Texas Drifter: Part II - Private Sector Dark Side Obama Care
Marshall’s Law Dateline -"Let Them Eat Granite”: Part II - Private Sector Dark Side Obama Care.
If you had read my writing exercises from mid-nineties, you would already know that the primary goal of all city, county, state, and federal governments is to destroy America’s private sector middle class. The public sector exists to create more government programs for new subsidy addicts to justify higher taxes in its perpetual war against society’s private sector middle class.
Let’s start our learning scenario with both of your elderly parents living in their mortgage free home. Without warning, an untimely heart attack leads to your father’s untimely passing.
Your first dose of objective reality transpires when you discover that your parent’s prepaid life or burial insurance policies taken out decades ago; are either 1) not enough to cover funeral costs, or 2) have been transferred among so many different “bankrupt” or “sold” insurance companies that the policies are totally worthless.
Prevarications by government insurance boards that such events never occur will not ease your unexpected financial burdens. The bottom line is that you will have to come up with minimum five thousand to eight thousand dollars to cover your father’s funeral expenses.
Wishing to not get caught off guard again, you either use your savings or take out a note for eight thousand dollars with one hundred dollar a month payments for pre burial costs for your surviving parent.
Your second dose of objective reality occurs when you discover that Social Security is a welfare program not a retirement investment account. You learn this lesson when your surviving parent’s monthly benefits are reduced by approximately sixty percent.
Since America’s socialist Supreme Court has ruled that Social Security “contributions” are taxes not investment funds; all the hard earned money paid into the system by your father will go to fund bureaucrat benefits not assist your mother.
The end result being that you have to come up with another eight hundred to thousand dollars a month to maintain your surviving parent’s basic needs.
The third dose of objective reality comes when you get a bill from the hospital for twenty thousand dollars to cover the balance of your father’s medical bills while he was in the hospital.
Since you drove your father to the hospital and signed him in; and Medicare only covers eighty percent, you now owe the hospital the balance of your dying father’s medical bills.
You protest the medical bills, and the hospital places a lien on your house and ruins your credit rating.
The fourth dose of objective reality happens when you decide to take out supplemental insurance for your mother to cover the Medicare deficiency. The premiums start out at one hundred twenty five dollars a month, but can rise to over five hundred dollars a month within the first year.
The fifth dose of objective reality stuns you when you learn that the cost of a home care worker (whose only skills are calling 911) to stay with your mother start at about four thousand dollars a month.
Since most middle class families cannot afford four thousand dollar a month for home care services for their parents, you or your spouse (if you have one) start making frequent checks during the day on your surviving parent. A better option than hiring a home care worker, since it only cost you a fifteen hundred dollar a month cut in take home pay from your job.
What about government, home care programs, an accurate quote by a real live bureaucrat: Since you have been helping your mother by paying her bills; she doesn’t qualify for “the people’s” assistance. “The only way you can get assistance for her is to break one of her legs and abandon her at a police station without any forms of identification.” (Do not snicker, it has actually happened.)
Texas Drifter knows of a case in Texas where Adult Protective Services offered a child two one way plane tickets out of Texas for them and their parent, because they were “tired” of providing services to an “ungrateful client”.
The sixth dose of objective reality ensues with monthly random double digit increases of insurance premiums, utility bills, transportation costs, medicines, property taxes, and other failed public sector policies which cause higher market prices.
The seventh dose of objective reality will be the loss of your personal time. You and or your spouse can expect to add another eighty plus hours a week to your routine work schedule; either making money or providing care to your surviving parent just to keep them in their own home.
This issue raises an interesting question: If parents ship their children off to day care, are the children morally obligated to help their parents stay in their own home as long as possible?
The eighth dose of objective reality will be the your amazement at the amount of mental and physical stress you are able to manage in doing the right thing by caring for your surviving parent
As for help from your friends, they all have their own parents to take care of. You will realize that you are beyond middle age when the primary topic with your friends evolves from your children’s antics to taking care of your parents.
A preliminary summary, in addition to at least eighty to ninety hours a week of your time; you will probably need enough in savings to cover sixty percent of your parents current expenses, and fifty percent of your own expenses.
In the preceding scenario, the average middle class family will probably need an estimated additional twenty thousand dollars a year for at least five to seven years to maintain existing life styles for both them and their surviving parents.
Other problems encountered by children trying to keep their parents in their parents’ home include:
1) City, county, school, and other confiscatory property taxes designed to force senior citizens on fixed incomes out of their homes and into poverty; so that bureaucrats can acquire the property for a fraction of its value in rigged auctions.
2) Laws like those in Texas which prevent people living outside city limits to use private property as collateral for parental health care equity loans.
3) Threats from government agencies to arrest the children for “abandoning” their parents if the children go to work to have a “paycheck” to qualify for a home equity loan to obtain private nursing home care for their parents.
Private sector middle class baby boomers who, plan on taking care of their own families and their parents with a one family income will end up financial losers.
This being said, there is truth in the moral adage that it is easier to accept a parent’s passing for those who “honor thy father and mother” by being there during their decline.
(Following example provided by reader.)
I will give you the highlights as I remember them. This is a Mission of our church and is made up of professional and paraprofessional medically trained individuals that want to give back to the community.
This is a voluntary non paid mission that is supported by the local church. There was a little bit of training that was done by the Presbytery and it involved mostly administrative and safety check lists.
What the nurses do; using check lists provided:
1) Insured there were no dangerous situation in the nursery and child related locations in the church. Cleaning the toys used in kinder garden and hand, sanitary infection control.
2) Getting and storing important medical information on some of the older members of the church, taking blood pressure, heart rate and temperature when needed.
3) Reviewing medications to insure they are compatible and member was taking them correctly.
4) Keeping the first aid kit up to date and well stocked.
5) Checking on the ill members of the congregation.
6) Installing and defibrillator and providing instruction.
On three occasions that I can remember, calling the ambulance for and caring for members until it arrived. That is all I can remember as of now, if I should recall anything else today I will forward it to you. (End insert)
Translation: small groups of Judeo-Christian volunteers serve more older Americans than all government death panels combined. Why, Judeo-Christian volunteers are serving Heaven; while most public bureaucrats serve big government also known as "the anti-Christ". Remember my reader choosing who cares for your parents is your choice. TRUE or FALSE.
Reader’s assignment question: worst ethical capitalism is still infinitely better than Marxist-fascist or RINO greed based fascism. Should be obvious best economic system of Heaven’s favorite republic is Judeo-Christian ethical capitalism. TRUE or FALSE
Texas Drifter: Private Sector Dark Side Obama Care – Part III to follow.
