We are dying.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

In as much in the realm of we are America.

We have run our course.

If we want to save it, we have to fight. We have to sacrifice.

We have to take it back from the corporations that have killed us.

The vast majority of Americans work "for the man."

The "man" is corporate america.

The man is who you pay fealty to every month in the form of energy, food and health.

We pay it every day and the rest of the world looks agog.

It's time to stop the madness. Conserve, do without and bow up.

Cancel your insurance. Walk when you can. Consume less.

There is a way.

[jbane]

1. Cancel my Insurance?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. It's one of the roots.

Yes.

[Maraya1969]

3. What insurance?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

5. Health.

Of course it would only have an effect if many did it at once.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

16. Exactly right, done in sufficient numbers...

...we could bring the insurance industry to it's knees overnight. The problem is, as always it seems, the numbers. Noncooperation will work, but we gotta have massive participation. Gandhi taught this. So did Dr. King. We need to learn their lessons.

[KoKo]

41. Well it's so hard for some of us to even get insurance...that's a move

that would be impossible. If you end up in a car crash...they might take you in the emergency room...but won't really patch you up real well if you can't pay for it.

If your kid get's sick and has to go to the hospital without a "card" they won't bother with you. If you have a chronic condition and need meds and monitoring, you won't get it withoug having some kind of insurance.

If you get sick and can't even do a menial job because you can't see a doctor or get medication...that doesn't help one be "self-sustaining."

I agree with the rest of what you said...but many of us don't have the option you are talking about with insurance. :eyes:

[Ciggies and coffee]

53. Insurance created expensive medicine and captive employees

If employment-based insurance never took off, medical products and services might cost the average family about the same amount as food, as I hear it did a half-century ago. Maybe a bad comparison, since food today is cheaper (AFI), but medical would be something that would be cheap enough to pay out of pocket.

Insurance created incentive for greedy parties in the industries it subsidizes to raise costs, since it greatly eliminated the cash customer. Imagine if auto insurance was provided by most employers, and also covered gas, parts, labor for repairs, oil changes, and the like. Do it for several decades and picture what the costs would be to the minority of customers paying cash.

If you are only paying 20 percent of the cost of something, and the hidden hand 80 percent, something which is bumped from, say, $20 to $30 (50%) only moves from $4 to $5 for you. Over the years, that leverage can create a monster, without much sticker shock until it is too late.

The insurance companies couldn't be happier, since price inflation meant a larger pot to take their percentage cut from. Their occasional protests over the costs of a certain drug or procedure, is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Insurance, pharmaceuticals, doctors, and hospitals have a mutually beneficial relationship, with taxpayer-funded restraints on competition to boot. They often point the finger at each other in public, or bitch about lawyers who aren't on their crew, while laughing together at the country club about how they have the people hoodwinked. And getting another round of drinks for their PR friends.

And how often have we heard about folks holding on to their job solely
for their health insurance? Larger companies love that labor-market leash and check on small business competition. Kind of answers the question some folks (myself included used to) have on why the larger companies don't lobby for a single-payer national plan.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

55. Good description of the big American insurance scam ...

...this is precisely what they have done and the answer IS, painful as it may seem to many people, noncooperation. We must STOP doing business with con artists and thieves---big insurance, big pharma, big oil, big agriculture, etc. They only own us to the degree that we willingly submit to it.

[Brazenly Liberal]

29. Um. Sure.

I'd love to cancel my insurance. I'd love to not have to pay the premium every month. And I'd love to take a stand for universal health care.

Just one teeny problem. It could cost us everything we have and, frankly, I'm not ready to pay that kind of price to rail impotently at the system.

Two years ago, the spousal unit had a heart attack. Only 44 years old and always in good health. It was completely unexpected. Even with insurance, there were enough uncovered medical expenses to drain our savings account to nothing and put us perilously overdue on a number of bills. We're not people who consume lavishly and have a pile of credit card bills - when I say bills, I mean electricity, heat, etc. We're just now climbing out of the financial hole and praying nothing else happens for a while because our savings cushion is gone. Without insurance to pay the part of the bill it did pay, we'd have lost our home.

Cancel your insurance? I hope anyone who is thinking about taking that bit of advice has nothing to lose - because that's exactly what they could end up with.

[pitohui]

45. so 45 million w.out ain't enough for you?

please louise many have done it at once or ain't ya noticed?

[bananas]

4. We're already dead

Take the long term view - a hundred years from now, and you're already dead.
What would you have done differently?

