Comments by "Janis Williams" (@janiswilliams2766) on "Glorious Life On Wheels"
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Social security was never set up to be the sole support for anyone throughout their retirement. People needed to make saving a priority and a lot of people haven’t and unfortunately a lot of people still don’t. Food banks that I was associated with required people to have a social security number, several forms of ID and the amount of groceries provided were dependent upon the household size. A lot of people I saw in the food lines given where I live, reflected the American majority demographic, men and women; quite a few with incredibly expensive and nice cars including one who was driving a cyber truck, several in huge escaladles, F150s, BMWs, Mercedes. Other food banks are supported by the community, donations and/ or churches etc where there is no legal status requirement for receiving food, the Y I go to work-out is in the inner city and they have such a food bank. All kinds of people come there, overwhelmingly they are legally here or are citizens. Immigrants are not sucking up your benefits. Most of them work and pay taxes yet won’t be eligible for social security nor most benefits, depending on your state. The monkey on most peoples back is poor financial planning in youth and continued frivolous spending without discipline.
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@deed421 there are a lot of systemic reasons why people of color are not in nursing homes. Yes some of them are cultural, where the assumption is that you will take care of the elderly. However to make a leap to assume that many people of color are taken care of by their families isn’t accurate. Many people of color have higher death rate and die younger not needing extended nursing care facilities. Why? Some lifestyle choices but much more do to societal oppression, lack of health care services, access to good markets and food, education and employment. Typically having less insurance coverage and income they aren’t going to have access to long term care as long term care is expensive. If in California they can maybe get into a medi- cal funded facility but those are typically so bad, statistics show that an elderly person is not going to last much more than 3 months.
People are making judgements about this man not knowing much of anything about him or his kids. I don’t know anything about him or his kids. But I do know, because of my field of work, family dynamics are complicated.
I’m not making these next statements about this man and his family … so do not take it that I am Making any connections to HIM.
Family backgrounds as I stated are complicated. You don’t know what adult children’s experiences are to their parents. If you have a healthy relationship and are in a position financially and emotionally to take care of your parents good for you; everyone should have positive experiences. Far more of the population than you know are abused adult children. Abuse can be in the form of sexual (yes incest is rampant in our society, it’s just not talked about), physical and emotional. Domestic violence is also high, again not something that everyone is out there talking about. Adult children might be making decisions and taking steps to try and protect their own children from the background that they have experienced. And if that’s the case good for them. Generational abuse is also a problem and unhealthy adults usually perpetuate the cycle of whatever abuse they have experienced.
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What Project 2025 says about Medicaid
Medicaid is a free or low-cost national public health insurance program designed to provide coverage to eligible low-income adults, pregnant women, children, older adults and people with disabilities. As of March 2024, more than 82 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid.
Project 2025 calls for Medicaid’s federal funding to be converted from its current model — the federal government paying a fixed percentage of states’ Medicare costs — to a model in which the federal government pays a block grant (or fixed amount) to each state, regardless of their specific costs.
Block grants have been floated several times over the years. Such proposals are typically “designed to fail to keep pace with expected enrollment and/or health care cost growth in order to deeply cut federal Medicaid spending over time, relative to current law,” according to a report on Project 2025 from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
In 2017, a Medicaid block grant plan proposed by Republicans would have slashed Medicaid’s federal funding by more than 25% over 10 years and 30% over 20 years, according to a Congressional Budget Office projection.
For those receiving Medicaid benefits, Project 2025 also proposes coverage with “time limits” or “lifetime caps” to “disincentivize permanent dependence” on those benefits. And while the proposal is vague on details, it suggests that the incoming administration eliminate Medicaid protections and reform mandatory versus optional Medicaid benefits. Some of the benefits that Medicaid is currently required to cover are X-ray services, rural health clinic visits, nursing home care and early prevention and diagnostic screenings.
Project 2025 also proposes adding a work requirement, “similar to what is required in other welfare programs,” as well as raising premiums for higher-income beneficiaries. Eligibility should be redesigned, too, the plan reads, “to serve the most vulnerable and truly needy and eliminate middle-income to upper-income Medicaid recipients."
One recent attempt to impose a Medicaid work requirement led to thousands of beneficiaries losing coverage. Arkansas added a Medicaid work requirement in 2018 and removed it in 2019. During the nine-month period the requirement was active, roughly 18,000 enrollees lost coverage, according to The Commonwealth Fund, a health care policy think tank.
