09:22 – It was 48.1F (9C) when I took Colin out at 0615, dark and mostly clear.
We’re left with mostly unanswered questions about the Las Vegas mass shooting, and no way to separate fact from lies and spin. ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting, claiming that the alleged shooter was a recent jihadi convert, but that seems unlikely on the face of it. The large “arsenal” of automatic weapons initially reported now seems likely to be standard semi-auto black rifles equipped with slide-fire stocks.
If you’re unfamiliar with those, they’re simply replacement buttstocks that use the recoil of the rifle to pull the trigger rapidly and allow a semi-auto black rifle to fire 900 rounds or so per minute. They’re completely legal and uncontrolled. As far as the government is concerned, a semi-auto rifle equipped with a slide-fire stock is still a semi-auto rifle, just one that has a very high cyclic rate. They even come with a letter from BATFE that so states, in case a user runs into a state or local LEO who thinks such rifles are Class 3 weapons.
When I read this morning that the shooter had used bump-fire stocks, I admit that my first inclination was to order one this morning, figuring they’d soon be banned, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. I have a fair amount of experience shooting selective-fire and automatic weapons. I’ve fired probably 50 or 100 different models over the decades. They don’t impress me for civilian use. Military use, yes, but then the military has logistics pipelines to keep them fed.
The cyclic rate of a typical selective-fire or automatic weapon is 10 to 30 rounds PER SECOND. Most serious preppers I know keep anything from 1,000 to (rarely) 5,000 rounds for each of their battle rifles. On rock-n-roll, you can go through that many rounds very quickly, and you don’t have a military logistics chain to resupply you. You can’t afford, in any sense of the word, to waste the ammo.
Seeing the pictures of the LV shooting victims saddens me. Given that it was a country music concert, essentially all of the victims were probably Deplorables. Good, Normal people, in other words. Mostly young people. The faces were mostly white, as you’d expect, but there were a fair number of blacks and Hispanics and Asians in that crowd as well.
Most of the crowd fled or attempted to flee when the shooting started, as you’d expect, but there were more than a few heroes as well. One guy, black as it turned out, dragged 30 victims out of the line of fire before being hit himself. He deserves the civilian MoH. Progressives are always trying to incite racial hatred, but when the chips were down here, race didn’t matter. Whites helped minorities, and vice versa. That’s because, contrary to the prog party line, Normals don’t generally care much about race.
“You can’t afford, in any sense of the word, to waste the ammo.”
There are a couple of rare, but possible scenarios when you don’t care about the ammo and full auto is the correct tool.
For instance, you need to break out from wherever you are and get to your vehicle but there is a large crowd of zombies between you and it.
Or you need to break an assault for a temporary reprieve.
Any case where you don’t need particularly well aimed fire, but need to cause panic or open a hole, seems like a valid use of full auto.
Resupply don’t matter if they burn you in your house….
n
(If you are shooting, and not in a stealthy way, you’re probably in a bad enough spot that there is no such thing as overkill.)
Speaking of FLASHLIGHTS….
Costco has the small Duracell LED lights on sale, $8 for 4 INCLUDING 12 Duracell batteries.
No need to take a chance on variable quality direct from chine…$2 FLASHLIGHTS with batteries are only a costco trip away.
n
The Lawdog has a good summation of what to do when crowds get nasty.
http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2017/10/meditations-on-crowds.html
n
“Any case where you don’t need particularly well aimed fire, but need to cause panic or open a hole, seems like a valid use of full auto.”
I’ve watched a lot of inexperienced people trying full auto. They seldom hit much of anything. As my late friend Mel Tappan used to say, “firepower is hitting what you’re aiming at, not peppering the landscape with near misses.”
As to being attacked by masses of people, in the unlikely event that that happens, we’ll depend on (a) my 0.1-gauge shotguns (very slow to reload, but I have a bunch of them, and one shot is ten pounds of scrap screws, nails, ball bearings, and other metal going down-range at 1,500+ FPS), (b) claymores (see a), and (c) napalm fumaroles.