[entanglement]

6. Sage advice

How's the weather down there? :hi:

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. LOL.... Better. n/t

[the other one]

7. Must have been a good movie. The comic was dated.

Yeah, we are all waiting for the revolution. But we the people are not going to sacrifice the little they have. Wait. Soon they will have nothing, and then they will have nothing to lose. Sadly, by that time there will be nothing left to gain.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

9. I wish you weren't so spot on.

[awoke_in_2003]

12. Off topic

but I really enjoyed the political compass site listed in your link. I am economic left/right -8.25 and Social Libertarian/Authoritarian -7.64. I'm right there with the Dahli Lama, and close to Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. :)

On edit, your in the neighborhood, too. Such good neighbors

[pretzel4gore]

10. genteel poverty the ideal...

i think the 'man' (boy more like it, as bush at least proves) really was pissed off at the idealism of the 60's 70's beatnik, black panthers 'small is beautiful' greening of america age of aquarius etc.....they sat down and schemed how to neuter it all, how to demonise the hippy and the beatnik/community activist black, the young and the 'liberal'....they figgered out how to enrage the hard hats and the blue collar and the healthy active family man and even the yuppies (yippies who say yup) against the idea of progress, saying it's just dog eat dog, that's all and soon....BUT, we can still beat them, because truly, few of us can ever be 'rich' and why even want something most of our neighbors can't have ie porsches and black leather jets? Strangely, the republican'ts or gopigs or nazipoohs or conservatives or whaatever the hell they are called use the very thing that defies their logic to advance their agenda (the religion of peace to promote militarism etc)...it's all about money, and fact is, it is the root of evil when those who have so much want more! The pigmedia always was corrupt, and blacklisting that media might be the lifeline, the only lifeline(?)
let's shootem all and let god sortem out.....

[oscar111]

13. Live Simply.. but not as simply as in OP... and spread AAR

that's my input.

i wouldnt advocate cancelling insurance.. but do use non dr , home remedies when it is feasable.

Quakers have had a simple living movement for decades.. good ideas therein. Dont need the usual suburban big house of over seven hundred square feet. Nor the big car. Nor the expensive vacation. Grow your own veggies in the backyard... use solar heat collectors. Read mother earth magazine. Use Consumer Reports to get appliances that need the least repairs. Eat wisely and avoid artery clogging junk food. Form family compounds where you all live together. Get to know other DU'ers.

spread AAR to counter the current RW hate radio and all it has spawned in terms of lost elections.

[Selatius]

11. Fuck the Empire. It's the people who will live on.

It doesn't matter if it's a king or a president or a CEO who lords his power over your head. Nations and leaders and tyrants come and go, but people remain. When Rome fell, humanity didn't die with it. When this nation falls one day, we won't die with it unless we decide there is no future and blacken every inch of soil with nuclear ash.

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always."

-- Gandhi

[Maraya1969]

14. Yes that is what I believe. Everything changes and after a period

of horrible times good times will come again. It has happened over and over in the history that we know of.

How many times have people thought the end of the world was nigh? And then the sun came up.

[pretzel4gore]

17. ever heard of Alan Watts?

CBC radio had a perspective on Alan Watts, who was a guru type from the 60's 70's who sold alot of books and whose worldview was eastern mysticism meets christianity as Tolstoy or Gandhi appreciated it...I recall reading stuff by Alan while a young guy. What was a revelation from the CBC program though truly made me set up....the idea that 'the Universe' and life and even God aren't going anywhere, so all this alpha/omega eschatological stuff that we are force fed (we MUST live righteous and if we righteous enough we die succesful and go to heaven or if not succesful, to hell)...Watts said that the point of life is not to succeed, or fail, but it's like music or art - an immediate personal connection to the eternal and so on.....enjoyment was the key to uunderstanding and so on! We in the mod world have been taught that it's a series of test which you pass/fail from getgo...if you born poor, then you fail, if you don't go to right school, or get the right job you...fail. And who benefits from teaching us to be rats on a treadmill?
I heard this once: "when in an argument between you and the world, back the world"
in our society, we do the opposite

[marions ghost]

21. yes

being taught to be rats on a treadmill causes problems too numerous to list....

At the root of our problems is not knowing how to truly live--but only how to fight, compete, and acquire tokens.

We are dead before we die.

[Blue_In_AK]

40. Alan Watts was a great read

especially when the reader was on psychedelics. Not that I would know anything about that, of course. :hippie:

[Stanchetalarooni]

19. Go tell Sitting Bull that good times will come again.

The sun came up on Hiroshima.
And Nagasaki.
The sun will come up even after humanity has wiped itself off the face of the earth.

