Not everyone lives in New Jersey. Consider yourselves lucky. I don't know why people move here. To escape from New York, it seems. The situation is terrible. And maybe about ot get worse.
I am aware there are great differnces between the Medical Care Services one gets in NYC and what one does not get in NJ. Knowing best about NJ's lackings, I'll address, but not before I say something that's been needing to be said-last I knew, Rush Holt was not a rocket scientist. To the best of my knowledge, he was a nuclear physicist and a great humanist. But what would I know? I didn't work at PPPL all that long because of a shoulder which just wouldn't stay where it should. It was immobilizing and I couldn't do the drive. But the man know his stuff. He never sits still. He never stops.And he has a huge rank of Medicare/Medicaid constituents due to the numerous retirement villages in his district. He's my Congressman and I've been the happier for it. He is very responsive and Ihad the pleasure of walking a memeber of his staff thru the reality of "out here" a few years ago, courtesy of the "Walk a Mile...(in my Shoes)Program."
About medical care in NJ-you get it if you're lucky. If you're lucky, you can actually afford the outrageousness of the insurance companies who bleed you dry and then renege on their end of the contract (especially car insurance-it's mandatory here, and they screw you every which way even if, like me, you have never had a moving violation in your entire 42 year driving history. If you've been the victim of other drivers or as recently a tree falling on my car, you're screwed. They'll find a way not to pay. They expect everyone to just accept their phony damage estimate and don't argue with them. They put the doctors through the same crap.
My step brother is 5 years younger than me. They've had financial difficulties all along, but especially in this economy. They can't afford to go to the dentist, so he tries to work on his own rotting out teeth. Why? Because he was a trusting dummy who doesn't screw people over, so he expects the same. He nearly lost his house because of some scheister, he's barely able to keep his cars on the road (while "Detroit" rolls in "Goernment Gold"-since they priced themselves out of everyone's reach to begin with, they should have stayed there) and medical care? What's that?If they could afford the doctor, even though a lot of pharm co's have limited assistance for certain individuals, they can't bouy the medicine. So what's the point of any of it? And he doesn't understand that the system needs changing. He doesn't understand that being "American" is about changing what's wrong-that's what it was about from the day the Revolution grew from seed to germination. It's wrong to burden the people. Eventually, that took a war to extend to all the people, but slavery here is nowhere near dead. It just took on a more plasmatic form and hides at random in different houses. The current system of non-care in Medical field is a huge contributor to this. Why should a man lose his house just because he got sick once. Why should he have to take out a "Medical Savings Account" when he can't get his teeth fixed now?When his wife never gets over bronchitis because the house is always too hot in summer, too cold in winter and they can't afford medicine? Oh, they fell through the cracks. Yeah. That's a crack I'm sick of hearing. Stop with the cliches and get real like you maybe give a hoot because it maybe and probably will happen to you. Would have the thought the one good thing would have come out of the crashed econmomy. Maybe a few more people might actually care. But no. Once they get over their own rough stuff, it's now time to begrudge.
Medicaid doesn't pay docotors. I tried to find a Medicaid doctor for a friend via internet and can't even get a list of participating's from the state. She's a cancer survivior. She's not getting the right kind of care. The government has taken away funding because they figure the private sector is rolling in doantions dough. In a sense, they're correct, but the money isn't getting to the people to help them. It's going into administrative and "charity" perpetuating paychecks. To qualify as a charity, you can't show a profit. They find every way to hide it except to help the patients libe-really live. The only one that seems to vary from the norm are the AIDS charities, who realize there's more to medicine than hospital satys, such as eating and having a secure place to live, and maybe some rare addiction services program. Don't know for sure. But I do know that the only thing Medicaid wantsed to pay for was stays in nursing homes. So Senator Lautenberg authored the "Community Choice Act of 2009" so Medicaid could stop stuffing people into the 12x20 incacerations they get when they're old, sick and broke. Where did it go?
America, you have a bad habit of turning the lash on your own selves. When things get good, you decide it's time for a change. Due to your misconceptions, I haven't been to gynecologist in 9 years or had a mammogram in as many. And I was diagnosed with carcinoma in situ in both breasts just before that. But one clean biopsy, and the current Medicare (who, by the way, are actually NOT the government, but private insurance companies conctracted to the government) decides you are no longer in an "at risk" category. It used to take a few clean biopsies before you got pushed into that void. Private funding there has been disappearing too. There's a pre-process you have to go through to see what your financial standing is before you even get in the door for an appointment. And that's under the Susan B. Koman foundation's assistance. It always seems the poor can't get and the rich get everything for free here. Including medical care.
And no, the government does not take care of a person on Medicare. Depending on what you're willing to go without or have the ability to comprehend, you might get an HMO that includes most evrything, but then the dollar expenditure limits on other things will leave you bankrupt. Unless you're a Specified Low Income Medicare Beneficiary, you pay your Medicare premium straight out of Social Security, you pay your co-pays (20% or more), you pay for anything you need they decide they for some reason don't cover; you must accept the generic form of any medication if available (which I don't fully disagree with), you stiil sometimes have an enormous co-pay. This donut-hole they've been talking about, that's a $2,000. copay all-at-once on your medicine. (And now they give you $250. back if you go through that).
Do you get the picture? I hope so, because I live in it, and frankly, I don't want to look. It's coming onto Halloween Eve and I know I'd rather watch a horror movie which has less chance of happening than the horror that this mess is. And yes, the greedy get greedier. They won't even wait for Medicare to process before they start demanding to be paid. If you do that, you wait 3 months after they get the Medicare money to get paid back. Floating themsleves a loan on the those who are vicitms to be begin with-something attacked them-a germ, a virus, a car, a fall,--. And I know a system that was much better, where everyone had care and no one went without it. But I'm German and I know better than to say that America has the greatest medical care system in the world. You don't. Not even from the Capitalist Enterprise point of view that it is. If your docotr cures you, you're not repepat business. So where does that leave his business? It shouldn't be that your health and their monetary needs compete. I'm German, so I question everything-we don't want another Hitler, do we? Not most of us anyway. But then there are those days when the greedy little liars and crooks get away with what they get away with and no one can do anything about it and you begine to understand what was up with Josef Stalin-and you know you'ver been among them far too long.
When I was young, I never thought I'd have the ability to hate. But congratulations people. You've succeeded in teaching me that I most certainly can.
(P.S. I flunked typing. I know how to spell.)
Happy Hauntings!
