Combining that with my experience in factory automation would surely be my ticket to success, but toward the end of the 80s it became clear that this country was on a path that would end with no factories left here to automate, so in the 90s, yet one more time I was forced to change directions and this time I combined my writing and computer skills to become a technical writer.
I had finally found my niche; software documentation would not go away and how could they outsource that? Even as I watched the software development jobs around me evaporate, first being filled by Asians who were here on H1-B visas, and later by Asians in Asia, I was not worried. And then came the day I was replaced by two writers in China (each making less than $10 an hour) and told to clean out my desk. This was at the time of the big economic downturn in 2009 and even if I had been in the right age demographic (which I was not), there were no jobs to be had. I got all kinds of advice: buy a new suit, shave my beard, color my hair, anything to hide my age. But the truth was that I could not hide the fact that I was 60+, and for the most part my experience was that no one wants to hire old people. I can remember job hunting while I was in my 50s and sitting across the desk from a 20-something hiring manager and feeling his disdain as he waited to get me out of there so that he could interview the younger people who were waiting outside his office. And now, even if there were positions to interview for (which there were not), at age 61 it would surely be in an even worse position. Age discrimination in this country might not be legal but it is certainly rampant as corporations prefer to hire younger people who will work for less and whom they can push harder to work more hours (and put up with more crap) for the same pay.
So how did this country arrive at this point where jobs are scarce and employees are now forced to accept whatever jobs might be available and be happy just to have a job, any job? In the early 70s things looked so promising; salaries were rising, employee benefits were improving and even included company-funded pension plans, a rarity today. In 1998 while between jobs due to the Bush 41 recession, my wife and I decided to sell whatever we could, pack the rest into storage, buy an inexpensive motorhome, and take a tour of America to try to decide where to move to next and start over yet one more time. We spent six months making a big circle around the country. During that tour of America we had a chance to see first hand the results of a decade of job outsourcing. Across America small towns looked the same with storefronts boarded up, factories closed, and a thriving Wal-mart at the edge of town selling goods shipped from China. It was obvious that something huge was happening and that towns everywhere were dying as a result. In our search we resolved to find an area that was supported by more tech jobs but how many jobs had this country already lost: 10 million; 20 million; 30 million? And what were those displaced people going to do? In the short term they apparently lived off of credit, first exhausting the accumulated equity in their houses, and then running up huge amounts of credit card debt. Was it any wonder that the banking crisis came about?
While I like to think that I did everything I could to ensure that I did not end up in the same boat, here I am today having to decide between food and health insurance. For me, "Obamacare" is too little and too late. This month makes the last month that I will have health insurance until I turn 65 in 2014 and start receiving medicare benefits. Even though I am in relatively good health this prospect is daunting. I tried this once before when I was out of work 20 years ago and the results were not good and I still suffer the effects, but there are no other choices. The other patient in the waiting room got an earful for sure, but how many people really understand what is going on in this country? How many other people are (or are soon to be) in the same position as multimillion dollar bonuses and tax cuts go to the rich while the rest of us live on the edge? As long as the media is mostly owned by those corporations that have gotten us to this point, mostly only those of us who are at this point will truly understand and even many of those will not realize why.