Just so these dipshits know, I’m already feeling the cuts to Medicare/Medicaid staffing and services.
I live in the US and rely on Medicare because I’m fully disabled, to the point of being homebound.
Apparently the division that deals with remote visiting technology has been cut, so they can’t legally fill my prescriptions anymore unless I physically travel nearly an hour to their office every 3 months to remain eligible, and my doctor can’t legally renew medications that I’ve been on for 20 years. Within a couple of months I’ll have to stop taking all of my long term maintenance meds because I cannot travel to their office.
This will remove all my quality of life and will kill me slowly. I don’t want to die slowly of neglect, so I’ve got a decision to make, and I’m putting it off because I really don’t want to die yet.
I don’t know what to say except I have a name. I’m Lilly Piper. I’m a very good user experience designer, a pretty good writer, and decent friend.
We’re not faceless or nameless. I just want someone to remember that there are names behind these policies.
I’m good at sewing; I make period correct corsets from the 1800s and before (proof and more proof).
I’m actually great at sewing. I do embroidery and am a great listener. I’m also a good writer and editor. I didn’t need to die like this, but I won’t be homeless again, and I won’t beg in the streets for medicine. I just won’t.
I'm a disabled vet. I'm unemployable. SSDI is the only thing that makes things breathable for us. The only real way I have to make any money on the side is by painting DnD minis, dice towers, or maybe Gunpla commissions. It's so difficult to do much in a day that it takes me quite some time to paint just a couple minis. Months on a gundam. I just don't have the stamina to do much in a day. Fatigue is killing me. I've got a few painted, but I haven't had the energy to put them up anywhere yet. I have just as many to paint still.
Body wide small fiber neuropathy, a central nervous system issue and colon removal really tanked me. Winter (Wa state) and fronts rolling through, even in summer, tank me even more. I think the change in air pressure is what does it.
A cut in medicare means that I also now have copays. I have tons of doc appointments still. No one can tell me what the root of the issue is, or at least prove it as it's very likely chemical exposures. All funding that would have led to a "here it is" was shuttered. Regular blood tests due to colon removal. Regular tests due to the fucked up nervous system, which is still progressing 20 years after the last exposure and 18 after it started.
My wife is a PARA, but we're in a low income area and PARAs don't make shit. From my excel math, we can make it by with no SSDI. However, we'll have absolutely no extra money. No money to replace clothes. No money for home repairs. No money for vehicle repairs. Before you say it, we do need them. Taking public transit is incredibly painful, and shitty at best. Plus I have no energy to do that. I can barely do the appointments I have, even driving myself the only 20 mins, avg, to the various doc appointments.
I feel like such a waste already. I love math. I love engineering. I love turning a wrench. I love cooking. I can barely do any of it. These assholes seem to think we're all grifting and "welfare" queens. Sad thing is, there are many more vets in my position. Yet many don't seem to realize that the GOP hates us. They'll keep voting for it. Voting for that shotgun to the foot and pleading for more like a gimp gagging daddy for more.
Sincerely sorry you’ve been caught in this mess. Have you considered reaching out to your congressional Representative? They can sometimes work magic for their constituents. It’s part of their job to get us through red tape barriers.
Also, every major pharmaceutical company has a compassionate care program for meds, although I don’t know about having to re-qualify every 3 months & how that might affect their assistance. If your doc has a hospital nearby, they should have staff dedicated to assisting patients in dire situations. Your state should also have help, especially if you’re receiving aid.
Don’t give up. You’re worth whatever trouble it takes. Being ill and disabled and homebound is all hard enough without this added bureaucratic bullshit to deal with. I wish you the very best! ♥️
I’m not just talking about myself, but others like me. I’m Lilly Piper, but there are others like me. You can try to save all of us, and I would greatly appreciate your efforts.
I don't think the claim to Christianity is particularly relevant. Organized religion has been abused for its entire existence -- one might reasonably argue that that was the point of it.
Thanks for sharing this with us. If my friend was in similar circumstances, I would tell them to read this de-paywalled 404 Media article with a doctor and lawyer next to them, to do what the doctor and lawyer say and comply with all laws and best practices and sensible precautions, and that it wasn’t medical or legal advice and neither is this Lemmy post.
Also, corsetry kicks ass and your work is gorgeous. My SO found creators like Abby Cox, Bernadette Banner, and Nicole Rudolph during 2020 and it’s been an absolutely mesmerizing rabbit hole to fall into even for a cishet fella well outside the key demographics. Although, unisex medical compression support garments are more relevant to me lately; is that an angle that drew you to them with EDS and everything?
I’m glad there’s a gamepad in that picture too. What you’ve shared speaks to a life lived very well in spite of health and circumstance.
