She has only worked in the US maybe 12 years now. Her new position as a public teacher vs private has a vesting period of 5 years, so she needs 2 more years. We looked at the insurance provided by the school district and decided not to pay for it because the payment plus the deductable is still exorbitant. Since we haven't been to a traditional medical doctor for a long time it just didn't make sense. We have not poisoned ourselves with vaccines: I was against vaccines before COVID. We have only been married 15 years so no kids. If she decided to get the vax: that probably would have been an issue that would not have been resolved. Joel Skousen said his family hasn't had medical insurance for three generations.
I hope it continues to work that well for you. I suddenly had all kinds of aging troubles that I never had a hint of almost all at once when I hit 66. I am not muddling my way to better health, avoiding prescription meds and taking supplements, fasting regularly and dieting; but it's a tough go. Some of it is biomechanical injury that has nothing to do with health ( as a cause, though it certainly impacts health greatly). Some of it is hereditary. And some from morbid obesity (which wasn't terribly obese but was morbid enough to result in diabetes and high blood pressure).
I retired Oct 2022 at 59 from the carpenter union. When the medical insurance expired a few months surface. did not qualify for Medicare. My wife is still working and we opted to not join the medical insurance rip off. We never got jabbed and was surprised that you allowed your wife to get jabbed when you didn't. Both of you are basically jabbed to some extent. When you don't have insurance you treat your body with more respect. I couldn't have retired if I had purchased their scam - surance. I was fortunate enough to get my first ss check last November. Who knows how long we will receive those.
I allow my wife to do whatever she wants to so long as it doesn't impinge on me. I advised her against it, but I do not tell her what she has to do with her own body like our government does. She also has her own religious beliefs, regardless of what I think.
What do you do for medical care--pay as you go, pay much more for a COBRA policy or keep your wife hard at work to keep you covered? ; ) I realize she's probably not reached retirement age or WANTS to keep working. My wife has reached that age at the same time I have and very much wants to retire.
Certainly paying for Plan B medical care makes our retirement more difficult. The Advantage plans don't require a premium, but they limit what doctors you can go to and provide no coverage out of county. They also seem to have higher copays or co-insurance amounts. So, I'm having trouble deciding which to go with as we continue to wait to be able to choose a plan. COBRA policies would be the most expensive of all policies.
I retired in the fall of 2021. I had to make a phone appointment 2 months in advance. Sure enough, 2 months later , at the day and time appointed they called me. Im sure glad I answered the phone , or it might have been another 2 month wait to retire!. Sounds like nothing has changed in the govt. That was during the Biden years. At least now they are finally trying to get rid of alot of wasteful spending. Enjoy your retirement Dave, and everyone else!
Best of luck! As I wrote b4 we also had a nightmare with SS, and that was back in 2017, long before Doge ever showed up. Trump was there, but barely.
We found the local office was (mostly) staffed with local employees who were actually very helpful and tried their best, but they were stuck with antiquated systems and the same type of doom loop phone holds that you experienced.
Once we got it all sorted out (which took 5 months) they determined that I was owed about 9k in missed payments. I had to fill out a bunch of stuff and then submit it by mail. After about 6 months I got a letter stating my case was ‘under review’. A year after that, in December of 2019, a check showed up in the mail. No explanation. No accompanying letter. Just a check.
And then when I got my year end statement for tax purposes the 9k wasn’t included. Govt efficiency reigns no matter who sits in the WH.
My employer covered medical for my wife & me. When I retired in late 2019, Medicare kicked in for us seconds after my employer’s stopped. Very smooth & uneventful.
I'll hope mine turns out the same way at the end of the month. So far, we found out we had two additional forms that needed to be filled out and hand-signed with a real physical signature in ink, not the digital signature their website used by clicking a link and then responding to an email, which resulted in getting an email and a letter that said our application was complete and was in process. Nothing either on the site, in their confirmation letter, or from our insurance broker indicated we needed to sign those additional documents, which we rushed to do yesterday with a trip to her employer.
While SSA has now assured us everything will happen to the exact second, as your experience describes, the never-mentioned forms that we only found out about via that visit to the local office, don't give me full confidence in that outcome. So far, this absurdly complicated process of enrollment has involved multiple visits to the insurance brokerage over several months to select from a huge combination of plans, unbelievably long phone loops for me and my wife (I lucked out by hanging up after an hour), two uses of SSA websites (once to get on Plan A, then six months later to answer the exact same questions that SSA clearly already had the data for due to the Plan A app, to sign up for Plan B), and finally these requisite, unmentioned forms to be signed by her employer, never presented to us until this fortuitous visit to the local office. Only government could make things this hideously complex, such that two (I USED TO THINK) reasonably intelligent adults could take so many months with professional help to sort their way to such a, so far, ignominious end.
I will take your words as some hope that the rest may finally go as you say.
Just a shout out for unity, David. Happy friday to all from sea to shining sea!
"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are. You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
The billionaires are building robot armies because they know what is coming. They know that eventually the population will wake up and realize what has been done to them. They are preparing for that day. The question is whether we wake up before they finish building, or after.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf
She has only worked in the US maybe 12 years now. Her new position as a public teacher vs private has a vesting period of 5 years, so she needs 2 more years. We looked at the insurance provided by the school district and decided not to pay for it because the payment plus the deductable is still exorbitant. Since we haven't been to a traditional medical doctor for a long time it just didn't make sense. We have not poisoned ourselves with vaccines: I was against vaccines before COVID. We have only been married 15 years so no kids. If she decided to get the vax: that probably would have been an issue that would not have been resolved. Joel Skousen said his family hasn't had medical insurance for three generations.
