I just got a "Notice of Action" from Medi-Cal yesterday that they will discontinue my benefits on August 31. Of course, I immediately filed an appeal and mailed it off. Many recipients may not be aware (the information is in small, unreadable print on the back of the denial letter), but you can protect your benefits indefinitely by filing an appeal within 90 days of the Notice of Action.
In the notice, they claim I did not return my annual redetermination forms. However, I never received the redetermination forms this year. Their claim is bogus. I have dwelled in my apartment for 17 years, and I would have immediately filled out the forms, had I seen them in my mail.
I am frankly sick and tired of the state discontinuing my Medi-Cal every single year! How many times have I had to file appeals? Last summer I got the cut-off notice as I was lying in my hospital bed recovering from major surgery. The added stress did not help my healing process, obviously. That year, I had mailed in the redetermination forms on time, with a registered mail receipt from the agency, yet they still tried to discontinue my healthcare. The year before that, they tried to discontinue my coverage due to not having received my forms, even though the forms had been languishing on my social worker's desk for six weeks while he took a family vacation to his homeland in Egypt.
I’m beginning to think the state is singling out the “working disabled” like me for extra attention, in an attempt to hassle them off the Medi-Cal enrollment. I have asked Aleyda Toruno, my attorney at California Disability Rights, if she's ever heard of a client with as many erroneous discontinuations as I have experienced. My rough guess is, she hasn't encountered a client as persecuted as I have been.
Furthermore, I believe that these annual threats to discontinue my healthcare constitute a violation of my civil rights. When the state threatens to cut off the coverage of a person on life support, that is the equivalent of a death threat. A stranger would be arrested for showing up at my door and attempting to unplug my ventilator. By what right can the state claim to do the same thing?
Why is it only the crazed, right-wingnuts who yell and scream about their government? We, the disability community, are too docile. Our representative democracy has degenerated into mob-rule (the very thing feared by Hobbes, in "Leviathan.") The oppressed need to get out their pitchforks and torches too.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
The Irrationality of the Free Market
I've been reading the new book, "Cheap," by Ellen R. Shell. It's a study of the latter 20th centuy's drive to push prices downward, and thereby devalue labor and destroy the very middle class supposedly being served by Wal-Mart, Target, and even Ikea.
The part of the book I'm reading now deals with the psychology of price. What constitutes a bargain? What is the most fitting price for an item? What is the psychology of mega-stores like Costco, which herd customers like cattle, from stall to stall until the finally reach the exit gates?
What I find fascinating is that people's decisions to shop are not driven wholly by reason. Prices can be manipulated to activate the more primitive segments of the brain; the portions that pre-date most higher-level consciousness. Stores price items at $9.99 because they know that our brains see that as $9.00, not "virtually" $10.00. Even though we're aware of the trickery, we still fall for it. Our deep brains can't resist a good bargain.
Which brings me to ponder the current myth of the "heathcare market." Amazingly, "conservatives" like Huckabee and Palin, who go through all kinds of half-assed contortions to argue against CO2-induced climate change, or to reconcile Bronze Age creation myths with modern-day fossil evidence, suddenly transform themselves into 18th century Rationalists when it comes to market theory.
The argument seems to come down to "give people a choice, and they'll always choose what's best for them." Like Rousseau and Locke, the free-marketeers are wholly trusting in people's ability to act in their own best interest. From the American Civil War, to Germany's twin disasters in the two world wars, we can see that people often choose what's WRONG for themselves, based on emotive factors not completely under their control. These very factors are easily manipulated by those who can profit from humanity's tendency to act on baser instincts.
So, these Lockeans believe that if we give people access to hundreds of insurance policies, they'll select the best. Yet they buttress their arguments with appeals to fear and anger on the part of the masses: Obama's birth certificate, Hitlerism, "death panels," forced abortions.
The very reason we need government intervention in the medical marketplace is that insurance, like all other goods, can be manipulated by the corporate power structure against the best interests of the citizenry.
It's time to pay more attention to Hobbes, and less to Locke (the eternal dichotomy of American governmental philosophy).