The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, said lifetime caps on Medicaid benefits could cause “devastating coverage losses.” Specifically, the approximately 18.5 million beneficiaries who qualify for Medicaid based on income alone — around 20% of those receiving Medicaid — would be particularly at risk of losing their coverage.
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I’m actually surprised that his rent was able to increase by 500$ because there are currently laws in California about increasing rent during covid and kicking people out for non payment of rent. A lot of communities have rent control laws that only allow landowners to raise the rent a certain percentage, usually much less than 10 percent and it appears s/he might have raised it way out of proportion to their rent. He should seek out legal aid which is free and they will connect him to a tenant rights group who would be more familiar with the local laws. If nothing else that would buy them time on the issue of moving out and have more time to make a plan.
I personally feel that how people vote is what reverberates what happens in the future. When you vote Republican … let’s say because of a single issue like abortion rights or in the current case of California the governor taking steps to closing down the state because of covid…. You throw away all the social issues that Democrats try to better correct. Business owners, land owners tend to vote Republican because they don’t want rent control laws to prevent this kind of problems from happening because it’s all about their profit. Also, I’m going to add, maybe to the chagrin of some of you, the majority culture tends to vote against policies they perceive are there to help people of color (typically the phrasing is they need to learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they have had plenty of time to get their act together, all the problems in this country are because of brown and black peoples and people who are specifically brown immigrants) so when you vote on that agenda, your hatred also affects your own majority culture, and thus people like this become a story. I recently received my ballot for the ridiculous California recall election …. Californians think about what you are asking for…. For those Republicans, you really think Cox, Jenner or Elder are able to do a better job for people like this guy and his wife?
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Project 2025’s plan would lead to a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers.
Project 2025 would restrict Medicare enrollees’ choices
A stated goal of Project 2025 is to “[g]ive beneficiaries direct control of how they spend Medicare dollars.” Yet the result of making MA the default Medicare enrollment option will be the opposite: to give for-profit corporations more control by restricting the choices of even more older Americans.
Once a Medicare enrollee has chosen an MA plan, they are constrained to a network of providers, which restricts their choice of doctors and hospitals, compared with traditional Medicare enrollees, who can see nearly any Medicare provider nationwide. Sometimes, MA networks can be very limited: According to a 2017 report, MA networks, on average, included fewer than half (46 percent) of all Medicare physicians in a given county. Data show that some MA plan networks are restricted to an area as small as a single county, and nearly half of MA plan networks include no psychiatrists. One study of cancer patients from 2015 to 2017 found that MA enrollees were 6 percent less likely than TM enrollees to use “top-ranked cancer hospitals for complex cancer surgery,” suggesting that beneficiaries in MA plans also have less access to at least the best cancer care.
In the name of cost savings, MA plans also often require burdensome prior authorization for services and medications and sometimes deny doctor-recommended care. In 2022, physicians submitted more than 46 million prior authorization requests to MA plans. According to the American Medical Association, in 2023, physicians submitted an average of 45 requests per week and 1 in 3 physicians had staff members assigned exclusively to prior authorizations.
These restrictions do not lead to higher-quality care for enrollees: In a 2021 systematic review comparing MA and TM, MA plans performed better than TM for breast cancer screening, diabetes care, and influenza and pneumonia vaccinations, but enrollees in MA plans were more likely to be cared for by lower-quality nursing facilities, average-quality hospitals, and lower-quality home health agencies. Other measures did not show better performance by MA plans compared with TM “despite the higher payments to MA plans.” While Project 2025 touts MA’s superior performance in some categories, it fails to mention MA’s inferior performance in others. Overall, the best available evidence shows there are few differences in health care experiences between TM and MA.
Further, burdensome prior authorization requirements and care denials have led a growing number of hospitals and health systems to stop accepting some MA plans altogether. Citing reported losses of $75 million, one health system in San Diego recently terminated the contracts of the MA plans of more than 30,000 beneficiaries. A 2023 report in Becker’s Hospital CFO Report listed a dozen hospitals and health systems that have recently cut ties with MA plans, allegedly as a result of slow, excessive, and unreasonable prior authorization and claims denials that result in financial losses for hospitals. As providers drop MA networks, patients are left with fewer choices, and the MA program as a whole becomes less sustainable.