I’ve always wanted a “bump-fire” stock to “play” full auto but don’t have the deep pockets to support that rate of fire. I have no need for high rate of fire in real life. But it is fun once in a while …
I’d like to see something like this for my Ruger 10/22. I can buy a bucket of .22 for a reasonable cost.
I was going to comment on rifles, but I won’t add to the discussion, so I’ll complain about (l)users instead.
We had 4 weeks of testing wherein users were supposed to go into the test system (new ERP with real, live data) and test their daily ops. In addition, accounting was to check balances.
Yesterday and today we’ve been dealing with problems that indicate the (l)users didn’t bother to test the things they need to do. Nor did accounting check balances. It’s not a lot. Looks like adjustments from past corrections didn’t carry over. It can be corrected. It just sucks.
I have zero sympathy for them. I have a lot of sympathy for poor Dave, who is fending off most of the complaints. I have a sign on HIS door telling people to leave him alone & come see me. It mostly works. I tell them what the workaround is for their problem and send them on their way. They don’t get to bend his ear, I scowl, and they scurry away.
When the first thing you do EVERY DAY is receive material, and you don’t test the functionality for FOUR WEEKS, the problem is entirely yours. I have no sympathy at all. Deal with it.
Again, crowds are a favorite target, and increasingly so after all the “successful” attacks in recent months. Shitbags see and hear that and figure, hey, let’s roll! With guns, vehicles, gas, explosives, whatever. As has been mentioned, we’ll know when it’s getting serious if these things start happening every week, and then every day. Those of us concerned about standing tall and not buckling to fear and trepidation will have to ask ourselves if attending an event constitutes an unacceptable risk from now on. That does not mean the assholes have won. It means we devise tactics and strategies to defeat them decisively, while recognizing that some are just gonna slip through from time to time. This guy was apparently not on anyone’s radar, including his own family’s, and arrived out of the blue. But short of barricading all public buildings and venues with an army of cops and troops, we’re gonna get hit from time to time in this HUGE country of 330 million.
Wife has to travel to and through various large cities pretty regularly and I worry constantly about that and look forward to the day when she can bail outta that gig for good. I don’t have to do that, and I make a point of avoiding crowds and “events.” Just not worth the risk, even up here. And I’d say the same thing regarding our kids (when they were younger and at home) or our grandkids. I can’t stop their parents from dragging them to Disney World or some idiot concert somewhere, but I wonder where their heads are at given the Current Situation.
And it doesn’t mean a family has to engage in a bunker mentality, either, just a modicum of common sense.
Off to various errands and chores, as best we can manage them on this gorgeous and breezy fall day.
Back when I was a teenager, I had a .22 autoloader that converted itself to full auto. One moment, it was a normal semi-auto. I fired the last round, reloaded the tube magazine, and chambered a round. When I pulled the trigger, it fired all 15 or 19 rounds in about a half a second. I took it down to the local gunstore and he fixed it.
In basic training I got some dirt in the lower receiver of my M16. One little rock in /around the sear mechanism and it was full-auto, even with semi selected. The range armorer showed my what happened and how to fix it. Then I did a LOT of pushups.
These photos of two rifles used by the LV shooter show only one has a bump-fire type stock.
http://www.fox25boston.com/news/only-on-boston-25-exclusive-photos-of-las-vegas-shooters-guns/618716556
A couple of decades ago I saw a video of a full auto .22 LR “machine gun” that could chop through concrete blocks in a couple of seconds. Putting a lot of little rounds on target can be very effective.
At a gun show once I saw a couple of Ruger 10/22 mounted side by side on a tripod with a crank-cam to fire alternate barrels with each turn.
Shitbags see and hear that and figure, hey, let’s roll!
You cannot stop a determined single individual. There are no security measures in place that will stop a determined individual that is willing to die.
Consider the Atlanta security screening area. Friday evening, several hundred people milling in a roped off maze as they shuffle their carry on along a slow moving line while looking at their cell phone watching stupid people attempting to put stuff on the x-ray line.
All you would have to do is strap some high explosive to their body, cover it up with clothing that makes you look like a fat slob (irritating those that are hoping that your are not on their flight, in their row). Then wait until you are in the middle of the crowded security area and detonate the explosives and yourself.
