Take a look at the GOP ‘s vision of Galt’s heaven, air travel division:
PASSENGERS fainted when a 5-foot hole opened in the roof of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 flying from Phoenix to Sacramento last week. The most frightening moment may have been when, as one passenger said, “You could look out and see blue sky.”
[But] on [that] very day … the House of Representatives passed a bill likely to make it more difficult to detect and prevent midair ruptures, metal fatigue and other serious flight risks.The bill would cut $4 billion from the Federal Aviation Administration’s $37 billion budget. Representative John L. Mica, a Florida Republican who is the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, says the bill would streamline F.A.A. programs and promised the bill would “not negatively impact aviation safety.
I’m guessing that would be because the dead don’t care and hell, who needs an FAA anyway?
__
Or rather, maybe this is all part of the Randian conspiracy to make trains relevant again. Certainly, everything William McGee documents in his op-ed in today’s Times makes me regret every trip I’ve scheduled for the rest of the year:
Outsourcing, under which airlines shift repair and maintenance work from union employees to low-wage workers overseas and in the United States, compounds the already existing burden on safety inspectors.
__
Dozens of F.A.A. inspectors have told me that they no longer have enough money to conduct inspections at repair stations in China, Singapore, El Salvador, the Philippines and Mexico and other distant locations at which major fleets of American-based airlines undergo maintenance.
…The number of foreign repair stations hired to service American planes more than doubled, to 731, from 2004 to 2009. There have been alarming revelations: the Department of Transportation reported the discovery in 2003 of a worker with ties to Al Qaeda at an overseas repair station. In 2005, immigration agents arrested 27 undocumented immigrants working at a North Carolina shop that airlines had contracted for repair work.
Well, maybe McGee’s just a DFH — what’s with this Consumers Union nonsense anyway? Which would be why the current House is acting in such disregard of reports from the Department of Transportation — under George Bush:
…testifying before Congress in 2007, the inspector general of the Department of Transportation, Calvin Scovel III, described instances in which repair work has been contracted out by subcontractors to uncertified shops and unlicensed mechanics. These phantom shops sometimes consist of a sole mechanic who works from the back of a truck … Though drug and alcohol testing is standard for all mechanics who service planes in the United States, a Senate committee found that some overseas repair shops don’t bother with such testing.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome your modern Republican Party.
__
A conscious decision to weaken an already fractured governmental capacity to perform basic regulatory functions is not part of a dispute on the best way to operate government. The only way to explain the choice to cut FAA budgets at present is if you think the government has no role to play in society at all. When you believe in your heart that the market itself can do no wrong, then the minor matter of airplanes turning into convertibles is insufficiently real to shake your faith in John Galt.
__
That’s why, while I agree with just about every complaint about the inadequacy of the recent budget deal and much else besides, we have to remember (a) our folks are fighting an asymmetrical war against political terrorists — and it’s damned hard to deal with thugs who are fully willing to destroy the village in order to save it…
__
…and (b): if we don’t stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood, these same sociopaths will be running the whole damn government next time out.
__
If you weary of the endless compromise and seeming partial surrenders — as I do — it remains important to remember that we are up against those who, just for this example, see some number of exemplary deaths in the air as just the price you pay for the privilege of living in Galt’s America. If we rage against Obama or any other Democrat for their (admitted and regretted) inabilty to be the perfect expression of our visions of a just society whilst they wrestle with the madness that used to be the Republican party, we take our eyes off the prize: avoiding rule by the worst among us.
__
That may not be a grand and uplifting vision of progressive improvement in the human condition, but the avoidance of wretchedness is better than the alternative — much, much better.
Just ask anyone who’s seen the sky through what used to be the roof of a 737.
Image: Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Fall of Icarus, before 1569. (Apropos of nothing, a print of this picture was on the wall of the bedroom in which I slept from zero to about 14. I’m not sure what my parents were trying to tell me, but I still love it.)
Hermione Granger-Weasley
This is just the innovation of the market. Like Fukushima Daichii and the BP oil spill.
Kost Kutting Kapitalism in action.
Your tags are wrong.
Posted in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor
Yutsano
Wow…I didn’t even notice the kicking legs in the water until I saw the title. The painting is indeed brilliant.
