I would like to share a story about my dad and health insurance and how it was pre-Obamacare.

My dad has diabetes. He also owned his own business (a plumbing business, no, the humor is not lost on me), so he paid for his own health insurance. His premium was over $800 per month. This was… 2008ish? I was in my very early 20s.

He broke a toe and didn’t realize it until it got infected and went septic. He was hospitalized for over two months. He lost the toe. Because his $800/month insurance was garbage, and because he wasn’t working and making money, he also lost his insurance. My mom and I couldn’t keep up with everything, and somehow that payment slipped through the cracks. (By one week, and then it was gone.)

When we realized, we tried to get the health insurance back. They said because he had a pre-existing condition he would have to pay his premium like normal, but had to wait two years to receive any benefits.

Let me restate that.

We had to pay $800/month for NOTHING, for TWO YEARS, while also paying almost double for all of his medical needs.

My dad still couldn’t work, but still had hospital bills (that were now even more insane), insulin, medication, not to mention other normal bills, and business related bills.

I helped out where I could, but we were pretty much broke. I remember feeling guilty for buying fresh apple juice at the grocery store, instead of the frozen concentrate. It was my birthday and I was splurging.

I know the only thing that saved us was Obamacare.

Everyone likes to shit on it for not being good enough, or a whole slew of other reasons. But we somehow got my dad under the super early roll out.

His premium dropped to $130/month, and he received benefits IMMEDIATELY. His medication, even the insulin, was suddenly affordable.

I remember bawling my eyes out in the bathroom at work because I could suddenly afford to actually buy gas instead of putting it on my credit card.

I AM NOT PUTTING UP WITH THIS BULLSHIT ANYMORE, FOR US OR ANYONE ELSE. We are moving in the wrong goddamn direction.

Fuck Trump and the GOP and anyone who votes red. This has to end.

This info needs to be out there, it turned the tide against cryptocurrency in the public eye it might fit so too

interesting fact i have titanium in my spine

Fun Fact!

Titanium not only is crazy durable, but it noo magnet! Thas wy Dock chok jjiun spi; surgyr ad pater noster, qui es in cœlis; sanctificetur nomen tuum: Adveniat regnum tuum; fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cœlo, et in terra. Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie: Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris: et ne nos inducas in tentationem: sed libera nos a malo.

dude got hit with the ol’ Lorum Ipsem beam😞

Fun fact! Titanium is often used for medical implants because it's *dodges lorem ipsum beam* because it's strong, nontoxic, won't corrode inside the body, and best of all, *dodges* bone will directly grow onto it! This is called "osseointegration" and it means that your titanium artificial hip, dental implant, or whatever will have greater *dodges* greater mechanical stability and will ARRRGGH! aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit!

My favorite response to “that’s not a word” is “then why do you know what it means?”

Every time someone within 30 miles of me says “that’s a made up word” I am uncontrollably compelled to respond “ALL WORDS ARE MADE UP!”

In a college language class I took, we talked about the Jabberwocky poem and the professor had us try to explain every word in it. When we got to ‘outgrabe’ she asked why it was past tense and my response was “Cause the present tense is outgribe”. Her response was “That doesn’t answer the question but that brings up a better one. Why do you know that?”

Actually your society is the freaks for shooting everything that moves and burning half your "nature reserves" every year so that upperclass dandies can eat leaded pheasant. North Americans are the well adjusted ones here, your country has become a desolate suburban lawn in island form

my opinion as an american is that we spend way too much time trying to save african megafauna and nowhere near enough time making fun of the english for turning an entire island--which was once a hazelnut food forest--into a goddamn lawn.

bill bryson once actually wrote down in a whole book and got published that the english were superb gardeners and i about threw the book out the window i was that outraged. the english!!! the fucking ENGLISH. them? that's who you want to laud? the english

the

THERE ARE A GRAND FUCKING TOTAL OF ZERO STAPLE CROPS ORIGINALLY OR EVEN PRIMARILY CULTIVATED BY THE ENGLISH. NONE OF THEM. NOT POTATOES NOT WHEAT NOT TURNIPS NOT RYE. THEY GNAWED THEIR ISLAND DOWN TO A NUB FOR NOTHING. THE WOLVES AND BEARS ALL GONE FOR NOTHING. THE WILDCATS AND BIRDS AND MUSTELIDS AND INSECTS, GONE IN THEIR THOUSANDS, FOR NOTHING. FOR SOME SHEEP. FOR

THEIR MAIN AGRICULTURAL EXPORT IS FAMINE

anyway the english approach to agriculture, biodiversity, and environmentalism is roughly on par with a dog's approach to someone else's homework and everywhere in the world that has inherited their cack-fisted disdain for nature has suffered immensely. i can't overstate enough how bad things have been and still are.

please make fun of them. it's the least they fucking deserve.

