Letters to the Editor
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@ Gams on Glass
Gams on Glass: It was AKA Smith who stated that Hillary's healthcare plan would be set so that no one would would have to pay more that 10% of their income for health insurance. I thought I had read that in the article, but unfortunately I relied on a letter written by AKA Smith, who was starred for his contribution. I read tens to hundreds of thousands of words/day from multiple sources and cannot always have the exact article at my fingertips, but at least the 10% figure did come from something from this article and letters to the editor. My fault, believing AKA Smith. But no matter -- any figure that is payable by an adult over and above their everyday current expenses will still work for the point I was attempting to make.
I fully understand the "buying in bulk concept" of lowering costs for all manner of goods and services, including health insurance, purchased by employers and the government. My problem with Hillary's mandated universal coverage concerns those who are living virtually up to or over their level of net pay. What you missed, apparently, while concentrating on my "hard luck story and the wrinkles" is the point about families who by the next pay check have VIRTUALLY NO EXTRA AVAILABLE FUNDS TO PAY FOR ANYTHING ELSE. This could be for individual adults and/or families.
I know too many people today and in the past who have had to "rob Peter to pay Paul" each month, deciding which bill they can fudge this month to pay another more important bill. The $5,000 for health insurance is for those families with children who are making the maximum amount of $50,000/year under the current statistics that half the population makes $50,000 or LESS in gross pay in this country. I could have used $3000 for families earning $30,000, etc. Again, my question for Hillary Clinton, who, by the way has never answered it in the debates, when asked directly and I have watched all 20, is "How, exactly will you mandate that everyone MUST pay for health insurance if it is not provided for by their employer or the government?" Will she garnish wages? Will she levy fines? What does the word MANDATE mean in her lexicon?
Theoreticals don't count. Provisions and grants given to those living at or below the the poverty line don't count, when you are living just above the poverty line and won't qualify. These would be the people who make salaries between the ridiculously low government idea of the poverty line and the working poor, especially families making between the current poverty line and $50,000, which I repeat is the statistical median point for half the families in America.
All I am asking for is a definite, clear, concise and honest answer to what Senator Clinton means when she calls for mandates.
The rest of my letter was in reference to Mike Madden's article and the overarching belief that the Clinton administration and the 1990's were the best of times and worthy of repeating. Not everyone benefitted as much as foggy memories, enhanced by the terrible, horrendous, scandalous, frightening Bush administraton. Anything when matched against W's time in office would probably seem like we were living in a land of milk and honey with streets paved with gold.
I used my experiences and memories of life in the 1990's to prove a point because that is the only life and reality I can be absolutely certain of, but, I have learned from others then and now, that their realities matched mine, perhaps not in the choice of career, but in general. We did not all get rich in the 1990's. Life was not perfect in the 1990's and the nostalgia for those "good old days" was the point of this article in the first place. Also I happened to work on the film _Rocky II_ which will be 30 years old the year whoever takes office next time. Hillary Clinton her own self compared the experience of Rocky Balboa to herself and it tied in with my point about the differences of life experiences and outlook people have when they are in their 20's and later, when they are in their 50's, as I was and am. (Side point, Rocky wins the fight and title in Rocky II, not in the first film.)
By the way, after I left the film business in 1979, I worked for five years in an inner city hospital from '79 to '84 and watched the staff be cut and cut some more due to the advent of DRG's and HMO's. It was the beginning of the end of healthcare as we knew it in this country, and led to such things as drive by mastectomies, births, and the use of the Emergency Room as the family doctor for many people who could not afford health insurance and did not receive it as a benefit from their employers.
I don't see through a glass darkly, I have been seeing clearly for decades.