And what folks sometimes fail to realize is that this is a numbers game. In order to enact an agenda, you have to be in the majority here. That means tolerating folks like Blue Dogs until the country changes enough where alternatives become available. Does it suck? Yup. Is the alternative worse? Ask the folks on a Southwest flight their opinion.
Tom Levenson
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Modified, in part, to your suggestion
Mark S.
Is there anything we don’t outsource to the cheapest labor?
Mark S.
@Yutsano:
I like the guy looking up at the sky like “Did I just see that?”
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Nope. George Will clearly explained that trains (like other forms of mass transit) are tools of the homomarxists. ReaLAMEricans drive cars.
Medical care that requires face-to-face interaction. But I’m sure they’re working on that as well.
erlking
I love that painting. Every time I see it, it calls up Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts–and vice versa–the two are inextricable.
General Stuck
This is what wingnuts do, especially when suddenly kicked out of office unceremoniously after fucking all our chickens. They latch onto a article of wingnut faith from the remnants of abject failure, they a short time ago threw under the bus with visions of permanent majority rule.
Austerity, A Mystery wrapped in bullshit inside an enema. And they are trying like hell to administer it to the country. Now it is on hyperdrive to an oligarchy . Or, IOW’s, less government using a big hatchet to rid it of meddlesome regulations fucking with the gawds of short term profit.
We have seen such fervor before, when Reagan took over, and his minions were set on rock and roll for turning off government regulation of all kinds, and thought they had a mandate for doing such, only to be drawn and quartered by the voters in 1982 for over reaching. And Reagan actually did have a mandate in general with a landslide victory.
All the wingnuts have today is a temp toe hold of power in one half of one branch of government provided by historical trends of first mid term first term presidents, and largely achieved by bullshitting grandma that dems wanted to take away her medicare and soylent green her ass prematurely, and now the wingers really do want to deep six gramms, in black and white print in a budget.
These people are running on adrenaline of the near extinct, as a cohesive ideological movement, with a mighty wurlitzer cranked up to 11 around the clock. The only question is, will the general public catch on in time to stop them from killing us all.
Roger Moore
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
You mean like importing doctors and nurses from other countries because the AMA prevents us from training enough here? Or do you mean telemedicine, so they can have you consult with a lower priced doctor in India or the Philippines?
Bill Murray
1. I think your parents (or whomever put/kept the picture in your room) were saying, don’t fly too close to the sun.
2. asymmetrical has 1 s and two m’s — I know because I used asymmetric quite a few times in my PhD dissertation and I am quite the pedant
3. The Galtian Occupation Party* brooks no empathy.
4. A similar thing happened in 1988 with a 737 flight of Aloha Airlines https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
Dennis SGMM
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
A friend of mine is a radiologist. He told me some time ago that broad band internet had enabled hospitals to transmit Xrays and CAT scans overseas for interpretation.
Welcome to the Brave New World.
Tom Levenson
@Bill Murray: You know, I’ve often observed that spell check is only as good as the attention one actually pays to it.
Or to put it another way: you can’t outsource attention (and achieve literate expression).
Thanks for the catch.
Mark S.
Think of the innovation potentials. You could have some doctor in India directing your heart surgery over Skype.
(The guy doing the actual surgery will of course be non-union and making minimum wage.)
Dennis SGMM
@General Stuck:
Okay, I really do wish that I’d thought of that one. Kudos.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Dennis SGMM: That’s exactly why I included “face-to-face interaction.” A few years ago Medicare revised its rule about no payments for overseas services to include diagnostic interpretations. I don’t what private payers are doing.
Except, that’s not outsourcing.
I know of no payer that would cover this.
So, no.
Bill Arnold
Just an offhand note. I was attempting to explain “Government Shutdown” Friday to several foreign scientists, who understand things like strikes but didn’t understand “Government Shutdown” due to political gridlock. An interesting conversion, and somewhat embarrassing as an American.
In the course of the conversation, an Austrian mentioned that he avoids flying on any American airlines due to a bad reputation for maintenance, and generally sticks to Lufthansa and other airlines who use them for maintenance.
Martin
Bunch of fucking sociaIists. Will nobody think of the parachute manufacturers?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Tom Levenson:
wallah. I love your parents. I had a Stubbs thoroughbred and a Degas ballet class.
So conventional.
Apropos of nothing, ave you seen cirque de soleil’s varekai?
your parents were amazing.
im so jealous.