[WePurrsevere]

18. Yes, I believe this as well. "This too shall pass"... it may take time &

it may not be easy to go through, believe in or hold on to but eventually what Gandhi said is true... "in the end, they always fall - think of it, always". History has proven this to be true... if there is life... there is still hope... hold on and keep fighting the good fight.

[niallmac]

30. I always assume that somehow I have THE big picture

of the future. I've been proven wrong more than once.
True, I cannot see our way around the massive death star that is
world corporatism.
I am just waiting for the announcement of the first Roller Ball game.
But perhaps the real power center, the mass of humanity on this planet will have a common
'moment' and realize it's up to us.

[dipsydoodle]

15. I'm reminded of this

every time someone complains about Fux News. If all the Democrats stopped tuning in they'd soon change their attitude. Their existence is reliant on sustained viewer ratings.

[sweetheart]

20. "American lives don't have second acts."

I wonder if perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald was talking about the
country as well, that there never seems to be a recapitulation
of learning and a transformation...

And instead of a second act, death.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

22. Scary stuff, Tom

that cancelling insurance. I'd probably be dead in three months.

But I see your point.

I would add to your list: plant a garden if you can and get a few chickens. (after the bird flu scare, that is)

[TallahasseeGrannie]

23. A second response to your post

I think you hit it right on the head. It isn't the GOP, it isn't the fundies. It is our corporate culture... the WalMart mentality (and yeah, I shop there...gulp). More, bigger and better. And brighter colors. I am immersed in it as much as most folks. I'd like to jump off but I really don't know how.

And I don't think it is just America anymore. My German relatives tell us they also have big wholesale outlets akin to Sam's and Costco. I guess we are all really working hard to keep the Chinese in jobs.

You have nailed the problem. Just how do we solve it? There are people who see these excesses as our God-given RIGHT! Maybe a few months of interruption because of bird flu or whatever might actually be good for us. I remember life after Hurricane Kate. We lived two weeks with no power. Thanksgiving dinner was cooked in the fireplace. It changed us for a while.

[pitohui]

47. wow two whole weeks w.out power

there are neighborhoods today on the gulf coast that still don't have power

neighborhoods today that are nothing but slabs!

almost 8 months later

a few months of interruption is not good for anybody except some illegal aliens using it as an excuse to come roaring across the border and snap up every job in sight

bitter much, well, i have reason

i'm tired of the argument that it must get worse before it can get better, for many people, it can't get any worse, they have lost it all, in some cases even their lives

if people want to make it deliberately worse for themselves, such as deliberately canceling insurance, fine, but don't expect me to be impressed, life is hard enough and suffering great enough w.out creating fake suffering, if mr. yossarian really wants to do something useful forget all the self-righteous "live simply" crap and come help hammer some houses together for habitat for humanity or something sheesh

just folding one's hands and pretending to be above it all proves nothing

besides i doubt v. seriously that he has indeed in fact canceled his insurance, it's OK for us to lose our health or our houses, but it's a little different when the shoe is on the other foot!

[TallahasseeGrannie]

56. I didn't claim that two weeks was excessive hardship

I said that it changed my perspective.

I am not sure I invited the load you threw at me!

[Earth_First]

24. Cancel my Insurance?

What insurance?

[newportdadde]

25. Cancel insurance...

I'm looking around at my family 3 kids 2 and under. I'll get right on that..

How about instead of that advice I give some actual good advice.

1) Keep your insurance(if you have it) so you do not suffer an illness and financial ruin.

2) Do not buy anything and pay down every debt and pay extra on your house.

3) Live as debt free as possible and setup your kids with education as best you can. Preferrable dump all your extras like new boats and cars into getting those kids through college *gasp* debt free. This will help setup your kids for their run into adulthood.

[CrispyQ]

26. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.

We must reign in these behemoths we have created. The revocation of corporate personhood is essential if people want a better future.


http://reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/proposed_constitutional_amendments.html

snip...

An Amendment to Revoke Corporate Constitutional Privileges
SECTION 1. The U.S. Constitution protects only the rights of living human beings.

SECTION 2. Corporations and other institutions granted the privilege to exist shall be subordinate to any and all laws enacted by citizens and their elected governments.

SECTION 3. Corporations and other for-profit institutions are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of elections, legislation or government policy through the use of aggregate resources or by rewarding or repaying employees or directors to exert such influence.

SECTION 4. Congress shall have power to implement this article by appropriate legislation.

===
More on corporate personhood:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/index.html

snip...

We believe that corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges we willfully grant them. Granting corporations the status of legal "persons" effectively rewrites the Constitution to serve corporate interests as though they were human interests. Ultimately, the doctrine of granting constitutional rights to corporations gives a thing illegitimate privilege and power that undermines our freedom and authority as citizens. While corporations are setting the agenda on issues in our Congress and courts, We the People are not; for we can never speak as loudly with our own voices as corporations can with the unlimited amplification of money.

