A Letter From My Buddy Barack Obama

I love it, more Secret Service Envy headed my way!  Having been the only instructor at Major Gothic Wonder Land University to hold a required class on the day Ronald Reagan came to jabber at the undergraduates, and wave at the picketing grad students, I am a favorite of the Secret Service.  What they can't figure out is the "no-make ups allowed" major exam question that equally (always *equally*) excited my students -- made up of 14 upperclass undergrads and 1 relieved Divinity School doctoral student:

Explain, dissect, conjugate, and defend the following assertion:Michael Reagan, son of United States of America President Ronald Reagan will one day serve on the board of The John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation.

Of course, this pretty standard "no-make ups allowed" major exam question was in French, as this was a course designed to dunk -- by which I mean, of course, immerse students into French Lit.  As you can tell from the question, we had just finished reading Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

Oops.  Train of thought problems, yet again.  I was telling you about the letter I just personally retrieved from my private email account -- known only to my best of best Facebook Friends. [Loud guffaw! I have a fake Facebook account and about, oh, two Friends, all the rest being right-wing relatives.  My two Friends are right-wingers, as well, but tolerant.   Very tolerant.]

So, yeah, it was from Barack.  My buddy Barack.

[Look, let me settle this, as I just was barraged, nay, blitzkrieged by two Super Secret Facebook Friends who are actual full-blood relatives and consider themselves, and I quote:  "progressive as hell, girl!" Fine, let them assert their leftist tendencies.  Yes, their leftist tendencies surpass even my own, to the extent that I doubt either of them have ever voted in their entire political adult lives.  Not even for McGovern.  Okay... I'm telling lies now.  Let's just say that they may temper their support for President Obama due to expectations of a shift to the left by a rather large amount.  Not this profderien, no ma'am! I adore, respect, love, admire, and imitate this intelligent sign of life -- and his awesome family -- every chance I get.  Well, okay, so there are a few things, policy-wise, that could use a slight Marxist tweak, but, most days, I'm fine with that.]

That's right. The President, himself, writing to The Moi, care of, admittedly, the Haddock Corporation (now completely divested from Halliburton *).

 * Can you freaking believe that "Halliburton" pops up as a correction in SPELL CHECK?! How screwed up is that?  I mean does "amnety internatenal" show up in spell check? No, it does not, thankyouverymuch!  Jesus.

Cough.  Yes, my friend Barack wrote to thank me -- just me -- for my round-the-clock, high tech multi-year campaign on behalf of the watered-down Affordable Care Act.  I keep referring him to my other dearest pal, Bernie Sanders, but haven't heard yet how that's going (so much to talk about!).

In the past, as many a Beloved Reader of this blog recalls, I have shared a few of my personally keyboarded letters to our President -- never violating protocol, naturally, but always seeking advice from the now deceased Tante Louise on how best to post presidential correspondence. 
Well, okay.  Tante Louise and I may have flubbed a few posts in which my buddy Barack figured, but we toed the, er, red line in the, er, sand when it came to my personal, and by personal I mean one-on-one, tête-à-tête sorts of intimate, soul searching, letters.  The whole Flaubert and Bob Herbert catastrophe.  The admittedly odd basketball post.

Even when you limit a search of this blog to "Obama, ACA," there are just a half-dozen or so weird ones...  I mean, omit blog war waged on Walmart, and the regrettable incident in which I claimed not to be able to support "Obamacare" until Socialism was in place.  I was on drugs.  You can tell, I bet.  I mean, look -- clearly, I say often enough that Obamacare -- the ACA, the PCIP, whatever you like to call it -- saved my life.

Probably, that's all my vast reading public needs to know:  President Barack Obama saved my life.
And then pulls off this comedic email in which he pretends I had something to do with this brave legislative and moral effort [ ::waving:: at teddy!].

That is a true friend, indeed.

Oh hell, there is a man in a terribly plain blue suit that has been tailored, clearly, to hold a spare machine gun and drone in the small of his large back... peeking in the badly leaded hand-poured window panes that stud the upper chamber of the Computer Turret.  I have repeatedly and repeatedly asked Barack, even "cc"-ing Michelle, to have the damned Secret Service "STAND DOWN," already!

Jesus.

Lincoln's Presidential Seal

[Hi there, prof-de-rien!  How're they hanging?]