Project 2025’s plan to make MA the default option for all enrollees would also likely lead to more people getting stuck in the MA program. That is because in all but four states, MA enrollees who want to switch from MA back to TM after a short trial period can be denied supplemental coverage (Medigap), which many enrollees would need to make the switch to TM financially viable. This can trap people with serious health issues in MA plans—which may not be the best option for their needs—for the rest of their lives. If MA becomes the Medicare default enrollment option for all enrollees, MA plans will be guaranteed a steady stream of excessive overpayments, as many enrollees won’t be able to afford to leave them.
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@DearestDawn first I grew up struggling working class, there were no frills in our household. From the age of 16 I’ve never not worked even through college.
The Bush economic disaster in my 40s was a very eye opening experience for me and a reminder for me, from my father that this country will never do anything for me. I built back my savings that I lost under the Bush admin (2006-2008) by increasing my savings amount from saving 12% every month to 20% and then over a number of years eventually to 25-27%. I never saw that money it was taken directly out of my paycheck and directly went to my savings. Every time I got any increase in money, raises for example, or if there were no raises COLAS, I put all but 1- 1.5% of it in savings, when there were no increases I still put in an extra .5% - in short earning less money than I was making for several years. So in other words I kept my same lifestyle despite making more money. I drove the same car (Toyota Camry) for 23 years. There were periods where I also took on an additional part time job to buy a new car, or pay for a vacation etc. in the early 90s I worked 3 jobs for several years to build up enough of a down payment for a condo.
Under Obama the financial market finally stabilized and started getting soo much better. Building back all the losses I had in 2008.
I saved A LOT of money during Covid because we were in lockdown. Gas was lower because the market was flooded with fuel no one was driving, flying, cruising. Whatever frivolous shopping I did (Shepora, manicures, crafts, going to movies whatever) I didn’t spend any money. I couldn’t go out and eat, which saved a ton of money. I didn’t do door dash or any food delivery service so I didn’t have those kinds of costs.
So when things started to get going again Post Covid when people were using way more gas, traveling, causing shortages because production needed to be amped up, bird flue affecting the cost of chicken and eggs, production slow downs in other countries (took them longer to recover than us) affecting the cost of imports/goods here etc. The stuff that caused inflation affected me but I wasn’t devastated because I maintained the lifestyle I had during Covid. I didn’t go back to frivolous shopping, I ate at home more, friends hung out at friends homes and cooked and didn’t spend money on eating out going to shows etc.
CD % rates because of inflation were relatively good during these last years of Biden, not as good as I remember them when I was a kid but the rates are really good for our times. I took a portion of my savings and locked them into 5% for 2,3,4 and five years, laddering my accounts so that if I need it I’ll have money accessible once every year. Also, because of the economic stability and improvement over the last couple of years under Biden my IRA did better as well as if not better than it did under Obama.
For the most part I expect that the interest rates will continue to go down or at least stabilize and the market will stay sane as long as trump doesn’t do stupid stuff. If he implements tariffs, keep cutting tax rates more than he already did for the top 1% and big businesses, and actually deports all the millions of people he’s talking about the economy will again be in a perfect to crash and likely crash worse than it did under Bush. And that effects everything. For those who need charity related services, food assistance etc .. people and corporations who typically donate will not have the money to donate towards those services and everything will cost more for what those charities have to purchase.
So, for the potentially dark days ahead and my personal opinion is that there will be. I’m back to saving every piece of change again and looking at where I can possibly cut back (example a couple of years ago I talked a friend into going in a $30/mo inc taxes and fees cell phone plan, no longer offered). For cable I call every 6 months for rates, I call my bank and ask for them to lower my interest rate, but I usually pay my credit card every month. In the event I don’t or can’t I want my interest rate as low as possible. Until Covid I was able to keep my main card between 5 and 7 percent for 20 years. During the inflation with Covid it increased but every time the feds decreased the rate I call my bank. I’m now at 9.97%. Since the feds just dropped the rate again this week, I’ll be calling my bank again.
I don’t qualify for discounts on utilities etc but when my father was alive when he became older and didn’t want to deal with that kind of stuff I was calling his cable company, phone company, bank card etc to get better rates. He was able to save money during Covid because the PPp money for businesses kept food service businesses open during Covid (to keep people working and earning money) but the food, primarily through small family restaurants was delivered to seniors. It was all free for them. He was able to save a lot of money from that time because he couldn’t go anywhere either. You have to know your resources and know how they work. I will finally add that I live in a very blue area of a blue state so there is really an effort to help those who are less able to help themselves. The environment where I live also doesn’t have a seething hate about others, so people are not inclined to screw themselves because they think someone else is getting something they aren’t.
