The Government Just Doesn’t Get It – “Affordable” Means You Can Actually Afford It!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

So there are more difficulties plaguing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Now there’s a shocker folks!

I’ve already highlighted the mess that the government has made in trying to bring it’s computer systems online to enable enrollment in the new program. (See “What Am I” post from about a month ago)

Now people who thought they were already adequately insured are finding that this may not be the case, at least not for much longer. The private insurance issue is affecting lots and lots of people all over America, particularly those who were trying to be responsible and had adequate insurance for themselves and their families.

Most of them bought their insurance on the open market. Obama promised that would still be secure after his new Affordable Care Act was implemented.

He said, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

He lied.

Obama’s new law actually outlaws all but a small percentage of “grandfathered” individual insurance policies and requires carriers to instead offer coverage that is more comprehensive.

And there’s more trouble ahead. In 2018, an Obamacare tax on high-cost insurance plans kicks in and could cause upheaval in that part of the market as well.

The truth is that the law was designed to gradually eliminate the old system altogether.

The result?

All across the country those who thought they had adequate insurance are being issued with notices from insurers explaining that their plans are ending. Ending thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

It has understandably caused confusion, fear, anxiety and a great deal of anger.

Losing health insurance can be a terrifying possibility in America. Particularly as one gets older and policies are more difficult and expensive to replace.  

So is this the last of the Obamacare problems?

I think it would be a very safe bet to say no it won’t.

Affordable Health Care is a laudable goal. I’ve always said that. But the way to tackle it is to make the existing system more affordable by curbing the excessive profiteering of drug companies and medics, not burdening this and future generations of ordinary Americans with another government white elephant that the country can’t afford.

Unfortunately the government just doesn’t get it – “affordable” means you can actually afford it!

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Today is a beautiful day

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I know an architect.

Nothing very unusual in that.

Except for one thing, this one is blind.

He hasn’t been blind all his life but from his late teens, when he was training to be an architect, he started to lose his sight due to an inherited disease and eventually it went altogether.

To his credit he hasn’t let it stop him leading as full a life as possible. Although there have been good and bad results.

For example, he insists on helping around the house but on one occasion he picked up a kitten along with the dirty clothes and promptly dumped all in the washing machine. Both the clothes and the kitten were clean at the end of the washing cycle, but the unfortunate kitten was also dead.

He also tells a story about doing some shopping at a time when his sight was almost gone, but not quite. He was in a local pharmacy and queued up at the counter waiting to hand over his prescription. He waited and waited, but the pharmacy assistant kept ignoring him. He could hear other people getting served, but never him. He waited and he waited and he waited some more, but nothing. The girl behind the counter just kept ignoring him.

Finally his patience just ran out. He was angry. He thought he was being deliberately ignored because of his disability and that other ‘seeing’ customers were being allowed to jump the queue. He spoke to the assistant who was standing right in front of him. She didn’t respond. Then he spoke louder. Still no reaction. Then he started to give forth some abuse which included a good bit of strong language. The other customers in the pharmacy all stopped what they were doing and watched what was going on.

People were a little embarrassed. Nobody intervened except for one gentleman, who walked up to my friend, put his hand on his shoulder and said quietly buy firmly, “Come over here son, and this other person will attend to your order.”

He found out later that he had been patiently queuing up in front of one of those body and head mannequins that was sitting on the counter and which the pharmacy was using to display a ladies wig, and had been hurling his abuse and angst at it and not to a real person at all.

A few incidents like that aside, he has coped quite well. He has compensated for his lack of sight by developing an extremely good memory and equally good recall. I think that proves that the more you use your brain the better it works.

What a pity so many people these hardly use theirs at all!

For a lot of years his way of designing houses was very laborious. He would plan the whole thing out in his head and then give verbal instructions to his son who would dutifully draft out a sketch of the proposed building. It was slow and tedious for the recipient of the instructions, although he reveled in the task himself – a little bit too much and too long for most people’s liking if truth be told. I know because I was the unfortunate recipient of the drafting instructions on a couple of occasions.

And then a possible solution hit me like a brick.

A Lego brick actually.

I bought a few large base sheets and he got himself some small Lego bricks and from then on he was able to draft his own floorplans, and to scale using each little brick as equivalent to one foot or whatever. It worked well for him and gave him a bit more freedom to plan and re-plan without involving anyone else in the process. I don’t know whether he still uses it or not, but I kind of hope so.

Now, what sparked this blog post in my head wasn’t him at all. It was a video that I watched recently. It’s not about architects either, but it is about someone who is blind. And it is also about the power of words which as a blogger and writer I appreciate, as I’m sure many of you do too.

It’s a nice video.

I hope you enjoy it.