The so-called Massachusetts health care reform

There was a story on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer the other night about this. You can read the transcript HERE; I think there is also audio and video available.At first I didn’t like the story, because people were going on and on about how great it was. And it is indeed great for people who have NO money at all, such as the Gores in the fist part of the story.

But my concern was for the working people who fall between the cracks? These are people who have jobs and incomes, but make too much for state subsidized insurance. And they don’t, for some reason, get insurance through their jobs.

I was pleased that they DID finally hit on this. Take the case of Ron Norton…

SUSAN DENTZER: That led to the so-called individual mandate, a requirement that people buy coverage deemed affordable to them or pay a penalty to the state. Ron Norton, who makes about $40,000 a year teaching medical radiology at one of the state’s community colleges, was one of those affected.

RON NORTON: I don’t have a problem with mandating that everybody be covered. I do have a problem with mandating that people be covered by products that are unaffordable.

And, basically, I think what they’ve done here is create something which is unsustainable.

SUSAN DENTZER: Norton’s community college job doesn’t come with health insurance, and he says the cheapest private plan he could buy costs about $3,500 a year.

RON NORTON: The additional expense of insurance is just not something that I can bear right now. I would like to see everybody have access to health care, but I would like to see it done under a single-payer system.

SUSAN DENTZER: So rather than comply with the individual insurance mandate, Norton has elected to pay the state the penalty: $220 this year and $912 the next.

The cutoff for a single individual, no kids, to get any state subsidized insurance is $31,000. Since Norton earns $40,000, he makes *too much money*. Never mind that most of this guy’s income is probably being spent on housing…it is freakin’ EXPENSIVE to live here.

Ron Norton’s plight is EXACTLY what I’ve been bitching about since this thing passed. There are probably thousands of people just like him, who are still uninsured and opting to pay the penalties, because they are still WAY cheaper than even the cheapest insurance.

Also, I’m sure that the cheaper plans aren’t very good. They probably have ginormous deductibles. And the list of things that the cheap plans DON’T cover is probably twice as long as the list of what they DO cover. Many do not cover prescription drugs.

So, even if Ron Norton ponied up the $3,500 that he doesn’t have for the crappy insurance, he may still find himself tens of thousands of dollars – or more- in debt, should something happen to him. He’d be just throwing that $3,500 down the toilet, so if he HAS to throw money down the toilet, at least he can lose less of it.

Health care reform, my ass. It’s nothing but a freakin’ JOKE. The state should repeal at least the part that FORCES people to buy something that they can’t afford.

Some stores just don’t care…

This is an update on my Get inspired post.

The Shaw’s location in Melrose, MA clearly doesn’t care about this program. The promotional materials and such were not placed as advertised, and it was very difficult to find anything.

The stand with the recipe cards was supposed to be located at the FRONT of the store, according to the website. I did not find it there…I found it relegated to the back of the store. It was in a tight little space, and I almost had some stupid guy almost ram into me with a shopping cart while I was looking at the display.

But they did have a good collection of the free recipe cards, and they were also selling a little binder, for a buck, to keep them in.  So I ponied up and bought one, anything to keep things organized and easy to find.

Also, the featured ingredients for the recipes, the ones that they had coupons for, were NOT clearly labeled on the shelves, as advertised.  They didn’t even HAVE the Shaw’s brand romaine hearts for the BLT salad recipe, in fact, they had NO Shaw’s brand salads at all.

I am convinced that this particular location wants this great program to fail.  This is a smaller store, in an upscale town, and most of the stuff on the shelves is pre-made crap.  Most of the customers are the sort that really make me sick…stay-at-home moms who can’t be arsed to cook.  So what DO they do all day long, I wonder?  I guess these are the same ones who bitch about food being so expensive.  Well, maybe if you actually COOKED, and didn’t buy tons of over-packaged, processed CRAP, you’d save money?

But hey, they are just giving the local clientèle what they want, I suppose.  Next time, I will go to the much larger Shaw’s in Saugus, where they sell food to people who actually want to cook their own.  I bet they are implementing the program much better there.

Oh…and the recipes are very tasty.  If you live near a Shaw’s, pick up the cards and try them!

A couple of local news stories…

1. Watchdog Group Gives Mass. D- For Child Protection. Yep, yet more proof that if you want to be a criminal, come to Massachusetts. You can beat your kids into a coma, even kill them, and the state does little to nothing. Okay, so in the Haleigh Poutre case, the adoptive father who abused her is going on trial…but where was the state before all of this happened? Why could this have not been prevented?

