ShazzieB
ShazzieB's JournalMedicare Advantage Plans Disadvantage Many Elderly and Disabled People
For-profit Medicare Advantage program restrictions routinely result in delays and the denial of necessary health care.
“I went to a so-called Medicare Information Session and took the recommendation of the speaker and ran with it,” Timmins told Truthout. “I did not know that he was paid a commission for every person he signed up for a plan. The issue for me was cost.”
Like other Medicare beneficiaries, Timmins knew that the standard premium for Medicare coverage — $164 per month in 2023 — would be taken out of his monthly Social Security checks. He also understood that there would be a $226 annual deductible for Part B, which covers doctor’s visits, but after that deductible was met, Traditional Medicare would pick up 80 percent of the cost of his care. What’s more, he knew that dental, optical and audiology were not covered by the plan and that he would be responsible for paying the remainder of his health care costs — 20 percent of the total — out of pocket unless he purchased a separate, costly Medigap insurance plan.
Not surprisingly, when Medicare Advantage promised broader coverage for less money — the same deduction would be taken from his Social Security check, but he would not need a supplemental Medigap plan since Medicare Advantage (sometimes referred to as Plan C) would provide coverage for most of the services that Traditional Medicare did not offer — Timmins quickly signed up. That’s when his nightmare began.
Are these red states in a competition to see who can pass the most ludicrous abortion bans?
It sure seems like it sometimes. If so, the latest entrant in this strange contest appears to be New Hampshire:
The bill was pre-filed in the House in September, but the full text of the abortion ban was only released Tuesday morning. The legislation “prohibits abortion, other than for a medical emergency, if the gestational age of the fetus is more than 15 days,” according to the bill text.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-hampshire-15-day-abortion-ban_n_656f66dee4b0f3e5f44b124c
Aside from everything else, I see a major problem with the wording, because HELLO? It's not a fetus at 15 days! In fact, it's either still a zygote or just barely an embryo at that point!
There are 3 stages of prenatal development: the germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages.
Source, which includes more details and images: https://www.verywellmind.com/stages-of-prenatal-development-2795073
15 days = 2 weeks plus 1 day, which is at most 1 day into the embryonic period and nowhere near being a fetus.
Right now, I'm so hung up on that priceless bit of stupidity that I can't even process the rest of this absurdity. In fact, my brain hurts right now, so I'm going to stop here.
Abortion rights groups seek ballot measures in 9 more states in 2024
*snip*
It’s all part of a growing effort to put abortion rights directly in the hands of voters — a movement that took off after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its June 2022 Dobbs decision.
*snip*
Many, however, face a far less certain path forward than previous efforts. In some deep-red states where such efforts are underway, hurdles include public opinion on abortion care that is much less supportive, while in others, the obstacles are technical — including difficult signature and passage thresholds.
Still, advocates in a number of states say they see a clear road to more success.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/abortion-rights-groups-seek-ballot-measures-9-states-2024-rcna125177
States mentioned in the article
🔹️Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri: These states have a "tough road ahead."
🔹️Florida: This effort faces hurdles, "but its backers are still exceedingly hopeful."
🔹️Nevada, Arizona, Maryland, New York and Colorado: "Success more likely" in these states.
Hillary Clinton: "Hamas Must Go."
Like a lot of my fellow DUers, I've been disturbed by how contentious some of the threads on the Israeli/Hamas situation have been getting. I hate seeing so much hostility between DU members and having no idea what to do about it.
In a thread I was reading last night, brief mention was made of something Hillary Clinton said about Hamas in an interview somewhere, so I got curious and tried to find it. One of the first hits that I got was an opinion piece on the subject that Hillary wrote for the Atlantic. I found it so helpful that I immediately shared it in the above-mentioned thread. Enough people said they hadn't seen it before that I've decided it's worth doing an op to share it more widely.
First, here's the link to the original article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/hamas-israel-ceasefire-humanitarian-pause-gaza/675992/
And here's a no paywall link, courtesy of littlemisssmartypants: https://archive.is/FE3mh
Drawing deeply from her experience as Secretary of State, Hillary lays out everything she thinks Israel needs to do, including (but not limited to) eliminating Hamas. She has a whole list of recommendations, some of which I'm sure Israel won't be thrilled with, and I think she's right about all of it.
Perhaps most importantly, she explains her reasoning for everything she recommends, and she's very clear about certain things Israel has been doing that need to stop.
I hope others will find Hillary's nuanced, compassionate, and thoughtful approach to this subject helpful, even if you don't agree with every single point.
I'm glad you're not leaving and understand your restraint.
As many have already said, I've been quite dismayed by the contentious atmosphere in most of the I/P related threads here at DU since 10/7. I've struggled with the whole thing myself, partly because I've never seen this as a case of "one side is all good and the other is all bad." I've always been pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. Whatever the opposite of antisemitism is, that's me. But I can't help seeing more than one side to everything, whether I want to or not.
I can understand why a lot of people are upset about some of the things that are happening at the same time that I instinctively recoil at anything that smacks of vilifying Israel. My reaction to all this has been a recognition that I didn't understand a fraction of the issues involved in how things got this way, and I've been doing a lot of reading to address that. And the more I read and learn, the more I realize the perils of oversimplifying any of this.
This awful situation didn't just come out of nowhere overnight. It's the result of decades upon decades of mistakes made by numerous different entities, going back over 100 years. As I've been reading about the history of modern Israel, I've gotten irritated with almost everyone involved at various points along the way, while also understanding why most of them did a lot of the things they did.
