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Like your health plan? — 38 Comments

  1. The bottom line is the federal government has taken over authority for all aspects of the health care system. Little by little they will tighten their grip. The idea that Washington can do a good job of handling health care for the third most populous country in the world is absurd.

    Meanwhile all your health care records will be digitized and made available to the government. What could possibly go wrong?

  2. Wiemar II moving along nicely…

    The nationalizers are back!

    heck, even cabaret burlesque is back…

    Personally I hate remakes, but seems to be the trend

    Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
    Fremde, etranger, stranger.
    Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante,
    Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay.

    Leave you troubles outside!
    So – life is disappointing? Forget it!
    We have no troubles here! Here life is beautiful…
    The girls are beautiful…
    Even the orchestra is beautiful!

    You see? I told your the orchestra is beautiful!

    life is now beautiful…
    the economy, biden says, is moving the right way.
    its all beautiful..
    the automatkers now nationalized are beautiful
    the protected wall streeter is beautful

    and most of all, healthcare is most beautiful…

    We are here to serve you!
    And now presenting the Kit Kat Boys:
    Here they are!
    Bobby! Victor!
    Or is it
    Victor! and Bobby…
    You know, there’s really only one wat to tell the
    difference…
    I’ll show you later.
    Hans (Oh Hans, go easy on the sauerkraut!)
    Herrman (You know what’s funny about Herrman?
    There’s nothing funny about Herrman!)
    And, finally, the toast og Mayfir, Fraulein Sally Bowles!

    soon, the odd ways people regarded things in those old movies will make sense.. the Ce La Vie… the constant seeming to always be looking back to a better time, rather than a future.

    “The examples in Berlin and Munich were so influential that within a few years the revolutionary transformation of the mental and artistic habits of the Germans was already complete…they longed for color, disorder, and the unleashing of the arts of the theater. This thirst was slaked after the war. The overthrow of the Kaiser, the revolutionary tumult that resulted in the establishment of a Social-Democratic republic, and the hardships of the inflation period were the troubled waters in which cabaretists could fish with spectacular success.

    Berlin became a maelstrom, sucking in the energies and talents of the rest of Germany. The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig provides a lurid description of the cultural capital of the Weimar Republic: ‘Berlin transformed itself into the Babel of the world. Bars, amusement parks, pubs shot up like mushrooms. It was a veritable witches’ Sabbath, for the Germans brought to perversion all their vehemence and love of system…Amid the general collapse of values, a kind of insanity took hold of precisely those middle-class circles which has hitherto been unwavering in their orderliness..

    Amid this breakdown, the cabaret, once regarded as the haunt of a certain type of liberated individual, now lured a bourgeois as well as a bohemian audience

    It was Bismarck that gave women the vote, unleashed the decadence that set the stage for that Austrian fellow, and he created the first socialized medicine, though he thought it was anti-socialist a the time

    The reforms of the Weimar Republic following the medical crises of World War I included government policies to provide health care services to all citizens. Socially minded physicians placed great hope in a new health care system, calling for a single state agency to overcome fragmentation and the lack of influence of individual practitioners and local services. The focus of medicine shifted from private practice to public health and from treating disease to preventable health care. During the German “economic consolidation” of 1924-1928, public health improved under new laws

    only for a short while…

    Where traditional individual ethics and Christian charity had once stood, the reformers posited a collective ethic for the benefit of the general population. Private charity and welfare were nationalized. The mentally ill, for example, having been literally released from their chains in the nineteenth century and placed in local communities and boarding houses in regular contact with others (the so-called “moral therapy”), were returned to state institutions to become the ultimate victims of state “solutions.”

    With the world economic crisis of 1929, welfare state expenditures had to be reduced for housing, nutrition, support payments, recreation and rehabilitation, and maternal and child health. What remained of the humanistic goals of reform were state mechanisms for inspection and regulation of public health and medical practice. Economic efficiency became the major concern, and health care became primarily a question of cost-benefit analysis. Under the socialist policies of the period, this analysis was necessarily applied to the selection of strong persons, deemed worthy of support, and the elimination of weak and “unproductive” people. The scientific underpinning of cost-benefit analyses to political medical care was provided by the new fields of genetics and eugenics.

    this morning an article in the news celebrated the feminists, like Sanger. and others… (of course erasing from history what they stand for, want, and work for.. and erasing other women who were opposed to them and the end goal)

    Hitlers people in medicine wrote to her people, popenoe and gamble. and they traded info. moses harmon already changed lucifer bringer of light, to american eugenics. and there was a very rich happy time of it all… hitler became man of the year, something that ronald regan never got. but putin, obama, mao, and stalin did.

    as i have said many times before the truth was clear is that so many expect a tadpole to grow up to be a eagle, that they are surprised when a socialist health care system becomes a socialist health care system, and they become cattle as their choice (freedom) is removed.

