Wednesday, December 1

A modest proposal on "needs" testing Medicare

I'm waking up to NPR these days.

And this morning's story on Medicare cracked me up.  "Health policy analyst Jeff Goldsmith, who has studied the boomer generation" had this to say about the boomers coming on to Medicare this year:

"I think the baby boomers do not have the same type of emotional, almost galvanic skin response to Medicare politics that their parents did, because I don't think the typical baby boomer has thought for more than five minutes about the effect of Medicare on their lives, because they're not old," Goldsmith says. "And Medicare is perceived as something for old people."
The boomers are not old!  And NEVER WILL BE!  That's why they keep electing congressmen over and over again into their 90's.  As long as your Senator is, say, 20 years older than YOU, you're young!  You're young!

Infographic:  Your Congressman is Old.

So here's my modest solution.   Medicare begins a Alternative Program.  Call it MediYoung -- for younger Medicare recipients!   That'll get 'em.

And here's the deal:  It's a $250.00 copay per incident plus a thousand dollar deductible for anything beyond annual checkups and screenings -- but it covers Botoxic and Duvajerm and anti-aging hypnosis whatever up to three times a year.   So the terminally vain get a little discount on their vanity surgery and the taxpayer gets a big discount on anything else that happens to them.    And once they sign up, they can't switch out of it, ever.

But this is such bullshit.  Does that analyst know how many 50-64-and-eleven-months Americans are COUNTING THE DAYS until they FINALLY have single payer, not for profit health insurance?  Because now they have NONE?  Give me a break.

__________

Speaking of vanity, I notice the Kardashian's predatory lending debit card for Princesses has been discontinued.   Here's the deal:

First there are the upfront costs. For a six-month card customers pay $59.95, or $99.95 for a 12-month card. (The median fee for similar, non-Kardashian-festooned products is $10.) After those six or 12 months, there is the $7.95 monthly fee to keep using it. Users pay a $1.50 fee to withdraw cash at an ATM and a $1 fee to check their balance. They pay $1.50 to speak with a customer service representative. If they lose their card, they have to pay $9.95 to replace it. If they want to cancel their card, they have to pay $6.
Wow, how stupid do you have to be to look rich?

But thanks Kardashians! I always love an opportunity to pull out these babies:

The Karl Marx Mastercard:

The Che Guevara Visa:

And my personal favorite, the Emma Goldman mugshot Discover Card ("The Card with Payback tm")

6 comments:

  1. That Kardashian Kard thing was for rills? I swear - is it The Onion? Is it Fox? Is it TMZ? One cannot tell the difference any more...

    Figures that Jeff Goldsmith thinks that; his credentials: "Jeff Goldsmith is one of the nation's foremost health industry analysts, specializing in corporate strategy, trend analysis, health policy..." They keep hoping we don't want any of our Social Security / Medicare that we've paid into. Fat chance!

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  2. yea.... boomers are ok with paying into a system all their lives, then getting screwed in the end...
    -- oh & by the way-- you have to work till you are 100 years old before you can get Social security or medicare...
    And also we unlocked the box & spent the money...
    thanks for the money suckkas
    What crapola!

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  3. Of course the boomers will always be young. They've been tailoring the culture to redefine everything they experience for decades. That's why, when their generation's music got old enough to be called "oldies," somebody had to come up with the genre "classic rock".

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  4. Blue Gal, You're a goddamned miracle of sanity. I love the credit card business, and listen to the podcast every week. What's a Kardashian? LOL. Keep humpin' baby. You've got the goods.

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  5. Good lord. Good MediYoung pitch, BG. I'm guessing most of the Beltway boomers would lap that up. A few years back, Newsweek or Time (it's often hard to tell them apart) ran a whole section on "Boomer Aging" and "Boomer Lit" and everything else... Because it's not normal aging – it's boomer aging! It's something that's never happened before in the history of humankind to someone as special as you! Similarly, Joe Klein (who has gotten better) would insist he didn't sell out – the movement left him! And so, one fateful day, he vowed he would exact his "revenge" by trolling actual liberals endlessly...

    Look, I love me some Dirty Fucking Hippies, but I have also known some astonishingly narcissistic boomers in my time. Every generation has its wankers, but their boomerism is an issue mainly because they make it so – the douchey ones invoke it as a golden talisman of status. My favorite was the guy who made sure to mention he saw the Stones play back in the day, and bragged about how he once had a million-a-year real estate gig driving a Beemer but now was so much happier teaching high school and driving a (still expensive) Volkswagen. (He wasn't happier.)

    This is still my favorite example of pandering to boomer vanity. It used to play all the time out here in CA. It goes well with the pic above.

    All that said – much love to the honorable hippies and their fellow travelers!

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  6. Anonymous5:32 PM

    Or call it MediBoom... that should appeal to the narcissistic element (which, btw, is up for proposal to be discontinued as a psychiatric diagnosis...wtf?)

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