The Shutdown Gets Personal: Getting Mom to a Doctor
October 7, 2013
I‘ve spoken to you several times recently regarding my mother’s sudden & ongoing medical crisis following a string of medical mistakes (and incompetence) that turned my otherwise healthy mother into a (for lack of a better word) “vegetable” last June. I blame her HMO for creating this mess, and we had to fight them just to get her into a rehabilitation hospital, then fight them again when they threatened to cut her off if we didn’t bury their mistake by putting Mom in a nursing home. I’ve been wanting for months to take her to a specialist, but the HMO refused to cover any doctor that did not work for them. When I finally found a specialist willing to see her, I had to fight again to get her out of that #@!*% HMO and back onto good old-fashioned Medicare (which just about EVERY doctor accepts.) I’m pleased to report that as of October 1st, Mom is back on Medicare and scheduled to see a specialist Wednesday… just as the Teanuts have Shutdown the government and are now threatening to Default on the Debt Ceiling. Which means the Social Security checks paying for Mom’s rehab could stop, and Medicare won’t have the money to pay her doctor. Suddenly, this artificial Tea Party invented “crisis” has become very personal.
Conservative icon “George Will” finally faced up to the fact he wasn’t fooling anyone pretending to be a “Moderate” Republican over there on ABC for the past 20 years, and joined the cast of The Biggest Loser, er, Fox “news”, expressing opinions that put him squarely to the Right of Ted Cruz. On Fox “news” Sunday yesterday, when asked about the possibility of Default on the Federal Budget, Will declared “there will be no default” by pointing out the meaningless fact that, “We collect 10 times as much in tax revenue as is needed to service the Debt” (ergo, we have enough money to avoid Default.) This is classic George Will bull$hit (and an opinion held only by the most FAR right Tea Baggers). Yes, that’s absolutely true that we “collect 10 times as much in tax revenue than we pay in interest on the Debt”… which wouldn’t be a problem if didn’t have all these other expenses like… oh… like PAYING THE MILITARY or for the War in Afghanistan (which, as Bill Maher rightly pointed out Friday, if we ended now, would save us nearly $100 Billion dollars.), or paying outrageous prescription drug prices as a part of the “Medicare Part-D” program THEY created under GW Bush where they themselves made it illegal for the Federal Government to negotiate lower drug prices. We just saw massive forest fires in the West… the result of historic drought due to their denial of Climate Change… and massive flooding in the East as all the moisture sucked dry from the West was dumped in the East for the same reason (disasters which create OTHER disasters in their wake.) These states have already declared themselves “Disaster Areas” entitled to Disaster Relief funding. Where do they get the money for that?
Republicans… consisting of an awful lot of “Cafeteria Christians”… want a “Cafeteria Budget” where they can pick & choose what government functions they fund on a case-by-case basis upon discovering there are a lot of things people actually need government to do. That’s no way to run a $3-Trillion dollar government. The National Institute of Health is shutdown, then when someone points out that there are sick children that won’t be receiving their cancer treatments, suddenly they’re asking for a special exemption for those poor kids they clearly were never even aware of before they took us on this joy-ride (how many times have I written about the fact Republicans NEVER think about the consequences before they act? [see: Iraq]). They shutdown the National Parks and then attack a furloughed park ranger for telling a busload of World War II veterans that the park is closed. The Shutdown lays off nearly 15,000 FEMA employees, but when a Tropical Storm develops off the waters of a half dozen red states, suddenly FEMA is allowed to call over 11,000 of them (nearly 80 percent) back to work… as they suddenly realize, “Hey! The Federal Government really is necessary!”
Of course, if the anarchists in the GOP get their way, they won’t allow an increase in the Debt Ceiling, meaning we won’t have the money to carve out any of these special exemptions. No cancer treatments for sick children, no bringing back FEMA employees in an emergency, Mom doesn’t get her Social Security check, and Medicare lacks the funds to pay for her doctor’s appointment. Seal Team 6, which just pulled off another spectacular capture of an alQaeda terrorist guilty of killing Americans back in the 90’s, who eluded a Bush Administration distracted by their obsession with Iraq, but found and killed by the Obama Administration 15 years after committing his crimes. Do we carve out a special exemption for them too? Where are they going to get the money to pay for all these exemptions? They’ll NEVER raise taxes. That just leaves “cuts”.
As Treasury Secretary Jack Lew reminded everyone on “Meet the Press” yesterday, we are STILL operating under “The Sequester” from earlier this year, deep across-the-board indiscriminate budget cuts. We have been financing the government using “budget tricks” up to now, but as of October 17th, those “tricks” will have been exhausted. No more rabbits left to pull out of anyone’s hat. Yet these haters of all things government” keep finding programs they want keep while the only thing they can think of to cut is the one thing the CBO says will actually SAVE us Billions each year. (“ObamaCare” if you haven’t figured it out.)
Prior to the Shutdown, the GOP was heavily hyping a CBO report (pdf) on a Republican House Bill (H.R. 2668) that found that “delaying the implementation of The Affordable Care Act by one year” would “save us $35 Billion dollars.” Google “CBO ObamaCare saves billions”, and the first two pages are nothing but Right Wing links to the same report. So I checked out the report myself. It concluded a “savings” of “$35 Billion OVER TEN YEARS” simply by delaying those start-up costs (and reductions in funding to programs like CHIP… the Children’s Health Insurance Program). I don’t know about you, but I don’t think a savings of $3.5 Billion a year… 0.3% of the Federal Budget… on the backs of sick children is going to be enough to offset our expenses if they fail to raise the Debt Ceiling 10 days from now. (A brief scan of the CBO report appears to not take into consideration any SAVINGS resulting from the new health care law over those 10 years. Only the expenses incurred in the first year of roll out.)
So, what do you cut to come up with the money for all those government services you suddenly feel aren’t so bad? Remember, George Will already pointed out that 1/10th of the Federal Budget is spoken for (servicing our debt.) Republicans are GREAT at complaining about “wasteful spending”, but when it comes to actually naming those “wasteful” programs…
In the infamous words of Gov. Rick Perry, it’s “Energy, Commerce, and… er, uh, I forget. Oops.”
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October 7, 2013
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Admin Mugsy · 
2 Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Healthcare, Partisanship, Right-Wing Insanity
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2 Responses
Hey Mugsy– Hope your mom gets better in spite of the bullshit being pulled by (especially) your state’s Senator-in-training. What a friggin’ disaster– it’s like a West Fertilizer explosion felt nationwide…
For me, no work or regular internet these days; will check in when I can.
Go give your mom a hug (and maybe some ammo…) The struggle does, indeed, continue.
😉
Thanks Fast.
I’d probably be parked outside a McDonald’s or Starbucks all day for the free WiFi if I ever lost my regular connection. 🙂
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