Hi Amber,
Doing well, just taking care of business. It seems that me and my wife have been appointed the role of guardians for our parents. Taking care of kids is one thing but caring for the elderly is a step harder than that. It's been eleven years and counting since I could even leave for a vacation without having to worry about what happens if Mom goes down with a medical emergency. Sometime during that period, my wife's mother drifted into Alzheimers so, we have three households to manage. My kids are getting a real education on life.
My mom is close to running out of money to pay for her own care (she lives in assisted living facility, which costs about 5k/month), so this talk about radical change to how health care is delivered has my attention. It's my guess that by the end of 2020, she will be broke and on Medicaid. That's when we find out if the place she's in will in fact honor their promise to accept Medicaid payments. We've already been given the run-around by another facility and it was an eye-opener how quickly and easily she was denied a place when they decided it was in their best financial interests to do so. Medicare has been a good deal for my mother but it isn't free and has factored into her declining finances, though the real reason she is running out of money stem from her poor health and need for care 7/24. Other countries would provide that kind of care in return for her life-long contributions but not here. On paper, we plan to file for Medicaid at the necessary time and expect things to proceed without a hitch. We'll see what happens when reality comes home to roost.
Unlike Bernie, Warren has put forward a cost analysis and specified how pay for covering everybody under Medicare including senior-care. It seems to me that her plan is low-balling costs and the difference will be paid for with extra taxes whether she owns up to it or not. So, yeah, Warren has the right ideas but people are not wrong if they are skeptical of her plans. To me, holes in Warren's plans are not nearly as much of a concern as what Republicans tried to do the last time, which was: repeal the ACA, privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, dump 10's of millions from healthcare they received through the ACA and pretty much fuck over my elderly parents.
Also, Warren is not radical or scaring people like me who have much at stake and personal experience in what our government does regarding our healthcare system. It seems to me that Obama is overstating his concern. He is a private citizen and has the right to speak his mind but I think he's behind the times on this topic. I'm more worried about Republican efforts to gut Medicare and Medicaid than I am about expanding coverage. With the looming number of boomers headed into senility with a whole lot less in savings than my Mom had, we have to figure out what to do for them. To many Republicans, retirement for the masses means "work until you can't and then die".
Regarding MJ, Warren is good but hasn't been forthcoming with enough details for me to know what she intends. She says "legalize", she says "decriminalize" and she doesn't say what that means. Maybe I have been lulled into a false sense of security by living in Oregon where it's simply no longer an issue.