This must be terrifying. I disagree with this new requirement to appear in person every few months for reasons just like this, and I'd like to share cases like yours when I talk to Trump voters. Would you be willing to share the condition that keeps you homebound and prevents you from traveling in person?
I have a combination of rheumatological and genetic issues, including RA, Sjögren’s, Ehlers Danlos, severe osteoporosis, and a couple of related issues that have caused severe GI and heart issues. I can’t digest fruits or vegetables (they come out looking exactly how they went in) so my diet is severely limited, and I have seizures.
The drugs they’re saying I can’t have anymore include hydroxychloroquine, pilocarpine, prolia, and a few drugs meant to make my life more livable (tizanadin, gabapentin, mirtazapine, and ondansetron).
e: I can’t travel because of the seizures and that being out and about exacerbates my heart condition (SVT and periodic sinus arrest – I have a loop monitor).
I don’t take any opioids or anything like that, only things to keep GI cramps in check so I can at least eat a bit, plus metoprolol er and more paracetamol than is safe, because nobody is willing to even attempt to manage my pain at this point. I’m better at that through means that won’t ruin me physically or psychologically since I’ve had to for my entire life, since I was too small to have choices.
e2: Let me know if you want to know anything else. (edited to be a bit more specific)
I want you to know that I see you. I regret that we don't live anywhere near each other.
In my youth, I sewed my historical recreation garb (poorly). While I can't program, or do UX, I have worked with folks that did that while I managed the server side of things. And I have some experience in visual art.
I am also a decent listener. I'd be happy to listen to whatever you want to talk about. DM me?
at least $880 billion in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax breaks.
Don’t forget the purpose. They’re not cutting spending to “balance the budget.” It’s to pay for a fraction of the tax cuts they’re giving to the parasite class.
I think from now on we should only use the term "parasite class" when talking about the elites, the 1%, the billionaires, the wealthy, the rich, the landlords. Make it a habit, maybe even trendy. Parasite class. I like it.
An economy is a big system of trading money for services, round and round, do stuff trade money, do other stuff trade money.
But we're like, "how come stuff is getting more expensive and we're making less money?"
Because there's a problem in the system. There's a fat fucking leech... or a few hundred, amassing money, and the system further empowers those with money, giving them more control over the system. It's a very broken positive feedback loop upon itself.
It's like a boat that's sprung leaks. It doesn't matter how much money you print or who you vote for if you don't plug the leaks from the system and prevent the fuckers from stabbing more holes in it, you need to simultaneously plug the holes, make sure nobody else is drowning, and slit the throats of the people doing it and get rid of them.
The boat is going down and they're stabbing as many big holes as they can, as fast as they can. There will come a point VERY soon where it won't matter if they stop or not, this ship is gonna sink, and I'm afraid that we're seriously almost there. The United States won't last at all if they keep doing this for another year.
We've been sick right now, fighting cancer for a long time, but it's metastasized into all branches of the government and a lot of the people, who now directly do the bidding of the parasites.
So, I was thinking about this earlier, actually, and I was trying to conceptualize the differences in vibe between the problems that liberals and conservatives disagree with, and then the other types that reek of billionaire leeches. There are some minor differences that we have with normal conservatives: religion, family structures, traditions and such. But when capitalist leeches really take hold like this, it's an entirely different vibe of problems that society faces. You can tell when poor conservatives are starting to hurt from them too.
It's really obvious if you think about it at all: when your political or socioeconomic beliefs no longer serve you, but serve the billionaires, it's SO obvious who's pulling the strings - if you're miserable (and it isn't just through empathy for others' problems), it's likely that you've reached the point in society, or rather, the point is society has reached YOU where it's starting to be shitty.
I'm a believer that the vast majority of us want to do things and be productive somewhat, and self help and try to be happy and healthy. So, when the prices of goods and services and housing are out of your reach for whatever reason, that is a problem with society. It's really not complicated at all.
Right now, we live in an insanely convoluted bandaid patchwork boat, because generations of assholes have been stabbing fucking holes in it and instead of guillotining the fuck out of the correct people and values in society, we've mistakenly corrupted what chances we've had at fixing them, and let it fester and grow. Now, it's super established to the point where the entire government is killing itself just so that the leeches can continue to grow. It's quite literally brain cancer of society.
This country is on a fast track to being a living zombie while the parasites eat the brain and fully destroy the immune system. They don't know any better, it's just what they are.
Another perspective is that maybe we'll get pulled into a truly sci-fi dystopia, where some mega-corporations explicitly own us all. Sure, the human system will have grown massive on a universal scale (if it doesn't destroy itself in the process). But it'll be a far cry from what we are capable of under a better system, one that actually harnesses each and every one of our potential to form our self revolving universe around ourselves, intelligently, rather than slaverly.
