Kevin Gowen wrote:

> Eric Takabayashi wrote:
> > Kevin Gowen wrote:
> >
> >> Michael Cash wrote:
> >>> If there is anything more bizarre and fucked up than the Sepponian
> >>> health insurance situation, I don't want to know about it. I
> >>> (re)injured a knee and my doctor recommended surgery. The hassle
> >>> with
> >>> the insurance company to get it approved was unbelievable. I finally
> >>> got on the phone myself to a sweet young thang at the insurance
> >>> company and asked her what the deal was. Her words: "My supervisor,
> >>> Cricket, has to approve all surgeries".
> >>>
> >>> I gave up.
> >>>
> >>> My health care depended not on the judgment of a physician, but on
> >>> some inaccessible chick by the name of "Cricket".
> >>
> >> I think that Americans overuse health insurance to an alarming
> >> degree. Insurance of any kind is "oh shit" money.
> >> Oh shit! My house burned down! (here's your check)
> >> Oh shit! My car was crashed in a wreck! (here's your check)
> >> Oh shit! A crane fell on me and I need emergency care! (here's your
> >> check) Oh shit! I'm dead! (here's the check for the fam)
> >>
> >> This odd practice of using insurance to pay for the routine and
> >> expected expenses of maintaining one's health such as routine
> >> checkups, prescription medication, etc. is simply mind-boggling.Oh,
> >> and let's not forget the folks who think it is an employer's duty to
> >> provide heath insurance. I actually know a waiter in this town who
> >> thinks that his employer (a small restaurant in a strip mall) should
> >> be providing him health insurance.
>
> Bullseye.  just knew you would respond to this.
>
> > Will you not look for such benefits in your employment package?
>
> Not particularly. I mean, it's nice if it's there but it would not be a deal
> maker or breaker.
>
> > I know a woman (among many I've met) who *proudly* announced she had
> > just quit her job (and was "very happy"), and after hearing her
> > dissatisfaction with her old job, I suggested joining a well known
> > temp agency to find the kind of work she would like and have the kind
> > of freedom from responsibility she explicitly craved, she said that
> > she *might* try it, AFTER collecting some unemployment.
>
> Sheesh.
>
> > This woman is apparently one of those many people, almost always
> > women, I've known who thinks they are entitled to receive hundreds of
> > thousands, perhaps even millions of yen, and enjoy a vacation of up
> > to 330 days (perhaps even traveling and shopping abroad), because
> > they've paid a few hundred yen a month in unemployment insurance,
>
> Starting to understand why I hate entitlement programs?

No, because this woman is not a victim. If she were denied employment
opportunities for being a woman, or "too old", like my wife explicitly has been
(and other women I know continue to experience) despite her education and years
of relevant experience, as opposed to being simply lazy or selfish, she would
deserve to receive the money during those times they cannot find work.

You mean entitlement programs like those which benefited (only) males and
whites or white male property owners, or explicitly EXcluded women or blacks,
contributing to much of the inequality existing today?

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0625-02.htm

Published on Wednesday, June 25, 2003 by CommonDreams.org

White Affirmative Action

by Betsy Leondar-Wright

How have I gained by being white? The Supreme Court's mixed decisions on
whether the University of Michigan may consider race in selecting students set
me wondering about what preferences my own family might have received over the
years

Like most people without inherited wealth, I tend to see my success as the
result of my own hard work and abilities. My retirement accounts and the
down-payment on my house were saved dollar-by-dollar out of my paychecks. I
worked my way up from minimum wage jobs to become a salaried professional.
Couldn't someone of any race have done the same?

To see all the effects of race requires looking back a few generations. I left
college with no student loans. Why was my father able to pay for my college
education? As a World War II-era veteran, he went to graduate school on the GI
Bill and got a subsidized mortgage from the Veterans Administration, benefits
from which most veterans of color were excluded. As a homeowner, he got the
mortgage interest deduction, a tax break unavailable to the majority of people
of color who were renters.

Looking back another generation, my grandparents had Social Security benefits
when they reached age 65 in the 1960s, relieving my father from the
responsibility of supporting his parents. Since agricultural and domestic
workers were excluded from the original Social Security law passed in 1935,
most people of color in my grandparents' generation put little or nothing into
the Social Security system, and so got little or nothing at retirement. People
of color my father's age were more likely to be supporting their parents and so
less able to pay for their children's college.

If I'd been born a person of color in 1956, the odds are very likely that I'd
be less well off today. In 2001, the typical white family had $120,000 in net
worth (assets minus debts), seven times as much as the $17,000 net worth of the
typical family of color, according to new Federal Reserve data. Most white
people are homeowners with retirement accounts thanks to government policies
that boosted our parents', grandparents' and ancestors' assets. The financial
benefits of affirmative action programs are dwarfed by the benefits of, say,
the Homestead Acts of 1862, which gave millions of acres to white settlers, and
which excluded people of color.

[snip]

> I know of a woman,
> divorced with one child, who is now living with a man whom she appears to
> love very much. Guess what her stated reason for not marrying the man is.

Welfare?

If so, recall the actual nature or state of welfare recipients as cited by
Pangas, as opposed to Reagan's publicized fictions.

> > while other people even in a small place like Fukuyama, like another
> > woman I know, are only allowed to have ONE discretionary holiday per
> > year at Boon. This other woman was told this was the first and last
> > time she would be able to have such a day off.
>
> What's Boon? Was it an annual company practice of bestowing a nice thing
> (boon) upon an employee?

It's Obon, sent through the automated spell check.