It would kill a couple hundred people, injure a few hundred more, and damage the security screen area for several weeks. Thus effectively paralyzing one of the busiest airports in the country and causing massive traffic problems.
You heard it here first folks. My next post will be after 10-20 years. Thought crime.
or just load up your rollie bag like the shtistain did overseas.
Hell, you can duck out of line and get pretty far away with a 20sec timer…
There are thousands of ways to attack soft targets. Much of it is harder than it looks, as hook handed muzzies demonstrate, so the attackers tend to stick with proven methods. (we’ve seen this with something as benign as prepping, unless you try it out, you probably don’t know how it will fail.)
This particular attack has been written about in fiction before. Hell, Bracken was on Infowars the night before talking about mag dumping into a crowd.
The astounding thing is that it doesn’t happen more often. I’m thankful every Jan 1 that no one manages to walk a few mortar rounds into time square…
What doesn’t make sense is why THIS guy?
n
What doesn’t make sense is why THIS guy?
Exactly !!
Motive a total mystery last time I checked the news feed.
He had clearly planed this well in advance and the concert was not a random target.
Family and acquaintances say he was not “into” guns yet he owned at least 40 and had invested in optics and bump-fire stocks. I would have to assume he went to a range to practice. (But in NV there’s a LOT of open space to practice in private)
No social media presence is odd in itself. No mention of strong (or any) political or other views.
Makes one wonder …
nick flandrey says:
3 October 2017 at 09:03
Aesop has a good list of the questions that need answers. Nothing about this is making sense short of a movie plot….
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/
n
Rogue agent. Gambling makes great money laundry. Guy had no real attachments.
Secret life as assassin or covert agent.
Flips his shit and this is the result.
n
Speaking of movie plots….
ADDED– I feel compelled to add
-I love my life, wife, and kids, and have no interest in suicide, or going out in a ‘blaze of glory’.
-I will not resist arrest, that’s what lawyers and six figure settlements are for.
-I find child porn abhorrent.
-I’m not a radical ‘survivalist’, ‘sovereign citizen’, ‘militia member’, ‘3per’, or any other anti-government group.
-my video cams run 24/7 and upload to a cloud server, MORE THAN ONE.
-my house and vehicles are in good repair and are unlikely to catch on fire, swerve out of control, or have a brake failure and my mechanic can attest to that.
-I’m not a hacker, or ‘stockpiling chemicals that could be used in bomb-making’.
-my health is good, with NO heart issues and my DR can attest to that.
-that is all
And a good youtube of how the trigger/ bcg/ sear interact on a semi and full auto AR15
https://youtu.be/WtGZBL5BmZE
n
How the bump fire stock works, starting at range, but you can rewind to see the explanation.
https://youtu.be/WtGZBL5BmZE
I little company I do occasional consulting for called me up yesterday. They had some sort of IT problem, could I drop by and give them some advice…
Turns out that their server had had some problem, unclear exactly what. Their ERP system and their accounting system run in a VM on the server, and whoever installed them had them set to save data on the VM itself, not on any sort of actual disk. Which meant that this data was never actually backed up. Anyhow, the server, whatever happened to it, lost the current VM state, and reverted to the previous snapshot. Whoever configured the VM did not have it making automatic snapshots, so it reverted back. Way back. Two years back.
Two years of business data, gone, with no backup. Imagine just what that means.
When I got there, they were remarkably calm about the whole thing. I assume the screaming was already over, or maybe they were in too much shock. Right now, they’re running on paper. Thankfully, they keep meticulous paper records, for regulatory reasons, so this is actually possible. Crisis meeting on Thursday, to figure out exactly what to do next.
Too early to play the blame game, and I expect there’s plenty to go around. The external company that handles their IT infrastructure set up the server and the VM. But I think they did the software installation themselves. Nobody felt responsible for checking that the backups were complete. So…there we are…
Aesop has a good list of the questions that need answers. Nothing about this is making sense short of a movie plot….