Citizen_X
@Bill Murray:
Yes, as a co-author once reminded me, “Because the root of ‘asymmetry’ is ‘symmetry,’ and not ‘ass.'”
Bill Arnold
@Mark S.:
Don’t worry, there will be laws requiring random and frequent drug testing for the local surgical assistant.
Teleoperated surgical machines are however a real possibility, with a local low-wage attendant, if they can solve the liability issues. Fiber links only, to reduce speed-of-light lag.
Violet
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
I know quite a few people who have gone overseas for medical procedures. Even though their insurance might have covered part of it had it been done in the US, it was cheaper overall to go overseas. And no, it wasn’t vanity plastic surgery.
I don’t know if that counts as outsourcing. It was certainly the patient outsourcing their own medical care.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: In a way, we do. Medical tourism is on the rise in the US and across the world (I mean why go bankrupt in the US trying to pay for a $300,000 surgery when you can get it for $90,000 in India or even lower elsewhere). Of course the rise in superbugs as a result of medical tourism means you may bring back stuff that costs society as a whole more in the long run unless healthcare costs are tackled and brought down (and this goes beyond the ACA). If Paul Ryan gets his way, medical tourism is what the elderly will have to resort to make their healthcare dollars cover their healthcare costs. Or they can just plain die.
@Roger Moore: Telemedicine that involves the US and other countries is *usually* about specialists in the US working with general practitioners in other countries. That may change, but the majority of cases are still along those lines.
Martin
Um, virtually zero medical treatment is outsourced, even to the point that you can’t get an insurer to pay for medication purchased in Canada.
There are some policies showing up here in SoCal that will cover limited medical care in Mexico – particularly dental and some treatments that aren’t approved in the US, but they are quite limited. The likelihood that any part of your care will be outsourced is effectively zero – the cost of dealing with a medical malpractice suit would massacre any profitability from doing it. Even in tort reform heaven Texas (hah!) they won’t do it.
The only time that any kind of outsourcing takes place is when there are specialities not found in the US. Those are all (to the best of my knowledge) experimental procedures anyway and they still come with full local medical staff. There’s no cost savings there.
Mark S.
Medical malpractice reform.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
Oops comment in moderation above. Used the dreaded spec1alist word without thinking.
Teri
Tom, just wanted to say how much I enjoy reading your posts. I really enjoy clear, concise arguements along with documented facts. You have a wonderful way with words and I always feel somewhat smarter having read something you have written.
Teri
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Violet: Right, medical tourism (which is an odd term, innit?) No, that’s not outsourcing either.
And the machines will be run by Windows ME.
And now I am all creeped out.
MikeJ
@Mark S.:
Fucking over the current rich is the only way of bringing the, over to the side of humanity.
Bill Murray
@Citizen_X: sweet, the nice Mormon secretary that typed up some of my papers using asymmetric would never have said this, nor would my Southern Baptist advisor.
Joey Maloney
@Citizen_X: Yes, as a co-author once reminded me, “Because the root of ‘asymmetry’ is ‘symmetry,’ and not ‘ass.’”
Then what’s the root of “analysis”?
trollhattan
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Fee free, nay, encouraged to freak the hell out.
http://www.robodoc.com/home.html
Who’s driving Robodoc today? I kan haz internets, I can duz surgery!
Don’t know why I just thought of this, but I made ample use of Kaiser’s local xray facility over the years and recall lying there wondering why the operating system loaded from a 5 1/4-inch floppy drive and just how the hell old is this machine anyway? Then the studies about over-dosing xrays and CT scanners started coming out….
“Welcome, consumer!”
Kyle
Repuke World: the Magic of the Marketplace(TM) and the Power of Prayer(TM) will close any gaping holes in aircraft fuselages.
Chad N Freude
Management of large financial institutions.
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
Fuck these people. What the hell, don’t Republicans, even Republican congressmen, ride airplanes? What’s wrong with these assholes?
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): They just dont think it can happen to them. An investigation into the crash that killed Ted Stevens concluded that
further,
If fewer inspections occur due to FAA budget cuts, I doubt this recommendation will be followed.
Yutsano
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Remember though: Teh Invisible Hand fixes all inefficiencies. If an airline is just unsafe, people won’t fly it. And if they’re all unsafe, then no one will fly. Then we use the sociallist interstate highway system until that is all outsourced to the highest bidder and we all pay for its usage. Then when those decay we finally default to the Galtian paradise of trains. See how this works?
wag
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Yet.
