Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?

These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.

A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.

There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”

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Oct 7

working class hero

While chatting with my mom yesterday, she said there were some questions as to how much longer the factory that employs her would stay open. Rumors of the factory closing have been swirling around for years. The new owners are sending lines to Mexico, but this has been a slow process, so people have adjusted to the fact that the jobs are gradually moving elsewhere. Some people have been laid off, but my mom and step-dad have so much seniority (over 30 years each) that being laid off is not a pressing concern for them. Their hope is that the factory will stay in business at least two more years, when both will be 62. If it stays open until they’re 65, that’d be even better.

As she told me about the latest rumors and said things didn’t look good, I added up her living expenses in my head. The two of them live very modestly. They are great savers and their house is paid off. In my opinion, the house being paid off makes a huge difference as to how well someone can adjust to losing their job. It would be a great relief not to have to worry about losing the house. When I told her this she agreed and said “our biggest problem with losing the job is losing the health insurance. That would be bad.” Oh, yeah. Health insurance.

This would be particularly bad for them because mom is in remission from breast and ovarian cancer. If they lost their jobs, they wouldn’t have the prescription card to buy my step-dad’s medicine, and they wouldn’t be able to afford the premiums of health insurance policies. Also, insurance companies may not accept her since she has preexisting conditions. If they lost their jobs this year, it would be five years before they’d qualify for medicare. I told her that if the worst were to happen (and we’re hoping it doesn’t), we’d have to look into minimum wage jobs with companies that offer health insurance for its employees, like Starbucks. She joked that she’d be lucky to get a job greeting people at Walmart.

When we hung up the phone, I became very angry. This is the reason we need universal health care. It pisses me off when people make self-righteous and snide comments about a working person’s taxes being siphoned away for welfare recipients. My parents have worked their asses off for 30 some years (lately they’ve been working six days a week and getting to work as early as 4am). If they need some assistance, they’ve damned well earn it (but they’d be the last to ask for it). There should be some sort of transitional health care program for people between jobs. Last night, I read the health care platforms of Obama and McCain. Both make the assumption that the insured is receiving insurance through the employer. I’m not sure what their solution is for those who have found themselves without jobs. Perhaps this detail is covered, but I missed it. All I know is the health care system in this country is screwing a lot of people–particularly the working class. My father became a statistic for the uninsured. He didn’t have insurance, and didn’t go for checkups, and was diagnosed with late stage colon cancer when he was 56 (he was a Vietnam Vet too–one would think his health care would be complimentary thanks to his service). On the flip side, my mother has had insurance, has received regular checkups, and is in remission from two different cancers and is doing very well. There has to be some sort of help for the working class when they find themselves on the brink of losing their jobs and insurance. Perhaps insurance should not be tied to employment.

In the words of John Lennon, a working class hero is something to be.

Oct 6

totem

This was important for me today:

Oct 4

random

Before I moved to Florida, when I was in Ohio and nowhere near the Everglades, I had dreams of being attacked by alligators. I don’t believe I had ever seen one other than on television. I remember being chased at high speed by an alligator in one of my dreams. When I lived in Mansfield, Ohio, I would go jogging on a path near my apartment, and when the path entered an area that looked swampy, I would turn around and go back. Rationally, I knew there were no alligators there, yet I couldn’t make myself go through the swampy area…it made me uneasy. So, when I moved to Florida, I joked to mom that perhaps my dreams were foreshadowing run-ins with the alligator population in the sunshine state. Fortunately for me, I’ve had no such run-ins. They still make me nervous when I’m canoeing in their waters, but they’ve left me alone and I’ve left them alone. My husband and I visited the Loxahatchee Preserve yesterday, to say goodbye to the northern most reaches of the Everglades. This was one of the first places I visited when I moved to the area eight years ago. While there, we saw the biggest alligator I’ve seen since living here. He didn’t chase me.

While DS and I sit around, waiting to move (we’re hitting the road next weekend!), I decided to take up some sort of creative hobby outside of writing and photography. My mom always used to knit, embroider, cross-stitch, and I had her in mind when I drove to Michaels to see if I could find some sort of project to work on. I went with a counted-cross stitch project designed for children (they didn’t have projects for beginners…it went from childrens projects to more complicated projects). I finished it yesterday!

See:

It was a lot of fun. I’ve already bought my next cross-stitch project: the Chinese character for Good Fortune. If I finish it in time, I hope to give it to a friend before I leave. I’ve found a couple of other projects I’m eager to start, but the designs are rather complex, so I’m trying to work my way up to them. One cross-stitch project I’d like to start on is of Buddha sitting next to a Bonsai tree. It’s really lovely, but looks difficult. I thought I’d save it for when I’m more confident in my ability.