    Alfred Hoche, a neuropathologist (as Freud had been) and Karl Binding, a lawyer, published a pamphlet in 1922, The Sanctioning of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living. Binding relativized the legal and moral prohibition, “Thou shalt not kill,” and Hoche alternated between economic and medical arguments. Neurologists in Saxony formally discussed the topic, “Are Doctors Allowed to Kill?” A physician in Dresden pointed out “the contradiction that many persons (reformers) demand an end to the death penalty for crimes, but the same people are for putting imbeciles [sic] to death.” By the time the National Socialist Party came to power in Germany, the mentally ill and the mentally retarded had begun to be sterilized and to be subjected to euthanasia in large numbers in German government institutions.

    cant happen here? guess what? it did and kept going till 1980s. and what do you think planned parenthood and such is all about. different MEANS to same END. A MEANS that is tolerated and can be obfuscated, but under a full socialist state, can do so much more..

    anyone want to discuss the population papers of current administration people?

    A “Genetic Health Court” consisting of judges and doctors made decisions about forcible sterilization. As “advocates of the state,” doctors prosecuted those persons charged with being “genetically ill” in sessions lasting generally no more than ten minutes and from which the public was barred. In 1935, an adjunct law allowed forcible abortion in such cases up to the sixth month of pregnancy. A total of 300,000 to 400,000 were sterilized and approximately 5,000 (nearly all women) died as a result of these operations. After 1945, it was argued to the Restitution Claims Commission of the German Bundestag that the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny of Hereditary Disease” not be considered in the same category as subsequent National Socialist race laws and other Nazi abuses. The sterilization law had been drafted earlier under the Weimar Republic as part of progressive health reform, and as late as 1961 was defended by an expert at the Max Planck Institute on the basis that “every cultured nation needs eugenics, and in the atomic age, more so than ever before.”

    note that all this PROGRESSIVE stuff was the set up to the next move… Obama may be Bismarck in this repeat broadcast.

    In a system in which so many were routinely condemned to die, the temptation proved strong to use human subjects in medical experimentation prior to their tragic and terrible deaths

    we have the same thing, but a variation on the theme… anyone care to point out how the healthcare information will be used? and as far as panels or boards, the germans had that first too. we are copying the only functional model in history…

    the “banality of evil” described by Hannah Arendt in the Third Reich may stem largely from a government bureaucracy in which 90 percent of the people think 90 percent of the time about process–not purpose. Does the modern bureaucratization of medicine hold any real risk for a possible return with new health reforms and new medical technologies–to some of the horrors of National Socialist medicine? Removal of personal responsibility (“I was only following orders”), personal authority, and personal choice in a bureaucratized system may leave less and less room for individual ethics in the conduct of medical science and practice.

    Politicized medicine is not a sufficient cause of the mass extermination of human beings, but it seems to be a necessary cause. The Nazi Holocaust did not happen for some inexplicable German reason; it is not an event that we can afford to ignore because we are not Germans or not Nazis. The history of Germany from 1914 to 1945 is a telescoping of modernity from monarchy, war, and collapse to democracy and the welfare state, and finally to dictatorship, war, and death.

    since long ago, we have ticked off the different things in different orders and conformation, but still the key things…

    Now that we have turned the cucumber into a pickle, and that funky German word i kept saying to look up is now a reality…

    whats next?

  3. I wonder how the MSM will spin this so that it looks good. “ObamaCare revitalizes health care plans” perhaps.

    As with most of Obmessiah screw ups only a few will ever notice. Good news is that there are so many a few for each one may finish him. 70 days to see.

  4. Well, we had the Great Depression.

    And we’ve had the Great Recession.

    Considering how well this is going to go over with the seasoned citizens, is it too soon to start referring to this period of time as “The Great Unravelling”?

  5. This can’t be right, because Obama absolutely promised us that if we liked our current doctor and plan we could keep them. You must have made a mistake somewhere.

    Still, it’s something to look forward to–the benefits of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veteran’s Administration health systems extended to all Americans.

  6. I recently took a course on health insurance laws and regulations, but what struck me the most was how most of what Obamacare claimed it would do was already covered in state laws and provisions. Anything that wasn’t already covered was by proxy unnecessary or a corollary.