Yes, but I don’t see the logic of Progs moving forward with this script when the “Blame Trump For Puerto Rico” story was still on the first reel.
Funky Winkerbean, “The Writer’s Job”
http://comicskingdom.com/funky-winkerbean/2017-10-03
Heh.
I have a LIMS and an ERP system running in VMs. Even my SQL Server runs in a VM. VMs are great if you want to move to new hardware in the middle of the night.
BUT..
* No saved state crap.
* Data is backed up every 20 minutes, with a full backup every night.
* Lims is a legacy system they can’t get off of. So I have full copies of the VM stored in multiple sites. At most they have to reproduce a week of data.
* ERP VM is replicated to another server.
I lost 2 weeks worth of documents once. Multiple things went wrong, and the checks were too far apart to catch the perfect storm. Now I’m paranoid.
I don’t know what I’d do about 2 years of data. I’d probably get my toolbox out and go get that Diesel mechanic’s job I keep threatening to take.
“go get that Diesel mechanic’s job I keep threatening to take.”
you’d probably be happier…
n
I probably would. Haven’t done it in 25 years, so there’s enough new tech to keep me interested for a few years before I’d get bored again.
@JimL: Yep, that’s how it ought to be. Ok, database save every 20 minutes may be a bit much, but otherwise, yep.
My wife’s company also lost two weeks worth of data once. As you say, many things went wrong. Since then, everything is backup up daily, automatically, by more than one process, in more than one place.
Two years of data. Could have been…life changing. Thank FSM they have paper records to fall back on.
One person claimed to have been baptized by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I asked if that baptism involved stroking the FSM’s noodly appendage until he got a spaghetti sauce money shot. He did not respond to my perfectly innocent question. Rather suspicious, if you ask me.
I lost 2 weeks worth of documents once. …. Now I’m paranoid.
I’m naturaly paranoid. I have a RAID drive in my PC, a local NAS on my home LAN that a CRON job does backups to, and use AWS for daily backups. Just for fun I do a complete drive copy at the end of every month and put that in my EMP shielded safe. That’s Paranoid.
“my EMP shielded safe”
Is there such a thing as a safe that’s NOT EMP-shielded?
We had 4 weeks of testing wherein users were supposed to go into the test system (new ERP with real, live data) and test their daily ops. In addition, accounting was to check balances.
A company where I worked summers as an operator and later a programmer did a rewrite of the payroll system. We ran it in parallel for over a month, making sure to cross a quarter. Each week we would print the checks from the active system then print copies onto greenbar. Then we would run the new system with the same data input and print checks on greenbar. After that, the fun started. We compared each check (twice) to be sure they were the same amount, same payroll deductions, etc. Only then did we switch to the new system and kept the data for each week’s run for a few months so we could switch back if needed.
After the Lockheed-Martin Marietta merger, our location got lumped in with a Martin group and the word came down to switch over to their payroll system. It went live without testing. Every paycheck in Houston was wrong – wrong 401k deductions and other problems. They saw that there were problems and decided to fix them. As most of us had our checks deposited electronically, they needed to rollback the deposits. Which they did, except they screwed that up. If you had deposits into two or more accounts or banks, they took back the money from the first account only. A bunch of people ended up bouncing checks. The company paid the check fees and provided a letter explaining that it was their fault to appease the banks and companies that got the bad checks.
Just ordered a Wintel T8 Fanless Mini PC for my dad.
He does lite online gaming (poker and cribbage), and email.
$110.
Should be more than he needs, but I’ll get it with enough time to come up with another solution before delivery. Maybe I’ll preload a ton of grandkid pix…
n
Set the screensaver to cycle through 200 pictures?
This ObuttwadCare is a crappy system.
Wife needs some kidney stones blasted (Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL)). They use sonic waves as she lays on some type of bladder filled with fluid. Has to be sedated as I guess it is quite painful otherwise.
The procedure is scheduled to be done in two weeks. But the hospital wants their money tomorrow, a little over $3K, which is my copay. Cannot do a payment plan, pay tomorrow in full or the procedure is cancelled. So the hospital gets my money for two weeks to use for free. Oh, if the hospital delays the procedure due to logistic issues they still keep my money.