[saracat]

27. The rest of the world does not "look agog"!

the rest of the world is in much the same position. Your solution does not take into account political change , which is the only way to make a difference and that takes MONEY! Even this board, on which you post these thoughts requires MONEY to exist. And spreading the message of less consumption requires MONEY. And as for cancelling insurance, would you suggest that we die in actuality? Many of of could not get the treatment we need without insurance. I am not willing to make that sacrifice for a phyrric victory.
I would rather work my butt off to influence the political system for positive change. It will be slow, difficult and ultimately sucessful.

[Notoverit]

28. Way ahead of you! On all counts!

[AzDar]

31. My back hurts. n/t

[Comadreja]

32. I like the idea of a commune

They haven't done too well, but the reason I come here is for a sense of community that is lacking in the real world. On the other hand there was Jim Jones.


GEORGE W. BUSH:
MAKING TERRORISTS FASTER THAN HE CAN KILL THEM

[Bluerthanblue]

52. maybe 'intentional communities'-

I know this sounds absolutely nuts, but the concept of 'the village' on a less 'lilly white' format sure would be something I'd love to have had a chance at belonging to.

America has outgrown itself- and the 'voice' of 'everyman' is silenced by "men" who aren't human- but given the 'rights' of humans- (Corporations).

[DanCa]

33. I am dead allready.

I wont take you with me though.

[Deja Q]

36. Take me! Take me!

:D

[DanCa]

37. LOL

Thanks I needed that. :D

[Gregorian]

34. The man versus me.

I actually did cancel my insurance two weeks ago. That's odd to read this thread. Synchronicity?

What an interesting post. Yes, we have made that step from seeing the man as A MAN.

I want to reply by looking at the other side of this facade. Which I think is self-sufficiency. Or a relative self-sufficiency. Either we produce the things we need, or The Man does it for us.

I'm really quite out of it this morning. So this post might be abbreviated, if it even makes sense. However, I'm out of it for the very reason that this thread was started. My entire life is upset by the way we are living. As an example, try to find a place to live where you don't hear piston noise. It's very difficult now.

My point is, we are comfortable now. Dental floss? Walmart. Avocado? Safeway. When I shop, I look at an artichoke and think- two years. And watering. And insects. That's a hell of a lot of work for a few mouthfulls. When I see a digital camera, I think of Avogadro, Liebnitz, and all of the armies of engineers who pioneered the diode, and the integrated circuit, and computer science, and materials engineering, and modern machine tool manufacturing. And everything the modern world stands for. And if one asks the question "Why?", they get no answer. Except boredom and comfort.

What I mean is, if we are to beat The Man, we have to go back to a time before. To that time when life was harder. I don't see any way around it. And with global warming, we have yet that one more huge reason to return to that time before.

But we have forgotten. I sometimes look at a bar of soap. Or a stick of butter. You know what I mean. Make it.

I thought we had this discussion in 1970. See how addictive comfort is? It's not wrong. But to this degree, it is wrong. In these numbers, it is wrong. It has divided us. My head. It hurts. Right now it hurts. I spent my entire life looking at this. Thank god you all see it now. But I lost my life wanting what we had, and gave up. Strong backs, and a community of friends.

[femmedem]

43. It's doable, to a degree. I've got 9 lbs. of soap sitting in my soap mold

a raised bed waiting to be filled with veggies, a job walking distance to where I live, and an income low enough so that I'm not supporting war. It's a good life.

I used to want to live way out in the country, but now I think it's easier in the city. More community,less driving. (I don't even have a car, although my boyfriend does. We share.)

But no one's 100% pure--I sure didn't make this computer!
And once in a while I worry about being in my 40's with no insurance.

Good luck finding your way.

[Gregorian]

57. That is cool.

We think alike. I also worked it so that I'm not supporting war. I've managed to make my money without killing anyone, or myself. And after living in the country for a number of years now, I agree with the city comment. Right now I'm on a piece of land with abundant water, and tons of prime pasture land. And I know nothing. That's what started me thinking about this. Here I have everything it takes, except the handed down communal knowledge. I even have a book of the history of this property. The horse drawn butter mill. The pigs and chickens. I feel like poverty. And yet I'm essentially rich. I'm 50, and yet I haven't even started my life, as a result of running from the hoards in their cars. Now here I sit wondering what to do.