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What Project 2025 says about Medicare
Medicare is the federal government health insurance program for people age 65 and older and younger people living with certain illnesses or disabilities. More than 67 million Americans are currently enrolled.
As for Medicare, Project 2025 proposes making Medicare Advantage, the bundled alternative to Original Medicare, the default enrollment plan for Medicare beneficiaries. Medicare Advantage is offered by private insurers with federal government contracts to individuals who qualify for Medicare. It functions similarly to health insurance plans offered by private employers, in which policyholders have a set network of providers they can visit. About half of Medicare recipients are currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans.
While Medicare Advantage adoption rates have risen, Original Medicare remains a more flexible choice for many recipients. Unlike Original Medicare, which can be used to visit the roughly 90% of doctors in the U.S. who accept Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans have provider networks. Medicare Advantage plans can also require prior authorization for certain coverage, meaning that the plan can approve or deny certain services. Original Medicare plans don’t have any prior authorization requirements.
Medicare Advantage plans are built on contracts between the federal government and private insurance companies, in which the federal government gives money to the insurance company to “manage” patient care. Because insurance companies charge the federal government for patient care, Medicare Advantage winds up costing the government and taxpayers more than Original Medicare.
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Hmmmm. I hope to be somewhat delicate here.
First, I agree regarding knowing what one’s skill level is for the work they are applying for. I’m quicker than my younger peers but there are older people who have more knowledge and perfectly capable of completing tasks in a timely manner. You can’t go by age. You also can’t go by appearance. I look at least 20 to 25 years younger than my actual age, but I feel every bit of the late 50s that I am, but I’m not looking to do an Amazon job where I have to be on my feet all day because I know I can’t do it.
Regarding racism. Sure you may be sick of hearing about it, but would you have to hear about it or live it? supremacists are banking on you being sick of hearing about it so you turn a deaf ear to it and it then can continue to persist.
Also please note because blacks (and I also mean browns throughout this conversation) don’t have systemic power they are NOT the racists. They can be prejudiced and they can exercise discriminatory behaviors, but they are not the racists. If blacks managed and held the power and the wealth of the country and whites were then maligned by inequitable practices then blacks would be practicing racism as they would then have power. Which I suspect, is the reason for whites to keep power away from people of color, certainly wouldn’t want to risk them holding power and treating the majority culture the way they have been treated. I would agree with you, all of us are likely to practice or have some discriminatory behaviors.
There’s more than a “few” people who are racist. And you must understand that you in your experience wouldn’t know it because you don’t live it. You don’t have to walk around with the color of your skin shouting what you are. You aren’t a black man trying to catch a cab… the cab driver is racist when he passes him up to go pick up a white women and the cabbie would be sexist if he passed up that white woman for a white man (because women do not hold the power in this country). Black people are shot pulled over by police while white men can brandish a gun in front of police and they don’t get shot. White men can conduct crimes and not get arrested and certainly not get incarcerated to the same percentage of the population. My white friend and her black boyfriend were at a spa in Santa Fe NM… the lounging room for the showers was coed …. Two white women approached the boyfriend when my friend stepped away and told him he shouldn’t be in there. There was another white man in there. 🤷 what’s up with that? If it were my boyfriend I would have also told him not to be in there because those white women can allege sexual assault and he would probably be found guilty. But my white friend doesn’t have to think that way because that’s not her life experience. The bird watcher in NY, the woman screams to the police she was being assaulted by a black man, that could have gotten him killed. On the west coast in San Francisco a black guy was writing Black Lives Matter in chalk on his front walk. A white women and her husband said that that was not his property and he should not be writing on someone else’s property, they further said they knew the person in that house and they were going to call the police. It was his house. I don’t feel I can freely travel across this so called great country… the least irritable thing that would happen is someone calling me the N word, or if they are quick enough to figure out my Asian heritage a ch!nk or a j@p; the worse they can do is maybe string me up to the back of a pick up and drag me along the pavement until I die (I’m looking at you texas). A couple of weeks ago I’m at a stoplight in Arizona waiting for a green light, a couple of good ole boys in their truck pull up and say “N go back to Africa”. So tell me, would you rather hear about it or live it.
I think I’ll leave your “another block woman suing” comment alone.
Racism exists and it’s in is full glory and was revitalized by trump and made to be ok. And those who continue to support him are supporting to continue the behavior. I’m not saying you have to go democrat … but for common sense and the betterment of this country find some other repub.
