Those wonderful pre-ACA days

Wasn't it wonderful in the pre-ACA days when you were healthy? You could get plans with big deductibles, co-pays, coverage limits, yearly and lifetime caps, along with routine coverage denials for people with those plans, and applications denied for not-so-healthy people. Pre-existing condition? Sorry. Don't work for a company with more than 20 employees? Sorry. Oh, that treatment is "experimental" so we don't cover it. Sorry. Oh, you didn't tell us you had acne as a teenager long before the history period we asked for on your application. That is a preexisting condition you didn't tell us about and we are canceling your policy. Sorry.

The number one cause of bankruptcy was medical bills. Too many people got sick and found out their coverage was basically only a coupon. Remember how many raffles and fish-fries and other fund-raisers and collection jars there were for someone who got sick? What you had was insurance for healthy people and companies that routinely denied insurance claims when things got pricey. Sure, the ACA sucks, but at least a lot of people finally got coverage.

So until we can finally get universal single-payer coverage that Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom have had since at least 1995, we are stuck with a Republican plan (RomneyCare) that is for-profit. We're sorry your premiums went up when insurers had to cover sick people. Complain to other healthy people, because the rest of us don't buy it.

America - Land of Peons

Welcome to America. Land of the Wild West, unaffordable healthcare, unequal justice, bigotry, discrimination, high-cost secondary education, for-profit primary education. Land of laws written by corporations and the wealthy, a country where the main job of politicians is chasing mega-rich donors and corporate dollars. Welcome to unabashed greed, hypocrisy, corruption, religious intolerance and crumbling separation of church and state, attacks on retirements and constant lies about its cost, and asinine juvenile dangerous foreign diplomacy. Add in a narcissistic, delusional idiot president with cynical enablers.

Chanting that America is Number One does not make it so.

America - Land of Peons (pronounced PEE-ons).

Social Security Misinformation

Social Security is running out of money? Seriously? Would you be broke if you had $2.8 trillion in the bank? Or are you somehow under the delusion that the United States is going to default on its debts? Tell that to the Chinese and all the others who hold trillions in U.S. Treasury Bonds. You know, those interest-bearing bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the United States? The U.S. is not going to default even if the National Debt were $100 trillion; that would make the costs of borrowing skyrocket.

Calling Social Security the biggest federal expense or a liability is a damned bald-faced lie. It has its own revenue stream and is off-budget. In case you don't know what that means, it is that Social Security is not part of the federal budget. By law. Changes in benefits do not affect by even one thin dime the federal budget or the National Debt. The only change is the date that the $2.8 trillion Social Security Trust Fund zeroes out, at which point only 80% of benefits could be paid out for the next 75 years. Simple adjustments (which used to be routine) to the payroll tax or the salary cap would fully fund Social Security through the year 2093. Or don't you want to raise the salary cap to let the wealthy pay more payroll taxes than a minuscule percentage of their incomes of millions of dollars?

If you cut Social Security benefits today, there would be zero effects through 2034 except to the folks who rely on those benefits. Nada. Zilch, zip, zero, null point void. Saving Social Security by cutting benefits? That is a fucking con job by radical conservatives who are ideologically opposed to government-run programs, especially to Social Security. Can't have wildly successful government programs, 'cause that would put a damper on their anti-government anti-regulation anti-responsibility efforts.

The financial sector would love to get their hands on administrative fees (think 20% overhead instead of less than 2%) for all the Social Security retirement accounts, and they would like the $2.8 trillion Trust Fund to be in their pockets. Privatization. Profits. The almighty dollar. The free market, which is supposedly inherently moral (Ayn Rand is their God and Paul Ryan is their disciple). They have theirs, and they want ours, too.

Are you of the opinion that Congress somehow stole our retirements because the Trust Fund consists of U.S. Treasury Bonds? "Hey, Congress, pay back the money you stole from our Social Security!" Treasury Bonds are just the method that our government uses to finance the nation's debt (see Chinese buyers of Treasury Bonds above). And do you think that Social Security is a savings program rather than retirement insurance, and that we are somehow being screwed? Do you also believe that Social Security is currently running deficits?

Look up interest-bearing Treasury Bonds (which are what is in the Trust Fund); Social Security is still racking up surpluses. Politicians love to include those surpluses in their budget figures even if Social Security is not part of the federal budget. But what will happen when there are deficits, or more benefits being paid out than revenues? Are baby boomers screwed? Look up Social SecurityTrust Fund. Look up the meaning of trillions in assets. Look up why the Trust Fund was built up (hint: baby boomers). Those deficits were planned for.

But what about the $50 trillion in future liabilities? That figure is for the next 75 years, and that's why payroll taxes and salary caps need slight adjustments. Or should we run around like Chicken Little crying, "This guy is falling!" as radical conservatives try to get us to do.

Maybe the wealthy should have payroll taxes on all of their income, rather than just on $127,000 of their income, which amounts to about $14,000 (or $28,000 if they are self-employed) of their millions in income. The higher your income, the less of a percentage of that income goes to payroll taxes. And your income is not subject to payroll taxes if it is from capital gains, which is the increase in the value of your assets, or the money you make from stock dividends (from all those investments you can afford).

Social Security is not a savings account. It is retirement insurance. Part of it is also disability insurance. If you want to risk your own money in the stock market, go ahead. The Great Recession wiped out many people's savings. Bernie Madoff stole (made off with) billions of dollars of people's savings. Brokers would "invest" with Madoff and present their clients with Madoff's fabricated list of stocks and earnings that clients were supposedly holding, then took no responsibility when the Ponzi scheme collapsed.

Retirement accounts are stolen in other ways, too. Brokers can decimate accounts just by churning (buying and selling stocks) to earn commissions for themselves. Bookkeepers, accountants, financial advisors can and have stolen or lost client's money. Look up why Leonard Cohen had to go back to work in his 70's (hint: stolen retirement).

And what about all the poor workers who struggle to pay the bills and can only dream about putting money aside for retirement? Shall we let poverty rates for seniors rise back up from less than 10% to 50% as it had been before Social Security? Shall we force them to work until they die?

You think Social Security is the problem? You've been conned.