Enough blabbering. Who cares about my personal life. But it is an epidemic. We all threw away our lifeline. Now getting it back is an impossibility. For one thing, the land is gone. Paved over. A lot of it, anyway.

I'm glad their are people like you out there. Thanks for thinking and caring. We're a better world because of it.

[Deja Q]

35. Become our own bosses.

I like that idea.

it is a form of pulling one's self up and use their talents.

And forces people to be social.

Trouble is, those pesky "market forces" dictate what's economically viable. If you're not good at what is "marketable", you're dead anyway. And that realm is full of artists.

Art is subjective; rarely profitable.

Just think, in caveman and greek times, the painters of the Iliad and all wouldn't have bothered if money was a factor.

Art is part of society.

But when society becomes a sole business venture, art dies. As does philosophy.

[pitohui]

49. no one ever becomes his own boss toad

that is just a lie told by office workers enjoying a fantasy, the real self-employed person knows that every customer is his boss, and if he is successful, he has many many bosses telling him what to do and making demands on his time

if he lacks the sales personality and thus customers, he may be his own boss but only because he has no work and no money

everyone can't be an artist and in any case the great artists too had bosses, you can call them patrons if you think it sounds nicer but it still means they had someone to answer to

[Greyhound]

38. I find this quite funny, in an absurd sense.

Those that still have insurance seem to believe that it will benefit them if something happens, in spite of their own experience that demonstrates otherwise. The heart attack victim that has been bankrupt by the "uncovered" expenses. The parents that will continue to pay into the system that is killing them, along with the rest of us because "something might happen" to them, all the while ignoring the endless stories from previous victims that demonstrate that when something does happen, the insurance company just refuses to pay. The "health care" corporations are not in the health care business, and never have been, they are in the premium collection business, and will continue to operate in the same way until it is no longer profitable.

Wake up, you have no coverage now, you just have another, ever increasing, debt to keep you compliant. If enough people refuse to feed the beast it will die and we can get back to helping the citizens of our nation, until then it will just continue to get worse.

And this from those on "our side". The people that couldn't muster enough commitment to forego the daily latte on "Not one damn dime day" and all of the other similar efforts that we have tried to organize over the years. Amerika no longer has the sense of right and duty that real change will require, so things will not get better before they get much worse, and by then it will be too late.

[Greyhound]

39. I am curious to see just how well the illegals "sick out" works tomorrow.

Could it be that they are more committed to their cause than we are to ours?

[pitohui]

50. i find your post disingenuous

c'mon you know this is not truth-telling

the difference in the financial futures for people i know who have adequate insurance and those who had only partial insurance after katrina is night and day, the people who didn't have adequate insurance will never get back their lives, and they will be working until they are too disabled to work, they are not free, they will be slaves to the brutal necessity to earn money to be allowed to eat forever and forever, until they are too disabled to work and no one will hire them any longer


yes, if you have health insurance, you will likely have to go bankrupt anyway if the breadwinner is the ill or injured person and the issue serious but the catch is, you will get treated and you will have your life, without health insurance you won't get any surgery that is not needed to immediately stabilize you -- or if they discover you do have some equity, they'll get all of that and everything you own and then stop treating you midway

i have a friend who had cancer in his 30s, yes, he went bankrupt because of the long interruption in his ability to work, so he had no income, but he is alive, w.out insurance he would not have received the six figures worth of chemo and radiation therapy needed for his inoperable cancer

health insurance is not sufficient, but it is sure as hell better than the alternative of being dead

it's too bad we have to pay extortion to be allowed to live but the world is what it is, i'm not killing myself to change what is not going to change

[Greyhound]

54. What you say is true.

But I think the point of the OP is that we are accepting 1/4 of a loaf for those that have insurance and nothing for those that don't.
This is not the American way, we were founded by people that for many reasons, some altruistic others selfish, literally risked everything, including their lives to give us this country, and we've become completely self-interested, unfeeling, irresponsible, children. You yourself said that you're "not killing myself to change what is not going to change", pronouncing defeat without even allowing the possibility for change. What is going on in our health care system is, in fact, a crime against humanity and you accept it because you're better off than others and it won't affect you as badly.
I have no hope tonight.

[Robeysays]

42. meh, i don't have insurance

[pitohui]

44. you cancel your insurance and show us how dude

what disgraceful advice, haven't we lost enough around here?

[stepnw1f]

46. Universal Insurance is Better

A "People's Care Package".

[Montagnard]

48. In the future we will all pick the rich man's cotton

unless we use the hemp

[pitohui]

51. well the original OP won't pick any cotton

he'll be dead and out of his misery after being sent away from the emergency room for "indigestion" when they discover he has no insurance!