The hospital also says the cost is an estimate and could go higher if it takes longer than planned. Of course if it takes less time than planned there is no rebate as they already have my money. And if the insurance company says I pay less because of any medical billing between now and then, hospital still keeps the money as “I agreed” to the cost by paying early, which the hospital demanded be paid early.
This ObuttwadCare is a crappy system.
And the Redumblicans can’t get it together to pass a one page bill “ObuttwadCare” is repealed. Have to add a dozen earmarks to buy off political fukstiks. Even that didn’t work. Losers. Sad.
Covfefe! 2020!
This ObuttwadCare is a crappy system.
One of the saner plans that I read of over the weekend is to allow 55 year olds and above to buy into Medicare.
Kidney stones…
Been there, done that. Not as bad as I was led to believe but still not nice. Didn’t need the death star to blow them up or surgery, just medication. Still…
Does your wife like apple juice?
Yah, that’s a good way to crash Medicare sooner. Not a bad idea.
”Is there such a thing as a safe that’s NOT EMP-shielded?”
Small fire-resistant lock boxes are extremely transparent to radio frequencies, being just puffed concrete inside plastic. There’s no metal other than in the latches…
I don’t think of those as safes.
Unfortunately, a lot of people do consider those things useful for locking up valuables. Worse, they store just enough old coins or something in there to make it worthwhile for a burglar to grab the whole thing, with non-negotiable but difficult to replace personal paperwork that’s the point of the fire box in the first place.
And… Leaving it un – “locked” (not latched) makes it vulnerable to being accidentally kicked over by the firemen, again defeating the paperwork protection purpose.
Mr. Holmes. On Amazon Prime. Very good.
I’m with Mr. Nick’s personal movie plot autobiography except I don’t have cameras uploading our chit to the cloud, and I might consider resisting arrest and/or going out in a blaze of glory, depending on the circumstances. That’s just how I roll, haha. Or currently, stumble, trip, shuffle, stagger comically, etc.
Thanks to Mr. Ray for his summary of their current ObolaCARE troubles; outrageous throughout and IMHO, criminal. And the RINO shitbags had ZERO intention of dumping it.
WRT the IT capers and backups and lack thereof from Mssrs brad and jiml; I am so glad to be out of that field. Why I stuck with it so long and then tried to get back in is a sorry reflection on me on several levels. To the point that phenomenological existentialism is actually interesting and I can see how it might help somebody. Rather than contribute to some asshole’s golf club memberships and yacht berth fees.
And now for some of wife’s turkey chili….over corn chips….washed down with Dr Pepper. Yes, I’m living the Dream….
Is this another Sherlock thing?
I never seem to get tired of the various interpretations; it was such a wonderful concept from the beginning.
If a Sherlock thing; I still think the PBS series with the late Jeremy Brett takes the cake. I have them all, plus the original series with Basil Rathbone. And I devoured all the stories as a middle-schooler and saw the Rathbone flicks at the local state college for .25 cents a pop.
The first test for hiring network security professionals when security really matters should be to send all the candidates to a psychiatrist. Have the psychiatrist divide the candidates into two groups based on whether they are paranoid or not. Second step is to reject all the candidates who are not paranoid. Because anyone in network security who doesn’t think everyone is out to get them is clearly crazy.
Everybody’s jealous of me now that I’m no longer paranoid.
DH, did you ever formally hear back regarding the position you applied for?
[snip] This ObuttwadCare is a crappy system… [snip]
I hate to play devil’s advocate, but how, exactly, is any of that tale of woe (and it certainly is) the fault of the Obamacare law?
Don’t forget to add lots of paper towels to your survival supplies !
“DH, did you ever formally hear back regarding the position you applied for?”
Nope. Been just about a year now since I applied, had the background checks allegedly in-progress, regular email updates, etc., and nothing. No answer is still an answer. Woulda been yet another gig messing with network stuff in a Winblows shop for the Feds. No doubt a bullet dodged.