I had to take a moment to say thank you.

Lisa, you made history.

A long line of organizers fought for nearly 100 years to make health care reform a reality, and now we're seeing the results. Millions of Americans have health insurance today, thanks to reform -- some for the first time in their lives.

The work you did is how real, lasting change gets made, and I hope it will be remembered for years to come.

I'm so happy your name will be there, alongside mine, as part of OFA's permanent record of the people who made health care reform happen.

If you know anyone else who deserves to be recognized, tell them to add their name here:

http://my.barackobama.com/You-Made-History

Anyone who was part of this decades-long fight will tell you it was never easy, but it was always the right thing to do. Teddy Roosevelt knew it. Harry Truman knew it. Teddy Kennedy sure knew it.

No matter how hard it got, the results we're seeing today make it all worthwhile. Millions of Americans now have coverage, and even more have better health care, thanks to the work you did.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

It's proof that when people come together and fight for what they believe in, real, lasting change is possible.

I can't thank you enough,

Barack Obama





Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Dear President Obama: My Experience at the HealthCare.gov Marketplace

Hail to the Chief we have chosen for the nation, 

Hail to the Chief! We salute him, one and all. 

Hail to the Chief, as we pledge cooperation 

In proud fulfillment of a great, noble call. 

Yours is the aim to make this grand country grander, 

This you will do, that's our strong, firm belief. 

Hail to the one we selected as commander, 

Hail to the President! Hail to the Chief! 

Dear President Obama:

Every nerve ending in mine body is frayed, frazzled.

I began the search for coverage via the HealthCare.gov website promptly on September 13.  I know, it didn't go into effect until October 1, 2013, but I was anxious.  At that time, there was but a single insurance company in the bustling marketplace and since easily distraught, I became distraught.  Which led me into the arms of a very nice, calm, optimistic "navigator" -- our helpmates through this process -- Bill Rencher of Georgia Watch.

[Four Ruffles and Fluorishes for him, too!]

Since 1 October, I've been pestering the website dozens of times a day and receiving nothing but the the most polite error messages ever seen in cyberdom.  Repulsed, refused, unrecognized, I had about given up hope, despite the reassurances that the bugs in the system were slowly but surely being smushed into little bug pieces.  A carapace here, long sticky legs there, bulbous eyes strewn about.  Exoskeletons piling up, and with the government shut down, no one to sweep up the entomological detritus.  I say send 'em all to "Cry Me A River" Boehner.

Usually, Mr. President, I give no hints as to my political persuasions.  Yes, I used the plural, for like Whitman I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.  Ahem.

This morning, at 5 am, revolted by the idea of getting up to do something profitable for the domestic brood around me, I grabbed the computer and hit HealthCare.gov with something like a vengeance, but definitely with weepy eyes and no coffee.

After diddling around a bit, I created a new profile, ditched the old one, and kaboom, shazaam, wowza -- I was in!  Then I screwed up and had to call one of those blessèd telephone helpers, who was also confounded but wished me well.  I think, Mr. President, that she ended up helping out somehow, for a mere half-hour later, the glitch slid into the background of things.  It didn't disappear, but I was able to navigate from screen to screen and ignore the hell out of it.

Navigator Rencher, who helped calm the waters in September, had made several predictions about what my best options might turn out to be, coming from the Affordable Care Act's PCIP program, which ends precisely on 31 December.

He was right on all counts.  If I take up gambling, I'm bringing him with me to the racetrack.

If I could sneak past the First Lady and give you a prim kiss on the forehead, I'd do it in a heartbeat.  But what with all the shooting going on up there, they'd drop me with a head shot, for sure. (Gun control, anyone?  No destruction of the Second Amendment, just no guns for crazy people, registration and permits for all, no assault weaponry or accompanying ordinance, and equal restraint from law enforcement, including the Secret Service and Capitol Cops)

Since I doubt you'd break out into any Al Green on my account, I'll just say this here, in the safe haven of a nondescript blog:  God bless you, and thank you, President Obama.  I am a person with loads of physical woes that are constantly ganging up on my meager finances and limited sanity -- I worry, you see.  I don't want to be a victim, or whine about entitlement.  I don't want to bankrupt this good country.  But damn it, I need help.  My entire work life was dedicated to turning out well-educated citizens, both at university and at the proverbial "urban" high school level. I put my life at risk substitute teaching for the little ones, too, those cagey rug rats!  And I worked in Middle Schools where my status as a rube spread like wildfire, and the tweens often had me cornered between desk and blackboard, forcing me to throw chalk and lob erasers as a distraction.

In all seriousness, I had my life threatened and a student broke my hip in an attempt to escape capture by the kind and courteous police-people chasing him.  When I came back to work, one of my homeroom seniors stole my walker. To this day, I am convinced he was simply finding a novel way to encourage my physical therapy progress...

I was a GREAT teacher, Mr. President.  I loved my subject, I instilled a love for it in whomever the registrars put before me, and my students reveled in the concept of critical thinking and superb writing.  I'm just sayin'.  But these days, living on 60% of my year 2000 salary, no adjustment for the crazed costs of living, I need a little help.

Ted Kennedy would be bear-hugging you about now.

That website is going to drive many a USAmerican bonkers.  People unfamiliar with the terminology and the mathematics of health insurance are going to be breaking the backs of the Emergency Departments around the country as their heads begin to explode. I hope that was worked into the cost analyses.  But, like me, they will figure it out.  They will work with the outstanding navigators in their area, the phone wizards with infinite patience, and the online tech folk who speak plainly and make real suggestions -- even if those suggestions are initially aggravating.

I am now insured -- including a separate basic dental policy -- for less than what ACA's PCIP (a wondrous creation, that!) was charging. There's a whopper of a deductible awaiting me, and some nasty negotiations over medication formularies, and a doctor to switch out (but I've been secretly wanting to lose his Hoity-Toity-ness for some time, anyway).

And then there's the fear that this is all a dream.  That I filled something out wrong.

If I could throw chalk at a few Republicans for you -- I'd be up there in a minute.  But again, Mr. President, I don't want my pedagogical corrective measures to be misconstrued as some sort of attack, thereby ending my entretien with the GOP by a bullet square between my eyes.

Anyway, thanks.

You've done a great thing.

Sincerely,
Me and all the Gang at Marlinspike Hall
Tête de Hergé
(West of the Lone Alp)

P.S.  Should you and your family ever need access to an unmappable, unflappable resort that is impervious to GPS systems, Captain Haddock has ordered us to keep one of our finest wings ready.  He has even offered to ferry you here past the sharp eyes of your protective service, courtesy of an inexplicable undersea network of blackholed miniature submarine passages, all of which end nicely in our moat.

P.S.S. I decided to repost, just under this new letter to you, an older one, so as to aggrandize the scope of my experiences with obtaining heatlh insurance under your administration.  Let's call them bookends.  There are other mentions of you throughout this blog, as you've probably surmised.  My apologies for some of them.  There is even a shot of you in a video made at one of my lowest moments, but even that connection made for a "sí, se puede" rallying cry.

© 2013 L. Ryan

Paul Krugman on Romney's Sick Sense of Humor

Romney’s Sick Joke
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 4, 2012


“No. 1,” declared Mitt Romney in Wednesday’s debate, “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” No, they aren’t — as Mr. Romney’s own advisers have conceded in the past, and did again after the debate.


Was Mr. Romney lying? Well, either that or he was making what amounts to a sick joke. Either way, his attempt to deceive voters on this issue was the biggest of many misleading and/or dishonest claims he made over the course of that hour and a half. Yes, President Obama did a notably bad job of responding. But I’ll leave the theater criticism to others and talk instead about the issue that should be at the heart of this election.

So, about that sick joke: What Mr. Romney actually proposes is that Americans with pre-existing conditions who already have health coverage be allowed to keep that coverage even if they lose their job — as long as they keep paying the premiums. As it happens, this is already the law of the land. But it’s not what anyone in real life means by having a health plan that covers pre-existing conditions, because it applies only to those who manage to land a job with health insurance in the first place (and are able to maintain their payments despite losing that job). Did I mention that the number of jobs that come with health insurance has been steadily declining over the past decade?

What Mr. Romney did in the debate, in other words, was, at best, to play a word game with voters, pretending to offer something substantive for the uninsured while actually offering nothing. For all practical purposes, he simply lied about what his policy proposals would do.

How many Americans would be left out in the cold under Mr. Romney’s plan? One answer is 89 million. According to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Foundation, that’s the number of Americans who lack the “continuous coverage” that would make them eligible for health insurance under Mr. Romney’s empty promises. By the way, that’s more than a third of the U.S. population under 65 years old.


Another answer is 45 million, the estimated number of people who would have health insurance if Mr. Obama were re-elected, but would lose it if Mr. Romney were to win.

That estimate reflects two factors. First, Mr. Romney proposes repealing the Affordable Care Act, which means doing away with all the ways in which that law would help tens of millions of Americans who either have pre-existing conditions or can’t afford health insurance for other reasons. Second, Mr. Romney is proposing drastic cuts in Medicaid — basically to save money that he could use to cut taxes on the wealthy — which would deny essential health care to millions more Americans. (And, no, despite what he has said, you can’t get the care you need just by going to the emergency room.)

Wait, it gets worse. The true number of victims from Mr. Romney’s health proposals would be much larger than either of these numbers, for a couple of reasons.

One is that Medicaid doesn’t just provide health care to Americans too young for Medicare; it also pays for nursing care and other necessities for many older Americans.

Also, many Americans have health insurance but live under the continual threat of losing it. Obamacare would eliminate this threat, but Mr. Romney would bring it back and make it worse. Safety nets don’t just help people who actually fall, they make life more secure for everyone who might fall. But Mr. Romney would take that security away, not just on health care but across the board.

READ THE REST HERE

Dear President Obama...

Mr. President:

I learn something new every day.

I'm one of your avid supporters, President Obama, and someone who has benefited enormously, albeit catastrophically, from the Affordable Care Act, most specifically the Pre-Existing Coverage that was made available for me to purchase.  (An aside -- in your campaigning, it would help people to understand PCIP better if they knew that it was not "welfare," that enrollees pay their way.  However, I confess to having blown, all by myself, the national budget for this program, and it is only September!)

I'd be even more avid in my support if you'd push for real and true reform in your next term in office.  That's right -- the public option, true universal coverage, deep, real reform.

But there is also in me a conservative streak, though I prefer to consider it basic common sense.

The medical details are irrelevant in this story of abuse of the health care payment system:  On July 10, 2012, I required emergency transportation from a doctors' building to the emergency room of the hospital across the street.  Well, to call it a "street" is a stretch, since it was more like an alley.

There was no need, as there was no time, for even the taking of basic vital signs, no i.v.s started, nothing. They just put me on the stretcher, took the elevator down to the ambulance, loaded me into it, crossed the alley, and delivered me to the emergency room.  In the interim, they managed to muck up information such as the office we had come from and the reason for the emergency transport.  (The guys said "dislocated shoulder";  In actuality, it was sepsis.)

Because I have passed the catastrophic limit for the year, most of my medical charges are being paid at 100% by PCIP -- for which you have my deepest gratitude.

I still make it a habit, however, to peruse each and every Explanation of Benefits form that comes my way, and there are some almost every day.  It's been that kind of decade.

The EOB for the ambulance ride arrived in today's mail.  PCIP payed them a whopping $963.00, exactly what they billed.

I thought about ignoring it.  Why should I care?  I'm at 100% coverage, my health is "catastrophic," and I had just spent two hours convincing a radiology practice that they would likely get paid if they would file with PCIP and not the insurance company I had four years ago.  But, still, I found myself reaching for the phone.

The first two times I dialed and explained why I was calling, my call was disconnected during the complicated transfer to the billing department.  The third time, I think the Obama-like steel in my voice made the call go through like magic.

I discovered that a nifty way to inflate an ambulance charge is to alter the address of origin for the "pick-up" or rescue, or whatever they choose to call it.  The Big Ride.

My home address was "inadvertently" listed as the originating point of the ambulance ride across the alley. My home address, of course, is in a different city -- not too far away, but still...

Call me a cynic, or nuts (though you'll not catch me conversing with an empty chair), but I suspect this inadvertent confusion of addresses happens with some frequency among the shadier members of the rescue community.  I suggest that anyone taking The Big Ride and facing a huge bill as a result obtain the paperwork designating starting and ending points.

They're going to "investigate" my claim.  I asked them to please reimburse a goodly amount of that charge to PCIP.  I'm doing what I can, President Obama!

I hope your ribs are okay -- I saw that tremendous bear hug you got at the pizzeria this morning!  Good thing you didn't need an ambulance!

Your supporter,
Profderien