“…a fisherman of men.”
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the bright, blue, beautiful, brisk and bountiful island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Thursday morning, the fourteenth day of November, 2013, a gorgeous one out there as I gaze out upon Hyannis Harbor and the “Iyanough”, the ‘Steamship Authority’s’ fast ferry to Nantucket, with a trillion “sparklies” dancing upon the water, yes, it’s a good day to be alive. Speaking of alive, ACA, or the Affordable Care Act continues it’s infancy with 105,000 or so participants signing up (or 20 percent of what the administration had anticipated), as the website continues to improve (as will the number of people signing up). However, there has been an uproar over “people losing their health plans they were told they could keep”. Well, let’s set the record straight. I was an executive in the group medical insurance world for more than a decade and a half and what I saw and managed in that market would make your jaw drop. These insurance carriers drop plans all the time, moreover, there never was a guarantee anyone could keep their plan or doctor as the President obviously has no authority over private plans or doctor’s careers. 99 percent of the plans in question are junk plans, or insurance in name only, for when someone gets sick, many times the insurance carrier will find some preexisting condition that will nullify their original application and thus deny coverage. Most bankruptcies in this country occur for exactly this reason and proves that the system as a whole, pre-”Obamacare”, was fatally flawed, not to mention morally bankrupt, as more and more Americans fell beneath the cracks in the system. What is more troubling is the fact that the Medicaid expansion, bringing health care insurance to the poor, millions of them in 26 states, is being denied by republican governors, like Texas’ Governor Rick Perry, begging the question, “what the hell is wrong with these guys?”. The republican party has no intention of doing anything, but obstructing and hopefully, God Forbid, repealing, in the foreseeable future in congress or anywhere else, at least until they can unseat this very fine President, Barack Obama, whose vision and guts passed a LAW that finally gives a majority of people a fighting chance at health care and a happy life (a human right!), a right the rich take for granted everyday. I pray that democrats do not panic and change law in order to appease a few ‘losers’ in the transition, for 9 times out of 10, they will be better off with a plan that actually lives up to the definition of INSURANCE to begin with, while it makes this nation healthier and richer, cutting out the waste of ‘the emergency room’ as the primary physician for millions, with the cost of that care being passed on to the average tax payer in the way of higher premiums for all, while it adds to the overall deficit. Come on people, wake up! This was originally a republican plan, hatched from the right wing think tank, ‘the Heritage Foundation’, back in the early nineties, evolving into “Romneycare” here in the great state of Massachusetts in 2006, where the enrollment started very, very slow, only to rocket up to millions with the state now achieving almost 100 percent of it’s citizens being covered by some kind of insurance plan or another. You have to ask yourself the question, “why are we giving Mayor Ford of Toronto such as hard time with his crack smokin’ and whiskey drinkin’ when we have an entire caucus right there in Washington D.C. blowing all kinds of crack smoke in the American people’s faces? Politicians in full denial of their behavior and refusing any help as common sense attempts an intervention of the whole lot of ‘em. God help US! Have a nice day folks and keep on keepin’ on…this is still a beautiful world. Cast off the shadows of horrible men in cheap suits and smell the roses, take a bike ride, a boat ride or a sail ride, but don’t take a ride on the FOX & FRIENDS merry-go-round from hell, even though it’s bright and shiny ride, complete with a pretty girl telling you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye (credit musician Don Henley from “The Eagles“). Please, for the LOVE of GOD don’t buy a ticket on that ride; like crack, it is highly addictive and might leave you in a state of delusion where the person who is helping you find your wallet is actually the person who stole it from you to begin with…stop voting against your OWN, and your family’s, best interests! “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son” (credit ‘Dean Wormer’ from the classic 1978 film, “Animal House”, starring the late, great John Belushi, who might have had a thing or two to say to the likes of a Ted, “don’t you just hate poor people?”, Cruz or Sarah, “crazy horse”, Palin). PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