But I bet that if some guy accidentally bought his kid a Mike’s Hard Lemonade at Fenway Park, DSS would be all over him. This actually happened at Comerica Park, at a Detroit Tigers game. I blogged about that HERE. Yeah, the guy made a stupid mistake, but taking away the kid and banning the guy from his own home was WAY over the top. Meanwhile, I’m sure there are kids in Detroit who desperately need help, yet DSS there chose to mess with this guy instead.

New Hampshire, BTW, got an A from the same group.

2. Kids & Treadmills. This story was on the FOX-25 News last night, and it was yet another WTF? moment. They need a NEWS STORY to warn parents about this? Shouldn’t this be COMMON SENSE?

I guess not. Now that I think of it, when I’ve been in stores that sell exercise equipment, they almost always have signs that say to keep kids off of the floor models. But does anyone listen? Nope…I see kids playing on the treadmills and stuff all the time!

What gets me is that a lot of these machines have safety locks…but the idiot parents of one kid who got hurt left the key thing where the kid could find it!  It sucks that the kid got so very badly hurt, but I see it as parental negligence, and not the fault of the Evil Treadmill.

At least I don’t recall anything being said about suing the manufacturers of the treadmills.  That’s good.

Get inspired…

Yesterday, while I was listening to the Red Sox game on the radio, they  had a rep from Shaw’s supermarkets as a guest in the booth.  Shaw’s is an official sponsor of the Red Sox Radio Network.

The rep was talking about a new partnership that they made with the fine folks at America’s Test Kitchen.  You may have seen this long-running cooking show on PBS.  Anyhoo, what they are doing is offering free recipe cards from ATC, for meals that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less.  Also available in-store will be coupons for some of the ingredients for these recipes.

You can also sign up for free to get access to getinspired.shaws.com.  There, you can print out the recipe of the week, as well as a sheet of money saving coupons.  When you sign up (did I mention that it’s free?), you will also receive a coupon worth $10 off of a $50 purchase at Shaw’s.

Also, there will be tastings of the recipe of the week at some stores; the info about this is on the site.

I personally think this is an awesome idea.  Anything that might encourage people to cook at home, rather than buying all of that pre-fab, over-packaged, over-processed, over-priced, pre-marinated crap, is just ducky with me.  I have the highest regard for America’s Test Kitchen (which is put out by the same people who put out Cook’s Illustrated magazine, BTW).  Their recipes really do work; they spend a lot of time testing them until they turn out just right.

With the cost of food going up, I don’t understand why more people around here don’t cook at home.  It’s WAY cheaper than buying some crap that is mostly packaging.  Maybe this campaign might get people to see a better way.  I hope it succeeds.

Only in Messychusetts…

Oops! State Bills Taxpayers Twice

Now, it turned out that we’ll be getting a whopping $78 refund from Deval Patrick, so we were not affected by this.  But you can bet that if we WERE affected, I’d be going totally ballistic right now.  How much do you want to bet that the state will be taking their sweet old time getting all of these people their money back?  It will be interesting to see how long it actually takes, as well as how long it will take for them to cover late fees, overdraft fees and such, as they claim they will.

Sorry, but I just have a hard time trusting the government.  Can you blame me?

Maybe it’s a good thing that Mike still insists on filing our taxes the good, old-fashioned way…on PAPER.  So, if we did indeed owe Deval Patrick some money towards his new Cadillac fund, we’d have sent a check, rather than e-filed.  And then we’d not have been affected by this.

It sort of makes me scared about the bills I DO pay online.  The utility bills have always been in my name, since I lived in this place long before Mike came along.  So we just kept it that way, and now I take care of making the payments to Verizon, National Grid, and Keyspan.  I do them all online, because I’m VERY bad at writing checks and getting them mailed out.  I do not use the auto-pay feature, because I want to be able to control as to WHEN the money comes out of the account.  So I log in every month and pay the bills manually.

Yesterday, I paid all three, to the tune of around $260.  Now, I’m thinking about what would happen if any or all of those got double-billed.  Unless Mike spent money that I don’t know about, we do have enough of a cushion for a double-billing.  But what about people who DON’T have such a cushion?  I can certainly see how something like this can cause a LOT of problems  for a LOT of people.

So far, we have never been double-billed for any of the utilities.  I probably shouldn’t say that too loud, though.  But still, it disturbs me that this problem has to happen to anyone in the first place.  I’m sure these people feel helpless, that their money, that they possibly need to buy food or gas or some other frivolous item, is being held hostage by the government.  I know I’d feel that way if it were me.

So, I will let Mike continue to do the taxes the old-fashioned way.  It’s safer that way!