Homestead mailing list

[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

I'm sure your math is right, and I am really too tired to think it out,
but at first glance, I don't like your plan.  I've probably missed the
crux of this thread, so my comments are just shot from the hip.  If I
paid $1000 to my medical providers every time I needed care or medicine,
I would be paying $100 after the first week, and then be without
anything by the end of the month.  My RA medicine alone is now
$2000/month without insurance, but I can get 3 months mail order for
$60.  That is my quality of life-it keeps me functioning.

I don't know whether it was Gene or Marie who wrote the thing about gas
taxes and alternate energy, but I totally agree with that and would vote
for that Dictator anyday.  I'd tax the crap out of beer, booze, and
cigarettes, too.  It seems like 50% of healthcare costs are related to
alcohol use and abuse in some way, and the other 50% can be traced back
to smoking.  In line with the three halves comment, the other 50% points
to drug abuse, of all shapes and sizes.   That's just healthcare...I
can't even imagine how the big three impacts crime...can you imagine a
jail filled with people who were clean and sober when they erred? Or
perhaps they were clean, but grew up in a neglectful or abusive home
because of drugs and alcohol?  What a world it would be.

I think I will go pop open a Mike's hard lemonade and ponder that. <g>
Hey, at least I didn't say light up...I'm still smoke free,,,since
January 2008...but I'm drinking more...more alcohol, more coffee...gave
up soft drinks though...win some, lose some, depending on what day it
is.  Here lately, I'm losing pretty regularly, so the future has GOT to
be better.

B




Leslie wrote:
> My version of health care reform :-)
>
> All medical providers change their billing...
>
> Those with health insurance pay $1000 Those without health insurance 
> pay $100
>
> That simple step applied across the board would cut out the cost of 
> all the health insurance skyscrapers and offices, all the salaries of
>  the health insurance workers, all the retired insurance agents 
> collecting kickbacks on policies they wrote, all the long distance 
> faxes and phone calls back and forth to get permission to treat 
> patients, and so on............   It cuts out the red tape cost of 
> the insurance companies.
>
> I know, none of my ideas are popular......... but do the math.
>
>
>
> --------
>
>
> "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ZERO" ~ 
> Voltaire 1729
>
> ________________________________ From: Gene GeRue 
> <genegerue AT ruralize.com> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Tue, 
> February 23, 2010 8:33:51 PM Subject: Re: [Homestead] Shaking the 
> grid
>
>
> On Feb 23, 2010, at 5:23 PM, Marie McHarry wrote:
>
> > Were I Dictator in Chief, I'd put a $1 tax on gasoline and raise it
> >  every year till it got up to, say $10, and dedicate the proceeds
> > to improving the conventional and alternate energy that's
> > available.
> >
> > It would take a dictator, though, to bring that off. Half the 
> > CongressCritters would want to give new tax breaks, half would want
> >  to fight a new war, and half would find some new program to fund. 
> > Yeah, I know that there aren't three halves in a whole, but this is
> >  my fantasy, dammit.


--
Many of our greatest American thinkers, men of the caliber of Thomas
Jefferson, Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, William James, and John Muir, have
found the forest an effective stimulus to original thought.
Bob Marshall