It’s coming.
As is remote robotic surgery, with the surgeon in the next room, or in the next county, or the next country
Martin
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
That’s why they invented lobbyists with private jets.
Spaghetti Lee
Man, I can’t even think about this stuff anymore without literally quaking in rage. God, I hope these people just get tossed out on their asses in 2012.
wag
@Chad N Freude:
FTW!!!!
PeakVT
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Krugman, on top of being a top-notch economist, has done real-world reporting that shows that George Will is a hypocrite.
Yutsano
@Spaghetti Lee: Don’t hope. Make it happen. We can use the Obama election wave to get back control of the House and keep the Senate. We’re getting lucky in that several brilliant Democratic candidates have come forward for a few of the open seats, but it will still take effort to get them elected. And you can bet your bippie the other side will be working hard to get their folks elected. We need to sell our case and work harder and shell out the dough.
piratedan
@wag: or hell, just a link to WEB MD, you can diagnose yourself and then see an arrangement of treatments, like appetizers and salads and the like, covered with your new HC voucher, like a coupon, good Monday thru Thursday between 10 and 5, not valid with any other offers, only good with minimum purchase of 1,000.00 of health care services.
scav
There’ll soon be a little additional fee charged by airlines if you want to upgrade to a non-convertible flight.
LosGatosCA
You see a hole in the aircraft, I see new wonders and innovations in air travel and opportunities for profit.
1. New seating choice. No more limitation to just aisle, window, middle. For a small additional fee you can be an eyewitness to the stratosphere at 37,500 feet traveling at 475 mph.
2. New luggage fees through insurance against mid flight re-routing. “Let’s see, your luggage escaped the baggage compartment somewhere over Colorado. Let me give Grand Junction a call and see if anyone has spotted your dirty underwear in a dust storm headed toward Salt Lake. Or if you prefer, you can exercise your baggage insurance policy, that you purchased for $175 and with your debit card funding of the $50 deductible per bag, we can file a claim for you. So sorry about your luggage, but with the $275 we’ve collected from you in the original policy and the deductibles, you are entitled to a fully depreciated replacement value check made out jointly to you and WalMart of $150.
I know you’d rather have your own dirty underwear than a check that’s less than the insurance and deductible you’ve already paid, but the truth is that there has been significant fraud with claims that require us to increase our rates. In fact after we pay claims there is almost no profit in these policies. We offer them to give you the peace of mind knowing that you can replace your lost items at WalMart.
What’s that? Your wife also went out of the hole in the aircraft as well? I’m so sorry, let me tell you on behalf of Vampire Squid Airlines that we offer our sincerest condolences on your loss. Let me give you directions to our human casualty and insurance operations. No, I can’t handle that for you. That policy is handled by another company located in Terminal D. Let me show you on the map. We’re here in Terminal Z. You take the shuttle to the Main Terminal and then walk over to the shuttle that services terminals A-K. The platform is right next to the brand new Airport WalMart where you could- if you wanted- use your $150 check for merchandise to replace your items lost in your luggage. Sir, there’s no need to use profanity, you can use the claim proceeds at any WalMart you want. Yes, I appreciate that you’ve had a tough day. I don’t make the rules, sir. I’m just trying to help you. May I remind you that neither you nor your wife actually paid the upgrade for those seats with the in flight unfiltered external view.
Well, if you insist on focusing on the negatives, I’m going to have to ask you to step aside so I can help the next customer with a claim. That’s better, but it’s much easier if you stop sobbing. I’m not supposed to do this, but I can give you a voucher for $10 off taking an express cart directly to the other claim desk. Yes, it’s 50% off I just need your debit card again to pay it in advance. There you go, the express cart is at gate 42. We’re here at gate 2. No, it’s not that far, only about 20 gates to the left since there are gates on both sides. And the line is usually pretty short so you should get on in just 20 minutes or so. No, that way, sir to your left. And have a nice day.
Spaghetti Lee
@Yutsano:
I try to do as much as I can, but I’m a full time student with no car, no income, and a life savings of about $800 dollars. I want to do what I can, but I often don’t know what it is.