    Our legislators and executive really have no clue about how insurance works. You would think they would have at least taken a crash course on the mechanics of health insurance before they went about trying to improve it. It’s acceptable that the people who make our laws are ignorant, but intolerable if they are willfully so.

  7. Alex Bensky: “. . .health systems extended to all Americans,” you say, but you forgot to say: “with the efficiency of the DMV and the humanitarianism of the IRS.” Or something like that. F

  8. “The idea that Washington can do a good job of handling health care for the third most populous country in the world is absurd.”

    Further the more it fails the more it will be said that the “solution” is more control.

    Right now our system only attracts the power hungry and few others – the others leave in disgust after a short time. It’s only a matter of who gets the power, not should the power be there.

    The hard part is a party that doesn’t want power is going to have to gain it and then relinquish it – that has happened VERY rarely in the entirety of our history. And here I mean world history – the history of the human race. It rarely happens because people who do not want power are rarely going to go to great lengths to get it, though more often than not those are who should have it.

    Indeed *our* history (the US) pretty much starts with one of the very rare occurrences where the bourgeois initiated a coup, won, and then turned around and let the proletariat have more say than they did. It’s not uncommon for us and I think this is why it is causing so much trouble too and why so much of the rest of the world can’t figure out the reason why we balk.

    In the end there is going to either be the end of the American Idea or the end of the current path our government is on. If it is the end of the American Idea then MUCH will collapse as we are the main thing holding many economies up (unless China, which is probably more in line with the American Idea fiscally – just not socially – can take up the slack. I do not think so either, a billion poor uneducated people are poor and uneducated even if there were a trillion of them). At that point it then becomes a free for all and, well, the American Idea will eventually win (it is MUCH more efficient – liberalism can only thrive in highly controlled environments) but it isn’t a good thing to go through and may take more than one persons lifetime.

    I have felt for a long time that there is a revolution coming – it is either going to be bloody, electoral, or both. My guess is a bit of both, I think that both parties have too much interest in keeping the status quo and *when* (not if) they see that dying I think they will try and preserve it by any means they can. I think we will see true bi-partisanship when they both realize the good ship Screw-America is sinking. It will take a major electoral change and most likely a bit of bloodshed when both sides realize the boat is sinking (though I think it will mostly be the govt trying to oppress during its last gasps).

    But I hope that an electoral change drastic and quick enough will occur, I just do not see it. Too much cynicism out there and that has been fostered by those power hungry people because it allows the corrupt the room to destroy the non-corrupt.

  9. But but but.. what about the unions? At least those unions that got the Obamas into office, and that financially support the DNC, will be protected, right?

  10. “hitler became man of the year, something that ronald regan never got. but putin, obama, mao, and stalin did.”

    Something about being in good company…

    Bravo to Miss Venezuela, waving her 7 star flag, for her sensational exit from the Miss Universe contest, now that is the definition of true beauty…

  11. Thanks, F, I stand corrected.

    Any socialist feelings I ever had have been expunged by working for two levels of government (city and state) and in virtually all my dealings with the government at any level.

    But I recall hearing Irving Howe once, long ago, say something like yes, socialism turns out badly every time it’s tried, but it’s still our hope and dream. I am paraphrasing and loosely.

    And that’s when I realized that to socialists and the statists inhaviting (or infesting) the current administratiob), empiricism is rejected as a means of understanding the world. It doesn’t matter what the actual experience is with government run medical programs, here or in other countries–the policy is pursued almost for aesthetic reasons.

    At my age I’m having lots of feelings I never thought I’d have, and one of them is I’m hoping for a huge, smashing Republican victory in the coming elections.

  12. We liked our health care plan and paid dearly for it, because we like to have choices about what doctors to see and when to see them. Within 3 weeks of Obamacare passing we were informed by Anthem Blue Cross that our plan was no longer available. We have been put into a new plan and rates are slated to jump 20%. I have no doubt that our betters in Washington will still be able to afford the excellent health care that we once had, since most of them are millionaires…many becoming so while in “public service”.

  13. Tom the Redhunter Says:
    Artfldgr seriously needs his own blog

    Really? I used to write political stuff for Mens News Daily. I have a silent following, and perhaps my familial experience from which I speak from advises me otherwise…

    after having liberals come to my house when they disagreed with what i wrote in the early days, i have decided that since your not going to stand guard outside my home, you can forget about it.

    besides, are you going to volunteer to pay the costs in the near future for listening to your stupidity? or am i to suffer because i listen to you?

    too funny…

    Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license
    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/philly-requiring-bloggers-to-pay-300-for-a-business-license-101264664.html

    I am also avoiding socialists going through facebook and other things to build social network lines to social targets. this avoids the problem of them snagging me for associative guilt through secondary parties.

