Money as an American Value
I have been thinking about this a lot lately in my struggles to understand the world around me-I guess in my struggles to define the things I am seeing I have started making these connections with the things that seem to make the world go round. I guess we are all trying to find our own meaning in the things we do–maybe again I don’t have the luxury of a child to shrink my focus down to something manageable, something meaningful in a lot of ways. I think the things we leave, the legacies in whatever fashion format or space we allot–either with our words or images, song, it’s an art, all of this, dancing around the edges of meaning something huge and basically realizing you will die and nobody will fucking remember you for more than the moment you crossed their path.
I got into a thing the other day discussing healthcare and what the ACA did versus how people are treating it. Now–I would have had a fuck of a lot more respect if people actually fucking saw what the hell the ACA did ultimately. I can say this with absolute certainty because I fell victim to it as well–it’s hard to get untangled from the web when everyone is caught in it.
Let me just tell you something about what the ACA did. It made it not a prerequisite to be of any certain level of health in order to get care–and if you have an issue needing care medically–if you didn’t have a job offering care, you were likely in a position where you were either poor enough to qualify or the cost was a welcome change from all of the rejection. It made it not a matter of means to get the care you needed at least initially. To maintain was a matter of monthly premiums–but they could of course still charge you whatever they wanted for the appointment. The reason I know this is I have never been reasonably billed just a copay. PERIOD. No matter whatever my card said, I have never been charged just $20 or $50 for any appointment. And the deductible?!? IT MEANS NOTHING. It never has, and in the current incarnation of laws, never will. What it is is a fucking limit on what your insurance company plans on paying out, that is for sure.
So given this, all the fucking ACA did is make it so that you could not be denied that care under the monthly premium. I know a hell of a lot of people who probably breathed a sigh of relief when they realized they could buy a policy without regard to their history previous–because literally no amount of money you were willing to pay, up to a grand or whatever a month for a policy would require they cover you. That is what the ACA did. It did not help you from getting sued into bankruptcy. It just leveled the playing field a little bit for people who’ve had it hard enough for as long as they did.
Yeah–so the getting into the thing the other day discussing healthcare and the flippant and fucking hateful shit thrown in my direction makes me believe people are just incapable of being grownups right now, and I am fucking dropping out of any more political commentary in all but very general terms. The mean and callous dripping out of people and the way they respond to me just makes me realize if someone like me can piss people off at that level–honestly there’s almost no point in trying to level with people right now. If the world gleans some way to have a larger conscience and start being a lot fucking nicer, I might come back and participate but right now I am just constantly bombarded with these ideas that most of the world does not want to get along. I sometimes cannot get anyone to see my point of view to save my life–and once I realized I was arguing with someone who told me that all of my problems seem to be about money or Trump and his mother was suffering in chemo over the past 15 years and my life has been way easier apparently in the interim because I hadn’t been through chemo–which is true but I am not arguing with someone who is trying to tell me that my whole adult life being sick was the equivalent of his mom, likely in her 60’s–that my life was cake and hers was tough. Once I realized my argument was hey asshole, I would have liked to have had children I realized it was over. There was no point because there was too much animosity already sewn in the argument.
And I realize all of these things we concentrate on–I mean think about all the money solutions to everything lately. Throw money at this, throw money at that, insure this, da da da…The United States of Money (you only matter if you have it).
I have more to say on this and some other correlations I have made…but for now it’s right before noon and I’ve got shit to do, as they say.
