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Sunday, November 28, 2010
Medicare Handbook, Church Missal Weighty Reading
By Charles A. Shepard
Albuquerque resident
Around the first of November I received my first Medicare Handbook. The one for 2011.
Almost 140 pages contain info for Parts A-D of the plan. Good grief!
It is packed with information to make things about as complicated as they can be without sending people out screaming into the night.
It reminded me of another book — "My Daily Missal" from Catholic school. It had the ordinary Mass, step-by-step, in two columns. One in Latin and one in English so you could follow along with the priest's mumblings at the altar. (Because he faced away from the attendees for most of the Mass and it was a big church you could hear him, but most of the time you couldn't understand him.) You mostly knew what was going on because you attended Mass six days a week between school and Sunday.
Anyway. I discovered my missal after my mother died.
She kept it, like she kept so many things of mine and my siblings, and in the back of the book were the rules for not eating meat on Fridays. Wow! Complicated is too subtle a word to explain it. Ludicrous probably explains it better.
As diverse as the Medicare Handbook and the missal are, I could still see some basic but important similarities:
1. The built-in complications ensured that any number of staff were required to keep things straight. This justified the staffer's existence and the need to keep them on the payroll.
2. The depth and variety of the information means the originator is trying to keep a lot of people happy and I don't mean the user. Definitely for groups or individuals who are more interested in profiting from the rules.
3. I also sense a need to exercise control, in the form of micro-managing the user, that is far more than necessary. This is disguised as showing interest in the welfare of the user.
4. The creators of these rules are not the least bit impacted by them because they have created a set all for themselves and never allow this information to be available to anyone else.
5. Lying about the importance of the rules is easy because both groups believe "The ends justify the means."
Nos. 4 and 5 do pose a big problem, however.
They are OK for the church because it is a top-down hierarchy and always will be. The government putting the insurance companies, the lobbyists, and whomever else might stand to profit from this process — that is not a user — is another story.
I find it a very big reach to think that anyone in Congress has the best interests of the represented as their primary goal. Certainly none of them would come right out and say that, for instance, the lobbyists were more important to them.
As for me, I stopped listening to the church a long time ago and have a good head start on ignoring any politician. My inclinations on what to do about our country's politics tend toward the seditious, and because I don't want the FBI at my door, I will keep them to myself.
One last thing. In spite of all that detail in the Medicare book, I still have to contact the Veterans Administration because I am a veteran and get my health care through that organization.
One hassle after another.
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