You know I wrote out some of those details about Medicare, then I decided it was too complicated and deleted it. So thanks for posting that.
I can't afford to buy all the various trick dick parts to B and D that are supposed to cover stuff and don't. It is actually cheaper for me to pay out of pocket. So I take the risk somebody will pick up my body on the street if anything nasty happens. If the ER bills me, then what? My plan for that option is to go over the bill and highlight duplicate charges and other quasi-fraudulent practices and hope the billing dept writes off a loss. I know just barely enough of the DCI9 codes to spot this shit---and there is a lot of it. Fraud comes from the hospitals, not the patients.
If something bad happens, my back up plan is to live in my truck. Mike Yates and long years with the climbing subculture gave me the basic idea. Just drive around in the outback. Note to self, get some fishing gear, further note, get a passport. It's cheaper to camp out than living any were except some rundown right wing haven in Idaho with no public services. Right now I am debating getting a used mac notebook so I can stay connected. Isn't that a silly thought? I could probably just use the Berkeley City Library, well when it's open...closed three out of four Fridays.
Now the local debate is around cutting funding for mammograms for women 40-50yrs. What insane crap. The highest rates of breast cancer are among Latina women---well probably because they are also the working class base of the agricultural-manufacturing industries where carcinogens are ubiquitous.
Most people have no idea what it means to live a working class life and get old in this asshole country. The cruelty and brutality is really astonishing once you turn the corner on age, and face it directly. I have great admiration, comradeship for my daughter-in-law's mother, C who switches between the nightmare of Nuevo Laredo and Laredo. She was a cleaning lady her whole life and still managed to help put her daughter through college. Half her family lives on one side of the border and the other half on the other. What she does is travel by bus between her children ... roaming in the southwest nowhere. It's a stark heroine life stripped to the bone. Nobody seems to see it.
US Capital to Working Class: Drop Dead.
Medicare needs a serious overhaul, but I wouldn't bring that up in this political climate.
CG