December 18, 2007 5:29 AM

Still glad you voted Republican? Don't you wish everyone would??

My health insurance premium just went up 22%

So I got a letter from Blue Cross yesterday. My health insurance premium just went up from $277/month to $340/month - that’s a 23% increase. Why? I have no idea. Is it because I’ve had problems with my eyes this year and now am paying the price? Or is it simply that health care costs keep rising and someone has to pay? And what am I going to be paying for health insurance when I’m 60? I don’t claim to be an expert on health care policy, and admit that my eyes gloss over when trying to understand the differences between Hillary’s, Obama’s, and Edwards’ health care plan. But I have a gut feeling that none of those plans are meant to help people like me, people in the middle, people who are neither rich nor poor. Just like the sub-prime bail-out, where our politicians are helping to artificially inflate real estate prices so first-time home buyers like me can pay tens of thousands, if not a hundred thousand, more for my first condo (that’s called a “tax”), everything politicians do is meant to help either the rich or the poor at my expense.

There’s nothing particularly unusual or newsworthy about the predicament John Aravosis from AMERICAblog finds himself in. It is, however, reflective of what is happening to so many of us in the middle class. It’s difficult to recall a time when so many in the middle were getting squeezed from all directions. Whether you happen to attribute it to corporate greedheads, global warming, or baseball’s steroids scandal, but it really is getting tougher to make ends meet. While I’m not an economist or a statistician, I’d be willing to hazard a guess that the real income of Americans, especially over the past couple of years, just hasn’t been able to keep up. The cost of gasoline, food- even beer- has far outstripped inflation and any increases in the average American’s salary.

It may be somewhat simplistic to blame all of this on Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © and his cabal of neoConservative thugs, but after seven years in office, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to do the math. This Administration and it’s prop-up-the-rich economic policies have been an absolute disaster for those of us in the middle class. By fiddling while Rome burned, they’ve ignored what’s become a spiralingchain reaction of ever-increasing costs of goods and services. Yes, some of the market forces in play may well have occurred regarless of what this Administration did or didn’t do, but what they’re guilty of is ignoring the signs that the economy was about to begin circling the drain. The Bush Administration has taken care of their rich benefactors and fiddled when the rest of us burned.

I can still remember Ronald Reagan asking voters if they were better off than they were four years ago. That same question can and should be asked this time around. Are we better off? Are you better off? As for my own personal financial situation, yeah, I’m better off, but that’s a function of the choices that I’ve made over the past few years, NOT anything that’s come out of Washington. As for whether or not this country is better off, all you have to do is to look around for your answer. If you can seriously say that we’re better off now than we were seven years ago, you might just want to step out of your Republican propaganda bubble and take a good look around you.

In a day and age when symoblism, overheated rhetoric, and vapid propaganda pass for informed political discussion, we’ve essentially given the foxes the run of the chicken coop…and somewhere, Josef Goebbels is smiling.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Technorati

Technorati search

» Blogs that link here

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on December 18, 2007 5:29 AM.

Uh...just another Republican with more money than sense? was the previous entry in this blog.

There'll be a little extra coal in your stocking this year is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Contact Me

Powered by Movable Type 5.12