So, these days I alternate between writing my thesis, reading, and cross-stitching. I hope to add a job to the mix once I move to Springfield.

Salon has an interesting article on the dumbing down of the GOP. This statement sums it up for me:

As Biden showed quite convincingly when he spoke about his modest background and his continuing connection with Main Street, perceptive, intelligent discourse is in no way identical with elitism. Palin’s phony populism is as insulting to working- and middle-class Americans as it is to American women. Why are basic diction and intellectual coherence presumed to be out of reach for “real people”?

Exactly.

Sep 19

Lincolnland

I spent all of Wednesday exploring Abraham Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois. He wasn’t born there, but he lived there for many years (15 or 16, I think) and left when he became president. The Lincoln museum is a feast for the eyes. There are Madame Tussauds-like figures of Lincoln, his family, and others from the time period. The exhibit is heavy on holograms; one section had a wall of hologram heads criticizing Lincoln for the Emancipation Proclamation—some saying it goes too far and others saying it doesn’t go far enough. All the heads are blathering simultaneously, so you feel overwhelmed with the criticism and the anger in the voices. There was a large room dedicated to political cartoons that skewered Lincoln. It’s fascinating to see how he was received in his own time considering how he’s been received in history. The museum does an excellent job of illustrating the poverty Lincoln was born in to and lifted himself out of. The first room you visit is a room that recreates the cabin he lived in when he was a kid. He lived there with four others and saying it’s cozy is putting a positive spin on it. Another excellent display was the Civil War in 4 Minutes. A screen displayed a map of the United States. It has a yearly time line on the bottom and a casualty counter on the side of the screen. The Union forces were represented by the color blue and the Confederate forces were represented by red. For the next four minutes, the two colors fight with each other, one pushing the other down then retreating, then moving to the right or left, then moving forward, etc. Explosions represented all the major battles of the war. Finally, you see the red section of the screen/map shrinking and shrinking as the blue surrounds it from various sides.
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I haven’t talked to so many complete strangers in a long time. As I was sitting outside the Old State Capitol, a man came up and asked me if I liked Lincoln. I could sense he wanted to sell me something, so I was subdued in my answer. And, honestly, it’s not like I’m a Lincoln groupie. I think he’s fascinating to learn about, and a great figure in history—possibly the greatest president in history—but I don’t have his picture hung on my walls. So, the guy sensed my lack of enthusiasm and said, “oh, I was just going to show you some of my paintings. Well, I’ll show you anyway since I don’t have anything else to do.” He sat down next to me and we flipped through his sketchbook. His work was actually decent…I mean his drawings of Lincoln actually looked like Lincoln, which is saying something. There was a green market nearby and I suggested he look into getting a table and displaying some of his work there. “Yeah, but I think that takes money,” he said. Then he started talking about the shitty economy and how bad things are there. He asked me where I was from and when I said “South Florida” he said, “Do you have a lot of money or something? Isn’t that where rich people live?” He said he would like to go to Key West because the street artists there make good money, but leaving his comfort zone was hard. When he asked why I was in the area, I told him my husband was interviewing for a job. “You’re going to move here from Florida?” he asked. “Maybe,” I said, and he replied, “That sounds like a downgrade to me!” A worker from a local restaurant interrupted our conversation to suggest we go to his restaurant to try the homemade chicken soup. “I just cut the noodles myself this morning,” he said while pointing at the white dough remnants on his black shoes.
*****
And, finally, the most important discovery of the trip: I’ve been thinking about buying a new mattress for some time now. The mattress we have is okay; I don’t dislike it, but sometimes I wonder if a better mattress would make a difference on my sleeping habits, back pains, etc. It’s something I don’t dwell on a lot because I don’t have the expendable income to buy a new mattress, so this keeps me from seriously looking for one. However, during our trip we stayed at a hotel in downtown Springfield that had the most comfortable mattress I have ever slept on. Seriously. During the night the train whistle would wake me up and as I snuggled back into my pillow, I would think to myself, “I love this mattress.” Sitting on the bed to put on my shoes would make me think, “I love this mattress.” I’m not kidding! Every minute on this bed was blissful! It was like sleeping on supportive marshmallow fluff! We even took the bed sheets off to find out what brand it was, but we couldn’t find any identifying marks. When we were checking out, I told the guy at the front desk “You have the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on.” He laughed and said he hears that a lot. Then he told us the bed is made especially for the hotel by Simmons, but since we stayed there and liked the mattress model, we could contact the “mattress concierge” and order the mattress they make for this particular hotel. I’ve already called the company and will buy this mattress if I have to sell a kidney to do so.
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Thinking of Paul Strand while walking Lincoln’s neighborhood: