HOW WOULD I KNOW?

In February 1968 Andy Warhol exhibited his first international retrospective exhibition at the Moderna Museet gallery in Stockholm. The exhibition catalogue contained "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes." The line began to bore Warhol in later years when interviewers kept asking him about it. In 1979 he did repeat it though, claiming that the line had truth - "my prediction from the sixties finally came true: In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."

I doubt my fifteen minutes is coming, but I might soon have fifteen seconds of fame of fame in a fifteen-mile radius. I was interviewed today by a reporter for the local paper to use in their question of the week. With that comes my photo and two sentences of my opinion. That’s a problem for someone who cannot distill a comment to a single sentence or two.

The question was: Do you think Obamacare should be repealed? I then launched into ten minutes of outstanding quotes explaining why the answer is neither yes nor no, but that is it so vague and fuzzy to those of us at The Home since all we want to really know is will this help us or hurt us. Even AARP is not clear enough to us, as so much in the bill is just totally confusing.

Of course, like all true Americans our concern is selfish. What will we get out of this? The answer: Who knows? Like so many things that come our way, it probably depends on the agent reading our 30-page application for benefits (slight exaggeration).

During the fifteen years I lived in Canada I crossed the Canadian USA border about twice a year. My family lived in the USA. It took almost no time to figure out the crossing guards (both sides) had the final say. Don’t tick them off. My experience with the US government benefits for old people is much the same. When I first arrived I went through a three-month application for extra assistance for medical expenses. I was approved. I got a new application three months later and was confused. I thought I had done that already. Wrong. My inability to read and understand government forms knocked my assistance out. I did not fill out my form in time or correctly. I made the mistake of writing to ask what this was for as I had filled out the form only three months ago. Well, I was now not eligible to apply for another quarter. I did three-months later and was turned down. I now made too much money. Nothing changed. My income was the same. My money in the bank was less than at the time of the first application.

I admit I do not know how these decisions are made. They did send me 3-4 pages explaining my rights of appeal. I did not appeal (my fault). This leads me to believe that the bill is so unclear that the peons who must administrate the rules cannot agree on interpretation, but they still have the right to decide.

This is a long way around to explain my understanding of the problem with Obamacare. It might be great. It might be the worst thing that could ever happen to Americans. The truth from my point of view is that no one likely knows. So what I want to know is how the gal making the decision on my application views the plan. It’s her decision that will affect ne, not the health care pundits.