You are truly a gem.

days I defended the ACA so many times it now makes me sick. What a scam, just one more way to allow ahem, "Capitalists" to suck off of taxpayer dollars. A friend of mine just got her latest notice on new premiums, just for her and she's mid 40 but does have Type 2 diabetes, $620 per month, and she didn't even detail out the deductibles. Now whenever I hear someone defend Obamacare it's all I can do not to say anything, and usually I don't manage to hold my tongue anymore on that one. I really don't manage to hold my tongue on much these days but oh well, it's too late for that now IMHO.

Maybe just maybe AOC pushing this might turn
the trick.

according to this clowngress/shits only pay $90 p/mo

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/04/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-calls-for-medic...

I spent $140,000, more or less, before Medicare triggered.
I never met the deductibles. I would love to have that set aside in a retirement account, but noooo!
I am happy you have a home, and that your funky heart valve is nevertheless working as though it were not funky.

so crossed it hurts my knuckles.

If it may console you a bit or distract you, I always get a blank stare in my eyes when I try to understand what all those 'public option', 'single payer', 'medicare for all', 'medicaid for some' is really all about. It has been written so much about it, I am just angry that I still can't grasp it and just give it up and read barely half way through most of the articles trying to explain it.

So, here is my health insurance life story. Just for entertainment.

Before I came to the US I was insured in Germany. Then, oOnce upon the time (early eighties) I was insured over my then husband's insurance. I was never sick and never needed a doctor, so I was not aware if it was a good health insurance coverage or a bad one. Same thing for my husband. I assumed it was a good one, as his employer was an international organization and I think they would get into a lot of troubles if they were not offering their international employees a good health insurance package.

Then I walked away from my marriage and looked for a job. My employers were all German companies with offices inside the US, but way too small in the US to offer health insurance coverage for their locally hired employees. As I didn't have health insurance coverage, I got a private health insurance provider through a German company, whose insurance would cover me even in the US. (They don't do that anymore). It was not cheap, but still payable, while I was still working.

Finally around 2009 or so, my German employer inside the US managed to offer health insurance coverage and I ended up to choose Kaiser Permanente in the state of MD. It was really inexpensive, like 25 dollars a month.

Then I left MD and moved for a time to HI. I got the same Kaiser Permanente program in HI, but it was now a premium of over 300 dollars. So, I was quite surprised about that. In addition I was by then retired and became poor. Made me nervous.

I returned to Germany with the hope the German Health Insurance company I had in the sixties and seventies in Germany would take me back in. There was little hope for that, because according to German regulations, in order to have a right to be taken back in, you were not allowed to be more than 10 years out of their program, like for people like me who lived overseas.

Well, I had forgotten one thing though. I went back home (to Germany) and worked there for four months in 1998/99 and was therefore mandatorily health insured again in Germany and I had chosen then the same health insurance provider I had back in my early years. But because I just worked for a short time there, I had forgotten all about it. It turned out to be my health-life-saver. I worked in the US til 2014 after my four month German stay and then retired one year early (age 65 instead of age 66).

When I came back to Germany in 2016, I walked into my former German Health Insurance provider's office in my home town and asked if they can take me back in, explaining that I was insured with them in the sixties and seventies. I didn't expect they would find me in their computer system. But ... they found me from my work in 1998/99 and said they will take me back, although again I was out of their system again for more than ten years. The lady said, she is bad in math and can't count the years properly with an eye twinkle. I was quite happy about it and relieved.

I have to tell you that I will never leave that program again and feel very relieved that I am covered for everything for sure no matter what. My premiums are adjusted to my retirement income, so I can pay them. They don't cover me in the US though.

Now I have US SS benefits and German retirment benefits, both real small. The US doesn't consider my German retirement income and so I am very poor for the US. I don't have to pay income taxes in the US anymore. The Germans are not that nice, they take my US SS benefits into account for my income and I do have pay income taxes in Germany. So, I pay more taxes in Germany, but can afford the health insurance.

Then I realized that Medicare payments were deducted from my US SS benefits and I asked them, if I HAVE to have medicare (US Consulate in Frankfurt, Germany) and they told me no, I don't have to, but if I get out of Medicare, I will never get back in again. So, I have now both, Medicare and that German Insurance. Makes a lot of sense, right?

Now there is another thingy about not staying outside the US for more than year, or else... but that goes off topic a bit.

I hope you get into Medicare. I hate the US for their healthcare system. It is cruel. I still don't understand why my premium in MD was so low. So, one can say, it's an incomprehensible system for common old people. Why are their programs even different in each US state?

An ongoing joke in my mini family is, 'why make something simple, if you have the chance to make everything complicated'?

Only in America. Bless their souls.

Good ol' Obama. He did so little to help so few.

And according to most employers, I may as well shoot myself. All because I didn't fit into the typical mold of the well-off, well-connected, well-adjusted douchebag.

For what it's worth, happy birthday.

I'm also a 1955 creation. Hang in there brother. Been doing a little research on the Medicare for All/Single payer issue. It's fraught with peril in the hands of the duopoly, and therefore the oligarchy, no doubt.

I’m partially to blame for the rise of Obama. I am so sorry. Here’s the story.

In 2004 I was an unemployed software engineer living in the Boston area. My job had disappeared in 2002 as a result of offshore outsourcing. John Kerry was running for President. He gave me hope by expressing opposition to the Iraq war. True he voted for it but after all he did have peace creds having founded and run the VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War). And he famously called heads of companies that outsource jobs offshore “Benedict Arnold CEOs”. This inspired my screen name that I took when I joined dKos that year, and kept when I moved here.

So in 2004, as an unemployed software engineer living in the Boston area, inspired by John Kerry, I volunteered to work at the Democratic National Convention, which that year was in Boston.

Because of my professional background I was assigned to the volunteer IT squad and helped run their systems. I was given three daytime and one evening time slots to work.

The evening shift just happened to be the one where an Illinois US Senate candidate named Barack Obama gave the keynote speech. It was his famous “Red States / Blue States / United States” speech, the one that propelled him to national prominence. I was working my IT magic at the time and helped make it happen.

Obama was an amazingly charismatic speaker, and I helped give him the platform to bullshit his way into the White House.

The rest is history. Ed and 30 million other Americans now have no healthcare as a result and I am so, so sorry.

the situation permits, been following proposals to 'reform' Medicare. One of the most worrisome proposals is one that will create a Committee appointed by the US Comptroller General (remember David Walker, folks?) to recommend reforms, and oversee it. IOW, to create 'efficiencies' in the Medicare program. Yikes!

Hopefully, progressives can beat back that effort, since it's mostly 'cover' for converting Traditional Medicare into a 'managed care' system, possibly, one that's even worse than Medicare Advantage. I'd say that it's a relatively serious effort, since a deal was struck with Pelosi, recently--she'll support the Rep bringing the Bill to the floor, in exchange for his vote (for her for Speaker Of The House).

Hey, best of luck, especially, with your heart valve. Maybe a miracle will happen, and all the corporatist neoliberals will simply go away!

Blue Onyx

"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong."
~~W. R. Purche