The part of the book I'm reading now deals with the psychology of price. What constitutes a bargain? What is the most fitting price for an item? What is the psychology of mega-stores like Costco, which herd customers like cattle, from stall to stall until the finally reach the exit gates?
What I find fascinating is that people's decisions to shop are not driven wholly by reason. Prices can be manipulated to activate the more primitive segments of the brain; the portions that pre-date most higher-level consciousness. Stores price items at $9.99 because they know that our brains see that as $9.00, not "virtually" $10.00. Even though we're aware of the trickery, we still fall for it. Our deep brains can't resist a good bargain.
Which brings me to ponder the current myth of the "heathcare market." Amazingly, "conservatives" like Huckabee and Palin, who go through all kinds of half-assed contortions to argue against CO2-induced climate change, or to reconcile Bronze Age creation myths with modern-day fossil evidence, suddenly transform themselves into 18th century Rationalists when it comes to market theory.
The argument seems to come down to "give people a choice, and they'll always choose what's best for them." Like Rousseau and Locke, the free-marketeers are wholly trusting in people's ability to act in their own best interest. From the American Civil War, to Germany's twin disasters in the two world wars, we can see that people often choose what's WRONG for themselves, based on emotive factors not completely under their control. These very factors are easily manipulated by those who can profit from humanity's tendency to act on baser instincts.
So, these Lockeans believe that if we give people access to hundreds of insurance policies, they'll select the best. Yet they buttress their arguments with appeals to fear and anger on the part of the masses: Obama's birth certificate, Hitlerism, "death panels," forced abortions.
The very reason we need government intervention in the medical marketplace is that insurance, like all other goods, can be manipulated by the corporate power structure against the best interests of the citizenry.
It's time to pay more attention to Hobbes, and less to Locke (the eternal dichotomy of American governmental philosophy).
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Folly of Health Insurance Reform
I was just watching Michael Medved on MSNB's "The Ed Show" saying, "Most Americans don't want government healthcare, they want INSURANCE REFORM." In an odd coincidence, I taught Michael's snotty litte brother, Ben, in my first Muir Writing class at UCSD in 1978. Anyway, Michael isn't one of the neo-fascist screamers of the Limbaugh and Savage ilk. He at least couches his words in reason.
The problem with insurance-only reform is that it will merely inflate the Ponzi scheme we've already got. I saw Elizabeth Edwards state on the "Daily Show" that at one time a single insurance company CEO made 1 in every $700 spent on healthcare in this country. ONE CEO!
The type of reform Republicans endorse, eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions and requiring that all be insured, will simply add to all our health insurance costs. Why? Because insurance companies will use the new rules to jack up rates. Their excuse will be that covering the truly sick is expensive, and all these government regulations constitute an onerous burden. Their solution will be increased government subsidies to cover their inflated premiums. They'll make money coming and going.
So-called insurance reform, without a government plan to compete, will merely prolong the agony of our intractible and slowly dying system. For-profit insurance will continue to demand its 30% overhead, and that CEO will continue to aggregate his salary. For insurance companies, "single-payer" means we, the rate payers and taxpayers, will continue to pay singularly exhorbitant salaries to their CEOs.
The problem with insurance-only reform is that it will merely inflate the Ponzi scheme we've already got. I saw Elizabeth Edwards state on the "Daily Show" that at one time a single insurance company CEO made 1 in every $700 spent on healthcare in this country. ONE CEO!
The type of reform Republicans endorse, eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions and requiring that all be insured, will simply add to all our health insurance costs. Why? Because insurance companies will use the new rules to jack up rates. Their excuse will be that covering the truly sick is expensive, and all these government regulations constitute an onerous burden. Their solution will be increased government subsidies to cover their inflated premiums. They'll make money coming and going.
So-called insurance reform, without a government plan to compete, will merely prolong the agony of our intractible and slowly dying system. For-profit insurance will continue to demand its 30% overhead, and that CEO will continue to aggregate his salary. For insurance companies, "single-payer" means we, the rate payers and taxpayers, will continue to pay singularly exhorbitant salaries to their CEOs.
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