    Just cause i understand the nature of the beast, and you don’t, doesn’t mean i am wrong.

    besides, for every whiner who cant take the expeditious erudition, there is someone else who complements the connections that no one else makes.

    if i listened to the whiners, you end up with a totalitarian state.

    that is, your desire to administrate the world around you to kiss your ass IS what makes totalitarianism possible.

    your ability to cope with the reality around you and not call for administration and changes to suit you that someone else can then use to tempt and exploit you, is how we stay E. Pluribus Unum…

    how did we get here? the progressives, like little devils, went into the ears of the disatsified and entitled, and whispered what they will do for them. they told them exactly what they wanted to hear, regardless of validity, goodness, etc…

    in your ear they are whispering right now… can you hear them? they are saying if you join their truth commissions, they will silence such commentary you don’t like. come, join us, you wont have to tolerate such…

    will you succumb to the temptation?

    if not, stop whining, as enough of you give them power they don’t deserve to have.

  14. I note that artfldgr.com is available.

    Not saying that I wish you would leave; far from it. But it does seem at times that you’d benefit from your own soapbox.

    (Unless you live in Philadelphia, as you point out, in which case this is not a good time to start a blog. We should wait until Philadelphia, of all places, is reminded of what the First Amendment is for.)

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

  15. Look to the future…

    in order to get a web address, you have to give your own address… and voila… i get nasties at my house at 3am again..

    and notice that CHANGE is in the air, and the constitution has been violated more then sweet polly purebred at a kennel while in heat.

    but again… i get one complement, one whiner, and the rest cant keep on target.

    if this was the death star destruction scene in star wars, everyone would have been distracted from the target by a cardboard cutout.

    LET ME SUGGEST SOMETHING:

    why dont each of those who want me to have my own blog, go have their own? it works both ways, since this blog is not yours…

    so you guys can go to your own blogs, discuss these same subgjects, you can link to neo’s article, and you can then control who or what comes up and what is printed to your hearts content. i can stay here where i am invited, and you can stay in the world you create that you wish to lock me into.

    hows that for a solution, or dont you like to be warehoused either?

    every person here partaking of this blog which is run by someone else can scroll past me, leave, or follow their own advice!!! that advice being create a blog, say waht you want, and avoid what you dont.

    and YOU can take the risk of liberals reading your posts and throwing a molotov into your car, or threatening your family. YOU can pay any charges and fees the stae makes up for a blog… and you can decide who writes, who is censored, how long, etc.

    the easiest way for those suggesting i get a blgo to be happy is to follow their own advice, and not suggest that others here who DO like me be prevented from that.

    or dont you think of those people?

    I do… they are nicer… more tolerant… know where their boundaries are… don’t think they are entitled to dictate terms in another home… and take responsibility to scroll rather than derail when the post exceeds their capacity, patience, content, or whatever bee is in your bonnet.

    Bottom line. i am the ONLY source here of this odd information, and connections, and the ONLY one who has been on target and knowing as to whats going on.

    there is a big reason why people in Russia are not on the internet and dont want to be, they have experience with what changes the state makes AFTER the fact that uses what they were doing BEFORE The fact. they learned it the hard way when lenin (and mao) made it appear like it was becoming more free… in order get the cockroaches out.. which when they tightened up again, the knew who.

    since none of you will even attend my funeral if someone does something to me from picking up my address, i really dont care as to your suggestions.

    mostly your suggestions have nothing to offer me.

    they are really stupid in that each person suggesting and doing so, tends to be one of those sick people who want you to do someting for them, but couch it in a way that it seems its for you.

    you know… those that say trust me, then dont care waht happens. those that say “i am only doing it for you”.

    i have had so many asswhipes use so many crap sandwhich tricks, none of them work any more, which is why none of you get anywhere with this line, as its all about you, not me. and i dont respond to selfishness, and improper boundaries, with reward, complicity, and such.

    dont like it, follow your own words and attract your own numbers.

    i already know i get quite a lot of hits as i get followed frmo place to place. (ergo some followed me here!), and thats why i get requests from places to write for them, as i get numbers with my big mouth.

    but i am here to teach, to inform, to spread the history, not to get my jollies.