Again I’m going to ask everyone who says they are tired of hearing about it. Would you rather have to hear about it everyday or live it every day? And you wouldn’t have to hear about it, if an equitable playing field was established. If it was established as recently as 1960, within the lifetime of many people who are watching YouTube videos … you wouldn’t have to hear about it now. It continues to be a problem and will be for future generations if people contour to turn away from it.
This country is not making any progress, really burning books? Women don’t have rights over their own body? People don’t have clean water to drink? People don’t have health care?
Unfortunately for 9/11… the country might have come together, but unfortunately it came together against Muslims and Arabic looking peoples.
The country didn’t come together for COVID and thanks to trump China flu rants crimes against the API (Asian Pacific Islander has increased).
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So then you tag all federal workers as such, that justifies aimlessly and randomly firing hundreds of thousands of people? That’s just plain hatred, jealousy and ignorance. I have a number of friends who work at a couple different VA facilities, I have two facilities near where I live. I know no one who doesn’t put in more than their 40 hour week to try and meet the need. When you work in services that meet the needs of people, most people put in way more time than they are compensated for because they aren’t motivated by the money and we are usually short staffed for all the needs that must be met. People who believe that mess by the current administration are drinking up the schit they are being fed by the elite. Im a mid level manager working with abused children and adults… not only would I make more if went outside of govt I probably would not often have to work 60 hour weeks but only get paid for 40. It’s the nature of the job, when there’s an emergency you deal with it, you don’t close shop and go home. Do I occasionally take a 90 minute lunch … you bet I do because on most days I choke down my lunch at my desk in 10 minutes, when I’m in the field seeing people, I might not eat lunch at all. Are there slackers? There’s slackers everywhere in all segments of employment, private or govt. Their managers need to deal with that, not a couple of guys that are hugely removed from that working segment. People need to clue in that no matter how many 400 year olds you think are getting SS checks or the ‘millions and millions’ of govt workers who are slackers…. Whatever you feel they are stealing out of your personal pocket taking a 2 hour lunch comes to pennies from what the top <1% are stealing from you.
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Please read up on Project 2025 and come to your own conclusions. There are two areas in the document that address Medicare and Medicaid. Here is a snippet from PBS.
Project 2025 would raid the Medicare trust fund
Insurance company profits have skyrocketed over the past decade, due in large part to increased revenue from MA plans. Gross margins for MA plans in 2023 were $1,982 per enrollee, more than double the $910 gross margins in group market health insurance plans, such as the plans people get through their jobs. In 2023, “administration” (which includes exorbitant salaries and profit) made up an average of 13 percent of MA spending. Traditional Medicare, despite being labeled “the bureaucrat-driven fee-for-service system” by Project 2025, spends less than 2 percent on administration and doesn’t take any profit.
The Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is projected to be insolvent by 2036 unless congressional action is taken. The Biden-Harris administration has called for extending the solvency of the Medicare trust fund by at least 25 years by modestly increasing the Medicare tax rate on income above $400,000, closing loopholes in existing Medicare taxes, dedicating the Medicare net investment income tax to the HI Trust Fund, and crediting savings from prescription drug reforms to the HI Trust Fund. Astonishingly, Project 2025’s proposal is to enroll even more Medicare beneficiaries in the option that costs 22 percent more per enrollee.
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Project 2025 would raid the Medicare trust fund
Insurance company profits have skyrocketed over the past decade, due in large part to increased revenue from MA plans. Gross margins for MA plans in 2023 were $1,982 per enrollee, more than double the $910 gross margins in group market health insurance plans, such as the plans people get through their jobs. In 2023, “administration” (which includes exorbitant salaries and profit) made up an average of 13 percent of MA spending. Traditional Medicare, despite being labeled “the bureaucrat-driven fee-for-service system” by Project 2025, spends less than 2 percent on administration and doesn’t take any profit.
The Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is projected to be insolvent by 2036 unless congressional action is taken. The Biden-Harris administration has called for extending the solvency of the Medicare trust fund by at least 25 years by modestly increasing the Medicare tax rate on income above $400,000, closing loopholes in existing Medicare taxes, dedicating the Medicare net investment income tax to the HI Trust Fund, and crediting savings from prescription drug reforms to the HI Trust Fund. Astonishingly, Project 2025’s proposal is to enroll even more Medicare beneficiaries in the option that costs 22 percent more per enrollee.
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