When I’m actually old enough, I hope I can maybe get into politics myself. It’s my ambition to run for congress as a Democrat and knock off either Peter Roskam (my hometown Rep) or move to Wisconsin and beat Paul Ryan.
Citizen_X
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Don’t worry. The system would never have to reboot just when something goes wrong with the operation and you start going into shock, right?
Yutsano
@Spaghetti Lee: You can always phone bank for your local candidate. Or just volunteering is often a good way to help out without it costing you money. There are lots of good ways to help, the best thing you can do now is get your name on a list of volunteers to assist when the net election comes around. It will also expose you well to the inner workings of a campaign so you can decide how you want to run your own when the time comes. And we can always offer our support as well, meager and scattered as it is.
El Cid
If you keep the American people suckling at the teat of the big gubmit nanny state, then they’ll forget how to test the airliners they travel on for metal fatigue for themselves — just like the Founding Fathers used to do.
Martin
@Yutsano: Good advice, but if he’s interested in running for office, he really should go into the campaign and party HQs. Getting to know the folks involved (and them getting to know him) is critical.
It seems like there would be a lot of people and a college student would get lost, but the same folks come back over and over. The regulars are a fairly small group and they’re quite well known. Getting in with that crowd is how you get backed to run for mayor or city council or state legislature or whatever that first office is.
Wag
@piratedan:
A friend on FB posted recently that he was upset that his insurance premium for a single marathon running healthy male doubled to over $900 per month for a policy with a $5000 deductible. He was justifiably angry. Other friends of his suggested, with a straight face, that he go for a policy with a $15,000 deductible. Hell, if I had a $15,000 deductible, I’d be financing my way through medical school.
I thought that medical savings accounts were supposed to make us all informed consumers of medical technology. I guess the $5000 dollar bar was set too low. I will leave it up to our Galtian Masters to tell us what the right price point is to avoid having to pay out any claims.
hamletta
Man, I’m so old, I remember when commercial pilots got paid major bank. When I happened across Salon’s “Ask The Pilot” column, I was shocked to find how poorly they are paid (your friendly pilot may be on food stamps) and how poorly they are treated.
I don’t want a pilot who’s been in the air for 18 hours, and neither do you.
That’s not union slacking, that’s common sense.
Spaghetti Lee
Well, I don’t know if it qualifies more as a fever-dream than an ambition, but thanks for the advice. I think I might just not have the guts for politics. When I was a freshman one of the first things I did was seek out the Campus Democrats, but the first meeting was inside a bar and I don’t drink, can’t stand the smell of cigarettes, and just kind of felt like an outsider in general. I didn’t do much after that. This semester’s drawing to a close, but maybe next semester I’ll try to get back in.
hamletta
@Wag: Medical savings accounts are a joke.
They’re fine for covering incidentals like eyeglasses, but for treatment of a serious disease?
You can’t save enough. One MRI and you’re tapped out.
Yes, we have the greatest medical treatment in the world, but it’s only available to the few.
piratedan
@Wag: I know, at the rate things are developing, WEB MD will be a pay site linked to from your insurance page. People talk about the costs of single payer, I keep thinking about the money spent on insurance company overhead and the amount of advertising dollars spent on telling us that our healthcare is great while they’re busy denying claims to wait out patients who have justified claims.
Martin
@hamletta: Medical savings are great for expenses you know are coming. Going to get kids braces? Dump enough in the account to cover those bills. It comes out pre-tax, so it can save a bit. But aside from that, yeah, they’re shit.
Chad N Freude
@piratedan: WebMD is already a pay site, just not paid by its users.
piratedan
and now they can reclassify the openings in the plane as replacing in-flight movies, now they’ll market then as “reality experiences” starring YOU in the now filming “Terror at 34,00 feet“, granted you’ll have to sign a release once the film is completed.
piratedan
@Chad N Freude: nothin like more good news eh? ty for the heads up CNF.
Mark S.
@hamletta:
You might find this interesting.
Yutsano
@Martin: Why the hell would I bother to dump my hard-earned cash into a use it or lose it savings account when I can just stick it in the bank and save up for a potential medical expense? The tax benefit can’t be that rewarding, plus if you don’t have it planned out just right that cash just disappears. Screw that.
Martin
@Yutsano: Well, like I said, if you have expenses you know are coming up. Braces for my 2 kids are close to $5K. The pre-tax savings on that add up. Toss in glasses and other known expenses, and it’s worth doing for just those items.