Building things like the pyramids and skyscrapers is amazing. But imagine what could be accomplished with better resource management and a more egalitarian allocation of resources. A world where every person is well maintained and is given the ability of enlightenment and a full self awareness. That's the world I wanna live in, not this shitty future, full of oligarchs and oblivious, ruthless human greed.
Maybe we do deserve world war three. But I know that the only way we're going to learn anything is through actual elevation of education systems, and not through pain, suffering, and war.
He’s already appointed his first eugenicist. David Geier is who RFK is having conduct the ‘study’ on Autism. He and his father previously experimented on autistic children in his basement by giving them Lupron injections, which cause chemical castration. He was prosecuted in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license, and his father had his medical license revoked in the process.
RFK said he was going to identify and eliminate the cause of autism. The cause of autism is DNA.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11237564 Bush Jr did this 20 years ago and got so shellacked by the constituency that (coupled with the whole middle east invasion that accomplished nothing and killed a few people) made it so republicans and conservatives dare not refer to him ever again because of how toxic he is
“Savings like these allow us to use this bill to renew the Trump tax cuts and keep Republicans’ promise to hardworking middle-class families,” said Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, the GOP chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles health care spending.
How the fuck are tax cuts for the wealthy gonna help the nearly nonexistent middle class?
Whaaat, the EO that the stable genius claimed will save "TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS"?
“It really does seem the plan is to ask manufacturers to voluntarily lower their prices to some point, which is not known,” Sachs said. “If they do not lower their prices to the desired point, HHS shall take other actions with a very long timeline, some of which could potentially, years in the future, lower drug prices"
That executive order?
You think he would write a toothless, narrowly-focused, bullshit executive order as, what?
A distraction?
From the massive cut to medicaid? That he and his entire party promised a thousand times over they would never do? That will absolutely, directly, fuck over not just Americans on medicaid - but all Americans? Everywhere?
If you didn't know, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is far more than just an insurance provider! It's a critical part of our healthcare system.
As most nursing homes rely almost exclusively on CMS funding, they also have to obey CMS rules if they want to get paid. Rules which - in a lot of states - are basically the only thing keeping grandma alive!
The piss-poor quality of elder care in this country can and will plummet even further if CMS was ever reduced in scope and funding. That would be horrifying and evil.
Can you imagine, a sitting president willfully dismantling a load-bearing pillar of our society like that? And lying about it? In writing?
Were you aware that much of our problems in US healthcare - in one way or another - tie back to CMS not being allowed to negotiate drug prices at all? At least until recently in 2022, when democrats pushed a bill that at least allowed some drug prices to be negotiated?
Which is why an executive order would ever be necessary - because CMS, the single largest American insurance provider, is legally not allowed to negotiate most of its drug prices, and instead just has to take what it gets?
And you think a sitting President would do that? Write a bullshit executive order as a distraction? Set up a faux protest from major pharmaceutical companies, who have a vested interest in privatizing as much of the healthcare industry as possible?
Pharmaceutical companies who will loudly complain about the executive order on maybe-potentially-in-the-future reduced drug prices, but for some reason keep funneling money into the Republican warchest?
All while he further hamstrings the literal life support system for senior citizens in America? Claim he's saving us trillions of dollars, while quietly pulling the plug on our most vulnerable neighbors?
You think he would pretend it's for our sake, even though the downstream effects of forcing people off health insurance inevitably leads to abandonment of all routine, preventative care? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, you know!
All those poor patients will then get debilitating mountains of illness where there should have been easily treatable mole hlls, the total cost to the healthcare system will skyrocket, local family health and preventative care services will suffer and bankrupt due to a sudden lack of insured customers, and chronically underfunded hospital systems in low income areas will collapse as they increasingly pay the costs of keeping their community alive!
And you think a sitting president would do that? Throw out a bullshit distraction while he pulls the trigger on a decades-long effort to collapse all public funding for healthcare? Send our rural and urban healthcare systems into a tailspin? Open up the floor for private equity to finish cannibalizing whatever's left, all for higher stock prices and earning reports?
Surely that could never happen in a civilized society.
People who think they are literally Gods, and have more resources than they can ever deplete, hate the idea of giving anything to the society that allows them to exist.
American voters are hilarious. Voted out the party trying to bolster Medicare and Medicaid. Then complain the party out of power for not stopping the cut.
People should probably protest this. go in person and demand to speak to your rep. or whatever. i don't know how to organize a protest. i just go when i hear about them happening.
Maybe we should question how good of an aid that is on its own when the eugenicists would happily love to offer such a service to help them in thinning the herd.