Vaguely reminds me of how much Australia gets flack for its "cracked up"/dangerous wildlife. Or the emu war. Like at least they have biodiversity. People act like the world is solely OUR playground and the animals are an obstacle which couldn't be further from the truth.

"Their main agricultural export is famine" is easily the best sentence I've read in my entire god damn life.

I’m sorry. Did you say “emu war”?

the emus won btw

Rapists, and killers, too? Really? (Those on death-row?) The drug/prostitution problems are just a portion of USA criminals.

yes, all criminals. the moment you say “except X criminal” is the moment that people will try to convict their opponents as having committed X crime.

it’s the same thing as what’s going on right now with people equating drag to some sort of child exploitation. “but the children!!” they wail, and people listen because oh, if drag is harming children, then drag MUST be BAD, so we HAVE TO BAN DRAG.

do you understand what i’m saying? you can’t take away the rights of any category of criminal, because suddenly that category will be overflowing with people who totally 100% definitely committed that horrible crime.

Just to look at this from one step further back, let's accept the premise. Let's imagine that there is a type of crime that is 1) horrible evil irredeemable universally-agreed-upon bad, and 2) could somehow be prosecuted with 100% accuracy and 0% bias. Yes, even then, those criminals deserve a right to vote.

Do you they're going to like vote themselves out of jail? Vote to make murder legal? What exactly are you afraid of.

Realistically they'll just... vote just like anyone else. They'll help elect city councilmembers they think will better their hometowns, and presidents they think will best serve the country. They might even vote in their own interests! To reform prisons, fund rehabilitation programs, and outlaw predatory practices by telecoms. Are you saying you don't want any of those things?

And even if there were one of those super-duper-unambiguously-evil totally misanthropic death-row convicts, who's scheduled to be execute the very next day and just wants to sow chaos and watch the outside world burn however they can... what's the worst they could do, vote republican?

Taking people's rights away isn't bad because it might happen to someone you like, it's because taking people's rights away is bad.

Wait I've seen this movie

Please be coherent about this and recognise that what this headline means is:

Poor and marginalised people are being kicked out of the houses they worked decades to secure, just at the time in their lives when they are the most vulnerable

And the ones kicking them out aren't of a specific age either. Soulless assholes come in every generation, and the ones born with too much money are the worst of the lot. Right now, a guy your age is authorising an eviction against someone the age of your grandma. Pop culture generations cannot explain that.

This.

thesanderstans:

Holy shit, they got Voyager 1 working again!

15 billion miles away and NASA was able to tweak code packages on one of the onboard computers and it worked and Voyager 1 is sending signals back to earth for the first time since November.

Incredible!

When public services are affordable and convenient, people will always choose those resources. They are not supposed to be a capitalistic profit-seeking initiative, they are developed for the benefit of the people, for a better life, just as government resources should be used. (tweet)

Update from Boston, where they have removed fares from 3 bus lines and ridership is up 48% in low-income areas.

Yeah it fuckin is

Want more go to a meeting about it

[ID: A poem written using fridge magnets, reading, (when one word is across multiple magnets, I put a - (dash) in between):

can we stay here a little long-er

linger-ing and kiss-ing like love-r-s

like raw meat I go bad quick

when all by my frantic self

how hard can it be to beg home

to be there with me fast-er!

& I know I know

I am a repulsive animal for how

my growl-ing belly howl-s and heave-s

with hungry voice-s

but I will never not long for you

and so I will always do the leash dirty

for how could I want to be by an-y-thing

but you

you

you

/end]

ever since i was little i knew i wanted to make up little guys in my brain and play on my puter all day