LOL. Who do you work for again? Every dollar you can shift pretax is a dollar out of your top marginal rate. Granted for me that’s single digit percentage, but it’s more than I can earn in a bank by a fair bit. For my mom who is in the top rate, it really does add up. My stepfather has a genetic degenerative disease that leaves him requiring fairly regular surgeries and treatments. Even with his excellent insurance (he’s an exec at an insurance company) he still faces out-of-pocket expenses in the 5 figure range each year. Even if they just drop $10K in that account, that saves them over $2500 on their taxes.
Mark S.
@Yutsano:
Wait, why is it “use it or lose it”? I don’t know shit about medical savings accounts.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Spaghetti Lee: IL-6 is my old stomping grounds. I used to live in Elk Grove. When you run for senator, you will have my vote.
Yutsano
@Martin:
I don’t do tax law. I’m a collector. If you owe then I’m nosing my way into your business. You couldn’t pay me enough to do tax law either.
Fair enough. Just make sure you use up every dollar. Though for kids needing orthodontia that won’t be too tough. And the fact that this benefits the wealthy more isn’t shocking to me in the slightest.
@Mark S.: Most HSAs require you to use up the amount you have put away in the year it’s originally stashed away. Otherwise it just evaporates. They’re usually run by outside firms, not your company.
sukabi
haven’t read the thread yet, so don’t know if this is redundant…
but with the repair of our fleets of airliners being outsourced to China, El Salvadore, the Philipines, Mexico and Al Quaeda WHY are we being subjected to p0rno scanners and m0lest@tion again? It can’t possibly be to keep us safe or to protect the planes, the airlines clearly don’t care about either… and apparently neither does our government.
sukabi
@Mark S.: most of the HSAs are only good for the current year, if you don’t use the money you’ve put in the account by the end of the insurance year, they take it… it doesn’t roll over into the next year, and you can’t get it back if you don’t use it all.
Mandramas
There are a running gag on american television about the fact that doctors gains a lot of money. Well, so far, in the rest of the world, doctors have more or less the same wages that most of the other jobs.
American medicine is overpriced. If you want to reduce health care costs, you should reduce the income of the medical professionals.
Martin
@Mandramas: Yeah, that’s quite true. Physician salaries are the single biggest potential for savings for Medicare and health care in general.
Elliecat
@Spaghetti Lee: You might just try volunteering in your community, in an area that concerns/interests you or has a big need locally—food bank, homeless shelter, domestic violence shelter, soup kitchen, crisis nursery, school tutoring program, adult literacy, animal shelter, whatever, there are so many programs needing help, with a bit of research and effort you should be able to find something that fits your interest, skills, etc..
This would serve to give you some hands-on experience and real-world knowledge of at least one local issue, as well as bring you into contact with people in the community who are actually working on issues and might know how things actually work.
This kind of volunteering would be valuable to any future political ambitions, or even just to future political volunteering, or just being a caring human who is part of a community.
Lurker
@Mark S.: I think Yutsano’s mixing up Health Savings Accounts (formerly known as Medical Savings Accounts) with Flexible Spending Accounts.
The money that goes into an HSA rolls over each year. Once the HSA owner reaches the age of 65, the pretax funds can still come out tax-free for medical expenses or taxed as income for non-medical expenses. So an HSA can be used like a regular IRA when the owner reaches Medicare-eligble age.
Although funds can be withdrawn tax-free for medical expenses at any time regardless of the owner’s coverage, an HSA is *not* meant to be used as a sole means of paying for health care. This is why only those with HSA-compatible plans are allowed to add funds to an HSA. The theory is that the HSA-compatible plan pays for the big bills while the HSA-owner pays for all the little bills out of his HSA.
When heart surgery costs $400,000, recovery from a motorcycle accident costs $40,000 and cancer treatments range from $14,000-$1.5 million dollars (numbers gained from the personal experiences of friends and family), an HSA-compatible plan with a $2700 deductible and $5000 max out-of-pocket doesn’t sound so bad…in theory.
It does mean more paperwork hassle than a regular plan. An HSA means one more thing to report on taxes and requires that the user keep copies of all medical receipts paid for with HSA funds.
