a long essay on my priorities with regard to health care and dollars

[Guest guest]

Let me see if I can say this with historical perspective:

I will summarize what I have spent a good part of the day

searching on the web and in family memoirs.

I was born in 1937, just after the Great Depression in the

United States, which my parents survived, having survived

WWI and the Influenza pandemic of that era, and just be

fore our nation entered WWII. My father had been a Marine

in WWI.

My father (I am NOT bragging here, just stating the facts of my

own circumstances and that of my family) was a corporation

attorney whose resources were vast by the standards of the era,

in small part due to inheritance, but in large part due to his own

efforts as an attorney who cared about people who repre

sented corporations and later, unions. He taught me about right

and about true caring as opposed to feeling " burdened " by giving.

As nearly as I can tell from family records, including tax filings

from my rather and his law practice, he payed close to 90%

income tax each year during the major years that he was working.

He did so with a great feeling of obligation to the society which had

brought him and his family much success. He also donated when

large charities became available, to many charities, and to many

private projects. He was honored to pay those taxes and proud of

having done so, in the hope that if the well-to-do paid enough, the

less financially well off would have to pay less. He was always

a person of high ideals and of great vision.

My father was born in 1897, my mother in 1899, so the very Social

Security and later Medicare programs which my parents had worked

so hard to help to put into place served my father very little, and my

mother only minimally; they fell into what was called the " doughnut

hole, " common to their generation.

One of my father's favourite charities was the Henry Ford Hospital

in Detroit Michigan, where at that time, most anyone could receive

the best medical care available, regardless of resources.

http://www.hospital-data.com/hospitals/HENRY-FORD-HOSPITAL-DETROIT.html

This hospital was established before Social Security, Social Security Disability

Insurance, before Medicare, and before the coming welfare system with

monthly income support and what we now know as Medicaid.

My parents lived to great old age, and due to mismanagement by the

attorney-executor of my father's estate, little of his estate was passed

to his designated heirs. None of us found out about this until after the

legal time for appealing all of this in court.

So, my father's advice to me as a child, which was to prepare for the

life of a relatively impoverished scholar and in his view that I was likely

to marry one, which I dutifully did, was to be frugal.

I had no idea how very frugal I might end up having to be. I was nearly

killed by a physical assault by an administrator of a program in which

I was employed in public health. I was about 51 when this occurred,

and was forced into what became permanent retirement when I was

about 53 years old. I retired solely an entirely due to that injury, and

not due to any of my multitude of other medical conditions. By the

time the long-term effects of that injury were known, it was too late for

me to get file for many of the remedies legally due me, but my colleague

(male) also injured in the attack, and I did sue, and were awarded a con

siderable sum, which I have only recently finally exhausted.

I live solely and entirely on:

Social Security Disability Insurance, of $835.00, due to the fact that few

were paid what many are paid today for the work that I did back then.

And I live on on an additional benefit of $139.00 per month Supplemental

Security Income, as well. I qualify for Extra Help for my Part D Medicare

prescriptions, and receive my Part B medications without direct cost to me.

So, fall into that goup known as " Medi-Medi, " or Medicare and Medicaid,

or in California, " Medicare and Medi-Cal. "

We will not get into how I might better have spent my settlement had I

even faintly anticipated the collapse of the United States dollar!

What I fear most, as even the most far-thinking and people-oriented

of our candidates for high office campaign before us, is that the persons

elected, appointed to the Cabinet, and to the Supreme Court and elected

to the Senate and the House, will NEVER lose track of the needs of the

vast majority of people in our country now, who spend a far higher pro

portion than ever before in our nation's history on:

1) food;

2) health care;

3) transportation, is that our elected officials, all of them will

come to realize

that we must staunch the flow of dollars OUT of our country, and increase

the value of them IN our country as well as in international trade, or we can

not afford to help anyone, and even Social Security and Medicare, SSI,

and Medicaid, will die.

I fear not only for me and for my own generation, but for my children's

generation and for my grand children's generation.

I myself, even with all that I do receive ( Social Security and Medicare

are NOT " entitlement " programs; they are insurances paid for by employees

and by workers together.), I pay close to 45% of my current income on

food, household items, and prescription co-pays, premiums and over-

the counter medications. This month the cost was 65% of my income.

I am fortunate to live in Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and

Section 8 (California State) combined housing in which my rent is

about 1/3 of my total monthly income.

So, I will vote on two issues:

1) withdrawal of United States dollars from abroad, by all means;

2) health care;

3) raising the value of the dollar, thus increasing purchasing value.

Love to you all, and thank you, each of you, for bearing with me.

n Rojas, who realizes that I am not a minority of one, but

of many.

P.S. Thank heavens that my mother was a concert pianist;

kind of offset the legal-logic of my father; both my parents

were generous, nearly to a fault. I can only hope to emulate them.

more love, from

more n