| Editor's Note: Axis of Logic Reader, "Yeoman" tells us how Obama's new Affordable Health Care strips assets of the elderly when they can no longer pay the insurance premiums mandated by the state, leaving them with nothing to pass on to their children from their estate. Yeoman calls it "Elder Cleansing." - Les Blough, Editor Axis of Logic Yeoman (Guest): Randall's piece slants toward blaming the fact that Medicaid wasn't expanded in red states as the main problem. Two things: First, the exchange leaves a big group of working poor ineligible for subsidy - those between 100 and 139% of Foreign Poverty Level (FPL). Why? At 140% of FPL you are suddenly eligible for almost 100% subsidy of your insurance premium. The people who need the subsidy the most are ineligible in states that expanded Medicaid, instead being "given" state care. Medicaid is NOT insurance. Remember the point of this was to make care affordable. Medicaid is "elder cleansing." It is setting up a new financial scam to clean out any assets remaining to the working poor. If you have an asset, not a penny of your care will be paid for, but rather taken from your estate. This is the worst insurance ever. It pays not a cent of care costs, while billions will be spent on premiums to help others afford care and will not be repaid. Many of the poor today have worked for 30, 40 or 50 years. Yes, they may have an asset - savings or a house. Why is it suddenly okay for their property to be confiscated to help pay for insurance companies' profits and financialization of hospitals by picking up the poor's pennies in front of Wall Streets profiteering steam roller? Right now most people are focused on the outrageous premiums paid by working people, but they forget that the decades will go by and they will wind up in the asset stripping grinder. All you worked for was for naught. Saving is for suckers. Nothing passed to your children to help them out of poverty. It is the end-game for capitalism when all workers live in knowing their entire lives belong to the state. |