I currently use an HSA-compatible plan from Kaiser Permanente to keep my premiums affordable. I’ve slacked off on my contributions to my HSA, but I plan to put more funds into my HSA this year when I can.
FSAs, on the other hand, are “use it or lose it” benefits offered by an employer.
sukabi
@Lurker: I think what they’re called and how they work depends on the company you work for and the insurance plan they choose for their employees… the company I used to work for had HSAs in addition / optional supplemental to their health insurance plan… the money didn’t roll over from one year to the next… if you didn’t use it, you lost it.
asiangrrlMN
I really like that painting. I hadn’t seen it before. One thing I appreciate about your posts, Tom, is your liberal use of art.
As for the rest…I just can’t. My sleep schedule is FUBAR’ed, so, where my night peeps at?
Joey Maloney
@wag: It’s already here.
If you are taken to the ER of any one of a number of large hospitals on the Eastern seaboard on the night shift, and you need X-Rays or a CAT scan or suchlike, your films are read by a radiologist in Israel.
I know this because an acquaintance is employed by the outsourcing company. He does the on-site admin and translation work for the radiologists, who work out of their homes.
sukabi
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: According to Douchy on Fox & Friends you can go down to your local Walgreens and get your Pap Test so there’s really no reason at all for Planned Parenthood. How’s that for unskilled labor taking over medical treatments?
Mnemosyne
@Lurker:
We have FSAs at the giant evil corporation that I work for, and they’re actually quite handy for things like prescriptions and dental work. Now that one of my prescriptions has a co-pay of $70, I’m wishing I hadn’t used most of it on eyeglasses early in the year.
HSAs always sounded like a scam to me.
sukabi
@Wag: they seriously told him to get a policy with a $15K deductible??? even IF he was the healthiest person in the world if he needed hospitalization or any other treatment for any reason he’s on the hook for the first 15K in addition to what the insurance didn’t want to cover, plus his monthly payment plus co-pays…
do they not understand this?
Karen
I’m flying Jet Blue on to my parents house on April 13 to the 20th and I am terrified.
thedeadcanary
Maybe your parents wanted you to read Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” which is a beautiful poem reflecting on this painting (or perhaps the very similar painting by Brueghel where Icarus falls further out.)
asiangrrlMN
@Karen: I have grown to dislike flying more and more for a variety of reasons, and this isn’t doing anything to change my mind. Good luck to you.
Hart Williams
If you thought airplanes were bad, just wait ’til you try AMTRAK.
Their motto (ought to be): At AMTRAK we seriously don’t give a flying fuck.
What the hell. If you can’t afford a private jet, what excuse do you have to live, peasants? (GOP memo)
abscam
@LosGatosCA: FTW!
Bill (aka 10amla)
@Hart Williams: As long as the train doesn’t fly, I’m OK with it.
Benjamin Cisco
@LosGatosCA: Somebody oughta frame that, it is museum quality.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@LosGatosCA:
Damn, that sounded like a real gate agent.
Ash Can
We’re 85 comments into the thread and no one’s dinged you for punching hippies? The firebaggers, Naderites, and other assorted ODS-sufferers around here must have all gone to bed early last night and slept late this morning. Or they simply avoid your posts because they contain too many big words.
Anyway, nice post, as always.
WereBear
@LosGatosCA:That was great!
You should write science fiction. Well, what used to be science fiction.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can: It’s partly the big words and partly the art. Unfortunately, the left of center has been playing defense against a very determined opponent for the majority of my life. While I would like to play offense more often, I think that any, even momentary, relaxation of vigilance on the defensive front causes our reactionary buddies to try to do something like try to repeal child labor laws.
Gus
@Yutsano: And it’s the inspiration for a great Auden poem, “Musee de Beaux Arts.”
karen marie
@Spaghetti Lee: There are lots of things you can do. First, VOTE. Second, get your friends and family to VOTE.
Also, too, poll workers in every city and town in this country are (paid, usually) volunteers. Call your local election department and offer your services on election day. It’s a long, hard day, but it’s well worth your while on many levels.
Susanna K.
“…part of the Randian conspiracy to make trains relevant again.”
Then why the heck do they want to cut high-speed rail funding? I can’t believe they really like trains as much as they like cars.
nancydarling
Tom, Here is my brother’s response when I sent him your post with NYT link. He is a pilot and has his air frame and power liscense.