It's Hard to Participate, I Know All to Well (Post 4 of a Series of Posts)

The following is my fourth post in a series of posts that shows my letter to those members of Congress who voted for ACA.  If you have not read the first post then I encourage you to do so by clicking here and then reading each successive post until you arrive at this one.

The following portion of the letter is my attempt to help the reader have a better understanding of the effects caused by their vote:

Undesirable Options

Added Costs

Because of your vote for ACA we must make some very tough choices, none of which are ideal. We can:

1.     Move to a plan with our present insurance provider that meets the mandates (aka regulations) of the ACA, which is similar to our current plan, but at an increase in premium of approximately $600 per month (a monthly increase of ~130%) to $985 per month and an increase in the annual deductible by $2,500 (an annual increase of 25%) to $12,500;

2.     Purchase one of three plans on the exchange, but even the bare bones plan is more expensive with a higher deductible and less physician choices; or

3.     Forgo insurance, but incur a “tax” (for NOT engaging in ‘commerce’ leaving me to wonder whether the tax will extend to ‘not’ buying a gym membership to stay healthy or to ‘not’ buying catfish or other crops subsidized by the recent farm bill).

Paid By Forgoing Long-term Investments In Oneself

Assuming we do not receive a sizeable increase in pay and if we choose one of the two former options then we must give up something.  Our options are limited because our budget is tight like most Americans. We can:

1.     Stop saving for our retirement and our children’s education, which amounts to approximately a paltry $200/month;

2.     Eat less healthy foods (as we rarely eat out and strive to eat many healthy fresh foods), which could amount to approximately $200/month per a study recently published in the BMJ Open journal;

3.     Drop our family gym membership, which amounts to approximately $100/ month; and/or

4.     Change the after school program for our children to one of lower quality that provides much less enrichment, which could save anywhere from $100 to $400 per month depending upon the risk we are willing to assume.

It's Hard to Participate, I Know All to Well (Post 3 of a Series of Posts)

The following is my third post in a series of posts that shows my letter to those members of Congress who voted for ACA.  If you have not read the first post then I encourage you to do so by clicking here and then reading each successive post until you arrive at this one.

The following portion of the letter is my attempt to help the reader have a better understanding of four individuals whose lives they have affected by their vote:

Lives Touched

To put my challenges in a better perspective, I think you should know in some detail the four lives whom you have touched and how we seek to deal with the problem that you helped create absent any intervention. From a political perspective, my wife and I are not affiliated with any political party (i.e. we are independents). I lean right and she leans left; hopefully, together we are in the center.   We have two elementary school-age children and together we live in a 1,100 square foot home (~ ½ the median) with three bedrooms and one bathroom, which is currently secured with a mortgage.  We have two cars, one 15 years old, the other six years old with the latter secured with a note.  Our children attend public school and an after-school care facility due to us both working fulltime for which we are truly grateful.  We are grateful because during the depth of the recent recession both of us were underemployed. I even took a position that guaranteed me no income whatsoever, but did guarantee expenses. During this period of underemployment, we incurred additional debt; it was not until late last year after five tough and extremely lean years that our financial situation improved such that we could restructure our debt to begin paying it down and to very modestly renew savings for:

1. A raining day,
2. Our eventual & hopeful retirement, and
3. Our children’s higher education.

It's Hard to Participate, I Know All to Well (Post 2 of a Series of Posts)

The following is my second post in a series of posts that shows my letter to those members of Congress who voted for ACA.  If you have not read the first post then I encourage you to do so by clicking here.

The following is the introductory paragraph of my letter:

Dear {Name of Member of Congress}:

When you cast a vote for legislation do you subscribe to an oath similar to that of which physicians subscribe, the Hippocratic oath? I ask because your vote for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) helped few people and hurt many more. More specifically, Kaiser Family Foundation published a recent study that indicates that over 50% of the uninsured prior to the enactment of ACA remain uninsured due to costs and my family and I comprise four of the estimated 16 million Americans (per Health Policy and Strategy Associates, Inc.) that have lost their affordable healthcare insurance due to your vote for the ACA. I think you would agree that these outcomes constitute a problem. Albert Einstein stated, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Therefore, I encourage you to undertake personal change to learn a new way of thinking to help solve one of our Nation’s daunting challenges.  Please allow me to help you begin the process.

It's Hard to Participate, I Know All to Well (Post 1 of a Series of Posts)

Following my failed attempt over four years ago to have my name on the ballot to possibly earn the opportunity to represent us in Washington, D.C., I have long promoted the concept that we must participate more in our government.  However, I can readily attest that it is extremely hard based on personal experience, which I seek to share through a series of posts beginning with this one.

Even though the date of this post is August 1, 2014, it is based on a letter that I opened in early January of this year, which I initially received two months earlier in November 2013.  That letter was a non-descript form letter sent by Florida Blue, my health insurance provider, informing me that my family’s health insurance would cease to exist due to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) mandates.  It is now obvious that when I wrote my last post, Set Healthcare Free, published November 22, 2013, I was unaware at the time that I was writing about family and me.

Needless to say, once I learned the news, I was angry; sadly, I felt hopeless, too, because I did not think there was much else I could do other than: 1. Make the necessary hard choices; 2. Voice my frustration to those who helped write and approve the legislation and 3. Share this information with as many others as possible (such as through a series of blog posts). In the process of seeking to voice my frustration and more importantly, give possible solutions, I discovered that the process requires a lot of resources (time and money), which are hard to come by. 

While I did not keep formal track of time allotted, I guestimate that I invested approximately 100 hours writing, editing, printing and mailing my letter.  I also spent approximately $300 on print material and postage.  When you read my letter (in a series of subsequent posts) you will come to learn why I sent snail mail versus email. 

It has taken me almost nine months to arrive at this point because there are only 24 hours in a day. I share one allocation of those hours for just one day based on my personal experiences: 9+ hours work, 1+ hour roundtrip commute, 2+ hours to nourish body with food (includes collecting, prepping, consuming, cleaning), 1+/- hours cleaning body internally (i.e. going to the bathroom) and externally (bathing, flossing, etc…), 2+/- hours investing time in children/family, 8- hours sleep and possibly 1 hour remaining for decompression. 

Notice that work consumes the most time as it does with most Americans.  Consequently, either one most work in government or work in an organization that does not prevent activities (i.e. politicking) to best affect our government.  In reference to the latter, I think the only organizations that willing approve of those actively participating are those where the principal owner is doing the activity, which means few truly participate and why I think that David Brat winning his election against Eric Cantor with less than $200,000 in donations could be a watershed moment.  I think the nomination of David Brat demonstrates if and when people participate then the everyday ordinary citizen can influence government more than any money that may flow into an election.

It is hard, but we can do it; we must do it.  WE MUST PARTICIPATE!