I hope it continues to work that well for you. I suddenly had all kinds of aging troubles that I never had a hint of almost all at once when I hit 66. I am not muddling my way to better health, avoiding prescription meds and taking supplements, fasting regularly and dieting; but it's a tough go. Some of it is biomechanical injury that has nothing to do with health ( as a cause, though it certainly impacts health greatly). Some of it is hereditary. And some from morbid obesity (which wasn't terribly obese but was morbid enough to result in diabetes and high blood pressure).
I retired Oct 2022 at 59 from the carpenter union. When the medical insurance expired a few months surface. did not qualify for Medicare. My wife is still working and we opted to not join the medical insurance rip off. We never got jabbed and was surprised that you allowed your wife to get jabbed when you didn't. Both of you are basically jabbed to some extent. When you don't have insurance you treat your body with more respect. I couldn't have retired if I had purchased their scam - surance. I was fortunate enough to get my first ss check last November. Who knows how long we will receive those.
I allow my wife to do whatever she wants to so long as it doesn't impinge on me. I advised her against it, but I do not tell her what she has to do with her own body like our government does. She also has her own religious beliefs, regardless of what I think.
What do you do for medical care--pay as you go, pay much more for a COBRA policy or keep your wife hard at work to keep you covered? ; ) I realize she's probably not reached retirement age or WANTS to keep working. My wife has reached that age at the same time I have and very much wants to retire.
Certainly paying for Plan B medical care makes our retirement more difficult. The Advantage plans don't require a premium, but they limit what doctors you can go to and provide no coverage out of county. They also seem to have higher copays or co-insurance amounts. So, I'm having trouble deciding which to go with as we continue to wait to be able to choose a plan. COBRA policies would be the most expensive of all policies.
I retired in the fall of 2021. I had to make a phone appointment 2 months in advance. Sure enough, 2 months later , at the day and time appointed they called me. Im sure glad I answered the phone , or it might have been another 2 month wait to retire!. Sounds like nothing has changed in the govt. That was during the Biden years. At least now they are finally trying to get rid of alot of wasteful spending. Enjoy your retirement Dave, and everyone else!
There is hope then!
Best of luck! As I wrote b4 we also had a nightmare with SS, and that was back in 2017, long before Doge ever showed up. Trump was there, but barely.
We found the local office was (mostly) staffed with local employees who were actually very helpful and tried their best, but they were stuck with antiquated systems and the same type of doom loop phone holds that you experienced.
Once we got it all sorted out (which took 5 months) they determined that I was owed about 9k in missed payments. I had to fill out a bunch of stuff and then submit it by mail. After about 6 months I got a letter stating my case was ‘under review’. A year after that, in December of 2019, a check showed up in the mail. No explanation. No accompanying letter. Just a check.
And then when I got my year end statement for tax purposes the 9k wasn’t included. Govt efficiency reigns no matter who sits in the WH.
My employer covered medical for my wife & me. When I retired in late 2019, Medicare kicked in for us seconds after my employer’s stopped. Very smooth & uneventful.
I'll hope mine turns out the same way at the end of the month. So far, we found out we had two additional forms that needed to be filled out and hand-signed with a real physical signature in ink, not the digital signature their website used by clicking a link and then responding to an email, which resulted in getting an email and a letter that said our application was complete and was in process. Nothing either on the site, in their confirmation letter, or from our insurance broker indicated we needed to sign those additional documents, which we rushed to do yesterday with a trip to her employer.
While SSA has now assured us everything will happen to the exact second, as your experience describes, the never-mentioned forms that we only found out about via that visit to the local office, don't give me full confidence in that outcome. So far, this absurdly complicated process of enrollment has involved multiple visits to the insurance brokerage over several months to select from a huge combination of plans, unbelievably long phone loops for me and my wife (I lucked out by hanging up after an hour), two uses of SSA websites (once to get on Plan A, then six months later to answer the exact same questions that SSA clearly already had the data for due to the Plan A app, to sign up for Plan B), and finally these requisite, unmentioned forms to be signed by her employer, never presented to us until this fortuitous visit to the local office. Only government could make things this hideously complex, such that two (I USED TO THINK) reasonably intelligent adults could take so many months with professional help to sort their way to such a, so far, ignominious end.
I will take your words as some hope that the rest may finally go as you say.
Just a shout out for unity, David. Happy friday to all from sea to shining sea!
"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are. You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
The billionaires are building robot armies because they know what is coming. They know that eventually the population will wake up and realize what has been done to them. They are preparing for that day. The question is whether we wake up before they finish building, or after.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf
Thank for that contribution from the Wise Wolf. It is well stated.
Thanks for noticing the author. Almost no one does.
I don’t know if you wrote this, but it is excellent and so true and timely. And it’s exactly ‘what they want’.
Trying to figure out what one can do to try and fix it can be quite depressing.
Moody, thank you, The Wise Wolf Wrote it. There a bunch of sutions at the bottom of this page:
Do you have a link to The Wise Wolf’s work?
Yes of course: here is a guest post on my substack from him (the article is among the best ive read), that links back to his substack: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/everything-you-watch-or-read-is-owned