Seriously, I have no intention of ever doing something like this, and certainly not all on my little lonesome, if only because, as Ben Gates in National Treasure says, you can't imagine how much I really, really, don't want to go to jail.
But today I can see how people can feel the need to terminate political figures with extreme prejudice. I can also better understand how you can have a civil war with brother killing brother, neighbor killing neighbor, and former best friends now worst enemies. I loathed Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and all their little sycophantic underlings before today. But until today I did know just how much I could hate. Beginning today, if they are on fire I will not piss on them. Beginning today, if I hear that something evil has befallen them, I will celebrate like the Palestinians on 9/11. Beginning today not a single one of them can claim membership in the same country or even species with me.
I just got the annual benefits enrollment package. And I am going to have to drop my health insurance at work and leave us with just Tricare, the insurance which most doctors would prefer charity cases over.
For the 12 years I have worked at this institution we have had two or three choices, the more expensive ones covering more stuff with lower copays, but all of them available to everyone who wanted them. For the last several years it has been two versions of Aetna, a PPO1 and a PPO2. I have chosen 1 because my share of the premiums for the family plan has been about $43 a week (which is actually less than 10% of the total premium), and since we have Tricare which functions as a secondary insurance, it just didn't make financial sense to pay 50% more for something which wouldn't give us that $1K more of benefits.
This year, HR has decided to give us two offerings, the PPO2 at the same $64 a week, or a High Deductible Insurance with an HSA, at $15 a week. Except that since I am married to a man who gets Tricare I can not, by law, choose the HDI/HSA plan. HDI/HSA primary members cannot be covered by any other health insurance. Their spouses and children can, but not them. So unless I could figure out a way to get off Tricare, which I suspect would require divorcing my husband, and even if it's not that difficult, I'd never be able to get back on, I can't use that plan.
So they say, I can just pay another $20 a week and get the higher plan. Except that over the last four years my raises haven't even covered the increase in the cost of gas to get to and from work. On January 1, 2013 Social Security will go back up from 4.3% to 6.3%, which is almost another $20 a week for me. The child tax credit is being halved, so that's another $10 a week in tax. Add in the return of the marriage penalty and the loss of the 10% tax bracket and that's another $20 a week too. My husband is also going to see the SS/MC increase so that's another $10 or so a week.
So add it up, the tax increases we will see in two months, thanks to the Democrats, will amount to nearly $60 a week. We can't really cut anything other than the SS from my husband's share of the income because pretty much everything he brings in is already spoken for, and anyway, working in retail, his hours haven't always been consistent this past year (surprise). So I'm looking at my take-home dropping $50 a week.
I can tell you right now that I don't have a spare $50 a week. I certainly don't have the spare $70 which I would need if I were to change to the PPO2. I'll be very lucky if I see even a one percent pay raise this year, partly due to some less than stellar job performance on my part due to both health issues and morale issues, and partly due to the organization having recently turned into cheap bastards. They've been around well over 100 years and only had the first successful unionization three years ago. I know that the appearance of the unions hasn't helped management any, but if they hadn't started treating the employees as easily replaceable cogs rather than partners there wouldn't be a union.
I don't mind my job, but I hate my work place. I hate being treated as an idiot and given no say in how my job can be done best. I hate being expected to accept being "dissed" by management at every turn with a smile and a "May I have some more please?" attitude.
I knew when the PPACA was passed that I was going to lose my real health insurance (I don't count Tricare as real), but my family, dyed in the wool Dems that they all are, kept assuring me that I was over-reacting and nothing like that would ever happen. I got to call my mother today and remind her about that.
And the worst of it is, that by dropping my health insurance with the institution, I am saving them over $20K a year, and there is no way they will give me a penny of it. Basically, my reimbursement from work is dropping over 30%.
I worked my ass off to get a good job so I could have real health insurance, and thanks to those &^%$#%^&* assholes in DC I'm working as hard as ever, my taxes are going up almost 50%, all the necessities cost more every day, and I can't even afford insurance better than they give to the folks on welfare (okay, sometimes Tricare is better, but the docs I work with have said that the pay from Medicaid is often better than Tricare).
My standard of living is sinking like a rock, I can't give my children the things they want, and not even some of the things they need, and the folks in Washington, who think they rule me, want me to just suck it up like a good little peon?
Ben Gates: Of all the ideas that became the United States, there's a line here that's at the heart of all others. "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security."
Here's hoping that we can overthrow this Government at the ballot box in November. Otherwise at best, we need to stock up on tar and feathers and start a march on DC. If, God forbid, Zero gets another term, we need to start that march on the 7th.
Who's with me?
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