More info on the alleged shooter out in Lost Wages:
http://mobile.wnd.com/2017/10/shooter-in-bloody-vegas-gun-massacre-was-longtime-federal-agent/#fsqokVmpJ4RC502i.99
And an example of what RBT mentioned the other day in his first post of that day:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/10/03/las-vegas-pray-for-the-fallen-prepare-to-fight-the-governing-elites-war-on-liberty/
The place is coming apart at the seams; I’m wondering if the Lost Wages massacre is a prelude to the supposed November 4 mass insurrections/riots nationwide by the antifa scum. And once again, cui bono?
Don’t forget to add lots of paper towels to your survival supplies !
Why ? And I have, both paper towels and toilet paper.
I now have a second Coleman propane stove with another Coleman baking box and a 20 lb propane bottle adapter. I just need to buy another 10 or so 20 lb propane bottles to enhance the three that I have already. The first Coleman stove, 20 lb adapter and baking box went to the offsite storage.
https://www.amazon.com/Coleman-Oven-Camp-2000016462/dp/B01N3QMNLU/
I wonder if I should get one of these for the house ?
https://www.amazon.com/Camp-Chef-Camping-Outdoor-Burner/dp/B0013LLSZG/
“Why ? And I have, both paper towels and toilet paper.”
Why of course for the ObuttCARE system of deliberately designed incompetence, obfuscation and robbery. Designed to fail, obviously, and render any national “healthcare system” null and void eventually while enriching its designers and empowering its enablers.
Mr. Ray’s tale of woe can easily be multiplied by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, by now.
Oh gee whiz, it’s past 02:00; I gots to visit the Land of Nod for as many hours as I can manage.
Pax vobiscum…
@OFD, you might be glad to know that I am following you in decrepitude. I have been exhausted walking my two miles five nights a week since I turned 57 a few months ago. So, I have now gotten a 1.1 mile walking path and been doing that this week. It is easier on me. I will keep the 2 miler in mind for when the evening temperatures drop into the 60s F again. I am hoping that it is just a temperature and humidity thing. But, who knows ?
Amazon is falling down on the job. I bought one of these extra strong (up to 450 lbs) and 6’6″ height camp cots for extra visitors (including the 250 lb nephew and the 450 nephew). My former USMC son tried it out while spending the night here recently and proclaimed it better than a USMC cot (which were stolen from the Army according to him). Now I want to buy three more for the offsite storage so we have a close (4 miles away) place to quickly bug out to. And Amazon is out of stock with no known cots in the pipeline !
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KH4CU42/
Man, it is expensive stocking a bug out place !
“@OFD, you might be glad to know that I am following you in decrepitude.”
You’re not even in the same ballpark, youngster. I can’t even walk 50 feet now. It’s worse as the day wears on into night, too. Stairs and inclines are very difficult. Balance is off unless I have something to hold onto, and now my right big toe has slanted off to the right quite a bit and appears to be, well, wrong. No wonder my balance is off.
I sure am hoping that the chiropractic visit on Friday morning will result in even the slightest improvement; I’ve gotten used to the chronic pain but the mobility/balance thing is driving me batshit. The shortest and simplest tasks defeat me and it’s a trial using the bathroom or even getting off the bed in the AM. I did not see this coming.
Goes to show.
And now I really do have to try to crash and burn. Warm regards…
Oh gee whiz, it’s past 02:00; I gots to visit the Land of Nod for as many hours as I can manage.
Dude, Toby has been asleep for quite a while and Lady is walking around the woman-cave XXXXXXXXX man-cave XXXXXX gameroom. The wife uses this place more than I do since she works from home half the time and it has a 55 inch tv conveniently placed in front of the computer. I need to finish this place up and make a video of it. I’ve still got to mount the sink mirror and get some cabinets for above the washer and dryer. I will then be finished with the addition !
The shortest and simplest tasks defeat me and it’s a trial using the bathroom or even getting off the bed in the AM. I did not see this coming.
