Tuesday, February 22, 2011

How To Fix The Deficit

Cut money to Planned Parenthood?  And NPR?

Yeah, not so much.  That's like fixing your problem with the giant credit card debt and hospital bills by canceling your cable.  Yeah, the thirty bucks a month you save (and yes, I *am* speaking from personal experience, how kind of you to ask) is thirty bucks you don't have to spend -- but does it really do much to help against the fifteen hundred dollar deficit you are running?  

Really?

(And before anyone says, oh, but stop buying lattes, and don't waste money on cigarettes, and you should live on crackers and grits LIKE WE DID WHEN WE WERE POOR, I've got something for you right over here in this cupboard.  Yeah.  It's a big cup of STFU.  The problem was never how we were wasting money.  The problem was the thousands of dollars the hospitals charged me, and then us, and, when we lived in states where this was legal, the interest they changed on those bills when we couldn't pay right away.  This was over and above what our insurance paid out, yes.  For instance: in Idaho, when I had my kid, the insurance did not cover "well baby check" at the hospital.  WTF?  So that was fourteen hundred dollars I was supposed to pay out of pocket, when I was still paying off the hospital and doctor bills from Arkansas for my thyroid cancer -- when I didn't *have* a spare nickel, in other words.  Guess where I had to put that $1400?  On a credit card.  Which charged, eventually, 39 percent interest.

But yes.  I'll cut my cable bill.  That will help.  And stop buying iced coffee.  By all means.  Not that I could ever afford to *do* that, mind you...

Where was I?)

Oh, yes.  Here!  Fred, at Slacktivist, explains why the problem is not the U.S. Government version of the cable bill.  So those who think it is should STFU.  Though he doesn't say that.  Because he's nicer than me.

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