    don’t forget, back when i started here, it was crazy to think that the state might go after you later, but now is it so crazy? and note that under socialism beleif is the crime,and so, my sharing this info, and making things difficult for them to lie, means i am in their sites.

    read what happened in Hue… while the battles were going on, another group was going down the lists and murdering the families and those that spoke out in the prior years.

    learn about the beast…
    once it goes wacky, it doesn not listen to reason.
    it will punish you for what you said when you were in kindergarten… it will use what it wants as proof to do what it wants, and ignore what it wants, to continue what it does unimpinged.

    i wonder at what point will the VISITORS here realize that they are visitors like me. and that what they are doing amounts to going to someone elses party adn then going about chasing guests out, commenting on other guests, and setting social rules like mini totalitarians without power.

    very impolite, impolitic, and a bunch of other vulgar things… no?

  16. And before you say that i am being impolite, impolitic, etc… neo and i have an understanding, and if a post is too long i request its delete, or she shortens it, etc.

    that is, i am working with the owner of the blog, i am not making an end around, derailing a conversation to politely impinge on someone not meeting my desires.

    at various times i have tried suggestions…

    i just realize that ingenous behaviro is that no matter how sweet it is, and arsenic will still kill you no matter how much sugar you swallow with it.

  17. artf–have you ever heard the phrase “brevity is the soul of wit”?

    but….if you have an “understanding”….

  18. Geran..

    yes… i am VERY well read… and have heard that a lot.

    have you heard
    “Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
    for if not, then maybe you should since your doing that…

    but since you want wit, and its a serviceable substitute, here, let me give you some.

    “Wit is cultured insolence.”

    of course it is, its a weapon of the smart used as a cudgel against the dumb, dim, and lesser people who feel that their life and education should be made up of an endless series of barbs and abuses…

    but personally i agree more with pope, he has a better track record than you.
    he said
    “Wit is the lowest form of humor.”

    and if you like word games, then i like pope even more

    “So vast is art, so narrow human wit.” 🙂

    and i dont do requests to be vulgar, abusive, etc for the entertainment of the dolts. when such happens i go after the dolts

    the problem is that you want all seasoning no subject.

    “Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.”

    addison saw how abusive wit can be, how emotionally negative and nasty it is to the victim.

    “Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty”

    But Samuel Johnson explains why i dont resort to wit. If you guys dont know the references, wit falls flat, no?

    “I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are minds upon which the rays of fancy may be pointed without effect, and which no fire of sentiment can agitate or exalt.”

    yes… YOU have to be as educated as i am and understand my references for wit to work, otherwise you confuse it with artful verbal abuse… [the vulgar wit]

    Personally i woudl rather tell you honestly and with no tricks what i know, and let the weight of the knowlege stand fast, which is does. i do not wish to seduce you with clever games, that is what socialism does, seduce you with everything and anything not hte point.

    the ignorant are the most witty i ever meet, they deflect attention away from what they dont know by giving a bit of a patter.

    you sir request a court jester to entertain you, but yet, you haev no kingdom, no court, nothing to offer, except, what?

    “Trouble brings experience, and experience brings wisdom.”

    to request wisdom earned by experience in trouble is to make trite what is serious, and make serious what is trite.

    “Wisdom is a blessing only to those prepared to absorb it.” and i guess many arent…

    “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”

    i would beg you to meditate on this from Confucius and see where you stand

    “By three methods we may learn wisdom:
    first, by reflection, which is noblest;
    second, by imitation, which is easiest;
    and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.”

    where does your request lie in this?

  19. Just in case anyone cares, I no longer believe in the term “unintended consequences.”

  20. cool, now we know everything about the “brevity” phrase.

    artf, could you help me with another definition–
    “bloviate”….

  21. The Philadelphia business license has been in place for a long time. It’s a tax, really– you pay the fee every year. I had a friend in medical publishing who once edited some MD’s book on the side for $200. She dutifully reported it as income. The city said, “Oh, no, now you’re a business– you owe us $300.00.” Kinda took the fun out of it.

  22. ok, geren, a bit of wit..

    brevity is not the soul of wit as Shakespeare said, no.. brevity is the soul of lingerie!!!!!!!!! as Dorothy Parker said it.

    hows that? FEEL BETTER?

    I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.
    Baltasar Gracian

    Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. ~Branch Rickey

    Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.
    [sorry, couldn’t resist another pun]

    go look up witty quotes..
    do they convey what you desire?
    or are they mostly clever insults and put downs?