I support Israel and the Jewish people as much as ever, while disagreeing strongly with certain decisions made by certain Israeli leaders. I am sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza, while at the same time understanding Israel's position on certain things. I absolutely detest Hamas as I detest terrorism in general, but at the same time I'm very much aware of the complex, multilayered relationship between them and the Palestinians in Gaza. I'm keenly aware of the fact that the Israelis don't trust the Palestinians as all, and the Palestinians don't trust them, either. Furthermore, I understand why they don't trust each other, AND I'm aware that they both have reasons for their distrust.
Because of all of the above, it gives me a headache to read any post that vilifies either side and paints the other as perfect angels, no matter which side is being portrayed which way. I know it's human nature to take sides, to see good guys and bad guys and root for the "good guys," but some things are just too complicated for that to be a viable approach, imo. Trying to explain that to people when passions are runnning high isn't always viable, either, though, so I have avoided getting too embroiled in any of these discussions for the most part.
Sorry for the long ramble. TL/dr: I get where you're coming from, I'm sorry you have been running into problems, and I look forward to the day when the Israel/Hamas war isn't a constant bone of contention here at DU. Best wishes to you and yours.
Leslie Jones loses her sh!t.
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while, and the best part? RFK Jr is the butt of the joke! 
NOTE: I wasn't sure where to post this at first, under DU4's new forum setup. It didn't seem to fit either Cable News Clips or Liberal Youtubers. I thought it was entertainment rather than politics per se, so I put it in the Lounge. The Lounge moderators disagreed snd froze it, so I'm reposting it in here.
Leslie Jones tries not to lose her sh!t.
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while, and the best part? RFK Jr is the butt of the joke!
There aren't any restrictions on abortion ANYWHERE in the Bible!
The Catholic prohibition against abortion (and birth control as well) is based on Church tradition, not anything that's in the Bible. The LDS Church also forbids abortion (with rare exceptions), but that's not based on the Bible, either.
Abortion used to be a non-issue for most Protestants until the Evangelicals decided to jump on the anti-abortion bandwagon and team up with Catholics and Evangelicals to promote making abortion laws as strict as possible.
This unholy coalition was limited in what it could do as long as Roe was the law of the land, but once that was struck down by SCOTUS, all hell proceeded to break loose, as we all know.
The one OT verse that the antiabortion religious right really loves to quote to support their position, Jeremiah 1:5, is not even about abortion:
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
If you read this verse in context, it's actually about God telling a specific person (Jeremiah) how he appointed J. to be a prophet before he was even "formed ... in the womb," but Evangelicals interpret this to somehow mean that terminating ANY pregnancy is "against God's will" (yeah, I don't get it either).
This verse is used extensively by the religious right, on anti-abortion websites, etc. They've latched onto it hard, presumably because they haven't got anything else. You see, Evangelicals need something scriptural to base their anti-abortion beliefs on, because they believe whatever the Bible says about something is the final word on that particular thing. Since the Bible literally does NOT say what they want it to say about abortion, they had to gin something up somehow, and that verse in Jeremiah was the only thing they could find that even came close!
And dont forget....
In addition to everything on that list, he wants to destroy our democracy and turn this country into a dictatorship with himself as dictator for life. He want to utterly demolish our system of government and all of the things America at least tries to stand for, and he wants to do it for the most selfish and childish of reasons: to avoid punishment for his crimes, to punish those he regards as his enemies, and to indulge his own ego. I can forgive some things, but this is not one of them.
In 2016, I thought he was a jerk and a buffoon. I knew he wasn't qualified to be president in any way, shape, or form, but I had no idea what a monster he actually was. Since that time, his true nature has been revealed bit by bit, and every revelation has been more horrifying than the last. I now know that he is capable of a level of depravity I never dreamed of in 2016, and I want him gone the same way I would want an organism that causes some ghastly disease gone.
I want him gone, not just for the things he has done, but for the things that he intends to do and WILL do if he gets the chance.
Glitches I'm encountering in DU4.
I am seeing several recurring glitches when posting (either ops or replies). I didn't post about these right away, because I wanted to give myself a chance to get used to DU4 first and be sure of what was going on.
Some of these are a bigger problem for me than they would be for some people, because I am so long-winded and often preview several times before posting, but these are things that didn't happen to me with DU3.
First of all, I do most of my DU posting on a Samsung Galaxy Android tablet, in landscape view. I greatly prefer landscape for 2 reasons: because my tablet is easier for me to hold that way, and also because it's easier to enlarge the text to a size that is comfortable for my aging eyes in landscape.
When I enlarge text on my tablet, the text box gets bigger, too, and it quickly gets too wide for the screen in portrait view. In landscape view, I can make the text twice as big as I can in portrait without cutting off the sides of the text box. As a result, I greatly prefer to read AND type posts in landscape view and I never had a problem doing that in In DU3.
With DU4, typing posts with the text at a comfortable size for me is difficult, because after the first few lines, or a paragraph or so, the text I'm typing no longer shows in the text box. I have to keep scrolling down to see the line I'm currently typing, and often as soon as I start typing again, the line I'm typing disappears from view again. I think text size is a big factor in causing this, but as I said, being able to enlarge the text to a certain size is important to me.
In DU3, I could enlarge the text in landscape view until the text box filled up the whole screen and type away, and the line I was typing always stayed where I could see it, no matter how long the post got. In Du4, I can't enlarge the text the way I used to without this problem happening. I REALLY miss being able to enlarge the text on my screen the way I used to, because it's so much easier on my eyes.
Sorry that was so long and complicated. I hope I explained clearly enough, if not, I'm happy to clarify.
There are a couple of other MUCH less complicated glitches I've encountered, but I'm going to put those in a reply to this.
Profile Information
Name: SharonGender: Female
Hometown: Chicago area, IL
Home country: USA
Member since: Tue Mar 26, 2013, 04:18 AM
Number of posts: 16,569