Another Healthcare Rant - This time it's personal!

My employer recently sold my part of the company to someone else. I blogged about it back in December but I want to do so again with some fresh thoughts.

This is real to me now. Before the Healthcare problems of this country, while extremely important to me, did not affect me directly. 

Now it is personal to me. Before I rant, let me say I'm not blaming my new employer, I'm blaming a broken for-profit health care system.

My old employer, Pioneer Natural Resources, paid $21k a year and covered my family at no cost to me. None!!! We even had our own clinic. Most American's probably don't even realize how much their employer contributes. I'm going to make a total guess here, but I believe when most people hear about the cost of a single-payer system they are not thinking about the money their employers are already putting into the system.

My new employer only pays for my insurance. I will have to pay in $11,900 a year to make sure my wife and kids have insurance. I'm actually going to be okay, I can handle it... it's not going to be easy, but it is doable.

My coworkers can not. Their compensation is based on a 40hr work week even though they put in 96 hrs a week. Mine is based on salary, I put in 84 a week, but it would be the same no matter what. In 2018 their wife and kids were covered. Every sickness, every broken bone, they had insurance.

In any other industrialized country in the world, this wouldn't happen. The amount paid would be the same (But in America we use healthcare as leverage to tie people to a job). Most middle class and poor people in this country live to their means (in other words their spending comes close to their paycheck), most cant absorb the sudden loss of almost $1000 in income a month.

Some of these guys will have to choose now between bills and coverage. 

Now.... we spent $3.4 Trillion on healthcare as a country in 2016. It went up about 4% 2017 and is expected to be up 5.3% after the final numbers for 2018 (Edit - I have the numbers now, $3.6 Trillion).

Conservatives estimate the cost of universal healthcare at 32 trillion over 10 years. Democrats estimate $2.8 trillion. That's $3.2 trillion a year by the con estimate and covers everyone. 

By any measure that's a savings of 2 trillion over 10 years. 

EDIT: Things have changed since this blog. I have been on Obamacare since May 2020. Read about that experience here.

I'm what's wrong with the Middle Class!

I work 90 hours a week in the oil fields of West Texas. Literally 90 hours a week and I can barely make ends meet for me and my family. Isn't that just ridiculous in this society? I make rich people richer and barely see my wife and kids during my two week on hitches.

And if I don't get my 90hrs I can't afford my bills and put myself deeper in debt. It's not easy work either. We have no scheduled breaks 12-15 hours a day on most wells. God forbid we take a vacation day. When we do we get paid 8 hours straight time. Every day of vacation I take costs me several hundred dollars in pay. My employer even schedules my 14 day hitches to start on Tuesdays just to get out of paying one day of overtime (my hitch ends on Monday).

Everyone around me is right wing and can't be made to understand that they continually vote against their own self interests. Sly politicians have convinced them to vote for non issues instead of something that could actually help them. They keep the middle class poor and make the poor absolutely destitute and somehow have convinced people it's the poor people's fault.

It's not the poor people's fault. It's just not. You idiots want to cry and whine about welfare recipients. They are not getting your money. Corporate welfare is not paying their share. The rich are dodging their taxes so you have to pay more and more and more. You cry about welfare cheats when very few exist. You cry about drug testing that actually costs more then it saves. You call these people lazy and tell them to get a job, but at the same time you are against giving them a living wage.

Wake the Fuck up! There was a time in this country when hard work got you somewhere. Now all it does is line the pockets of the rich! My grand parents bought a nice home and raised 6 kid's on one 40hr a week income. Stop letting them steal the American dream and making us their bitch!