    His mouth is a no-go area. It’s like kissing the Berlin Wall
    – Helena Bonhem Carter on Woody Allen

    If you can’t convince them, confuse them.
    – President Harry S Truman

    Who picks your clothes – Stevie Wonder?
    – Don Rickles

    yes… don rickles who made a career out of biting wit.

    I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born
    – Ronald Reagan

    The only genius with an IQ of 60.
    – Gore Vidal on Andy Warhol

    She’s so stupid she returns bowling balls because they’ve got holes in them.
    – Joan Rivers on Bo Derek

    and shakespeare back at you!

    Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
    – Shakespeare

    you did know your quote is from shakespeare?

    see how nice wit is

    read about the life of groucho marx.. a man many of us like, few of us met, and most have no idea of how he used that wit all the time. like when his wife drank, he would cut her up brutally…

    Shaw writes his plays for the ages, the ages between five and twelve.
    – George Nathan on George Bernard Shaw

    “Why don’t you write books people can read?”
    – Nora Joyce, to her husband James (1882-1941)

    are any of these nice?
    do they convey anything useful

    do they make you laugh at the expense of someone else?

    i raise you Voltaire…

    “A witty saying proves nothing.”
    – Voltaire (1694-1778)

    “A word to the wise ain’t necessary, it is the stupid ones who need all the advice.”
    – Bill Cosby (1937-)

  23. “I don’t know the key to success but I know the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
    – Bill Cosby (1937-).

    so i dont

  24. Artfl, I’m not aware that anyone meant you harm here. Why do you persist in assuming that either (a) people are demanding that you expose yourself to jeopardy, or that (b) people are too stupid to understand the deadly danger you’re in?

    My blog — which, I’ll admit, I haven’t had time to work in in a very long while — has been registered to my own URL since September 2004. I’ve gotten plenty of nasty comments, racist diatribes, antisemitic threats, and the like. Nobody has ever showed up at my door, and I don’t expect anyone ever will. Why? Because I’m not that important, and I know it.

    I don’t know why you’re choosing to take offense at this. I would politely suggest that you take a deep breath and calm yourself; no one here wishes you ill. (If I’m wrong about that, any who do wish Artfldgr ill are invited to speak up.)

    The only reason I suggested that you get your own blog — and, I suspect, the reason some others may have suggested it — was because you post more text here than our hostess, or than any three other commenters I can think of. That’s all. No personal insinuations of any sort were intended.

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

  25. Yes, the screws are tightening. Here is what has happened to me so far. I have a standard employer-provided health plan and flex plan. My company is frugal so they switch plans often depending upon who is offering the lowest rate. Well this year they started the HSA program which was very popular (which for other reasons I was unfortunately not able to join), in part to mitigate for a steep (25%) rate increase. Our premiums and deductibles also went up.

    Then Obamacare passed. First we get a notification that OTC medical supplies will no longer be reimbursed by our flex accounts. (the best part! alas.)

    Then we get a mid-year update from our health insurance rep. The summary was basically about the parts of Obamacare that come into effect in 2011. The rep said that they were already looking at a 14% rate increase, and likely to go up soon as they figured out everything that was contained within Obamacare.

    The meeting room with 70+ people in it was dead silent. I have never seen a group of people so freaked. Even the flaming liberals were freaked (and there are a lot of them).

    I fully anticipate more bad news on the health insurance front, soon.

    Oh, btw, we also got our first profit sharing checks in over 2 years. They were taxed at 38%.

  26. Geran: you’re not being fair. When you challenge someone in a blog comment and get no response, perhaps it means they’re avoiding you.

    Or perhaps the person in question has a life.

    respectfully,
    DiB

  27. Daniel, speak for yourself.

    I do.

    My right hand is my work hand; I overstress it by scrolling down all the artWTF rambling.

  28. Tatyana:

    Daniel, speak for yourself.

    I am. Sometimes it takes me a few days to respond to comments addressed to me; with a full-time job, a good marriage, and five kids, blog conversations are emphatically not my top priority. (I’m typing this now with a six-month-old on my lap; fun fun fun!)

    I can easily understand your frustration; I too have complained to Artfldgr about his rambling. But if we’re going to criticize him, we should do so for the right reasons.

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

  29. Daniel – I did, several times. When I do, my comments mysteriously “await moderation” and never show up later.
    After few of these attempts I resolved that this marasmatic, chauvinistic, white-woman-hater loudmouth is not worth my time and effort.

    I scroll over.

  30. A punim, no doubt.

    You could leave a comment with picture in my blog – it would wait for my approval and appear in my mail first.

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