Don’t pass out while peeing ! I did that about 7 or 8 years ago and bounced my head off the throne. I woke up and found myself laying next to the throne someone. My head was almost under the tank. I extricated myself from the toilet area but could not get up as I kept on passing out. The wife heard me bounce off the throne and called 911. Next thing I know, four firefighters are duct taping me to a backboard. Then they took me to an ER who took x-rays and an MRI ? and said I was still alive. I slept for 4 or 5 hours in the ER and then got up, told them to send me the bill and left. My heart doc said it sounded like the Vagus Nerve to him. The only thing I know is that when they took the duct tape off my forehead, I was worried that I was going to lose half my skin.
You and my 76 year old mother sound like ya’ll have the same abilities. Or is that lack of abilities ? Mom has the exact same complaints. And there is no way she is doing stairs. She and dad took off today for two weeks in Halifax before it gets really cold up there. They are really scaring me as Dad is 79 now and in not much better shape. He should walk with a cane too. They both fall a lot.
but how, exactly, is any of that tale of woe (and it certainly is) the fault of the Obamacare law
The Obuttwad law changed the way that all hospitals and doctors are doing their billing. Unless it is an emergency the hospital guesses what they think a procedure will cost, contacts the insurance company and finds out what the insurance will pay, then you pay the rest, up front. If the procedure costs more you get a bill after the procedure is completed. If the procedure costs less you get nothing. If you have another doctor visit or event between now and the time of the scheduled procedure that affect your deductible, with the hospital being reimbursed more from the insurance company, good luck getting your money back from the hospital.
The insurance plans offered by Obuttwadcare are horrible. Extremely high deductibles and maximum out of pocket that approach $10K. You can pay more and get better coverage but it becomes extremely expensive. Prescriptions and co-pay are not applied to the maximum out of pocket.
Then you run into the tax issues and the IRS. Fill out the application, use your projected income, get your subsidy for the year, and you are stuck with that cost. But at the end of the year the numbers don’t work. In my case I owe the IRS $3K for overpayment on what the government paid in subsidy for the insurance. Nothing changed during the year with my income. And because I owe a large amount of money to the IRS I get charged penalties for failing to withhold and have to file estimated taxes next year. IRS treats money owed because of overpayment of subsidies as a tax you owe and thus subject to subsidies. Only way around that is to contribute another $7K to an IRA. I need to draw from the IRA, not contribute.
My taxable income is $0.00. I do not have any money withheld because I have no taxable income. But I still owe the IRS $3K because the numbers on the Obuttwadcare website are incorrect. There is no way you can properly figure out how much you are going to pay and come out even.
Because of this I cannot draw any money from my IRA as it will adversely, as in significantly, affect the amount I owe the IRS. Not from an income level, but from the subsidies paid. I am basically locked out from drawing money from my IRA’s until the wife gets off the Obuttwadcare.
Then there are the insurance companies. BCBST was the original provider. They left my area because they were not profitable. Had to go with Humana as they were the only provider. There was no competition. Now Humana is leaving and BCBST is moving back in to provide coverage. However the rates are going up 40%. The cost for my wife is $1,300 a month with me having to pay $800 a month.
As it stands now the entire amount of my wife’s SS is going towards the Obuttwadcare premiums. Add in the visits to the doctor and prescriptions and almost half of my retirement money from SS is being spent on healthcare. People without any other source of money cannot live on what is left. Their only option is to just skip Obuttwadcare and take their chances.
With Obuttwadcard being the law of the land you cannot find private insurance. Nobody offers them. Thus you are rated in with a pool of very high risk people that severely impacts your rates. Health insurance should be based on your risk and you should not have to pay the same as the pill popping methhead who smokes two packs and day and whose caloric intake is mostly fermented barley.
The entire system sucks, big time. Penalizes those who maintain a healthy lifestyles and rewards those with a risky lifestyle.
But, Ray, just think of how much worse off you’d be without the $2500/person savings that Obuttsuckcare gave you.
think of how much worse off you’d be without the $2500/person savings that Obuttsuckcare gave you
Ha, Ha, Ha, you funny.
The funny ones are those who foisted Obuttsuckcare on us and those who failed to repeal it after seven years of promises.
Where by “funny” I mean “deserving of a hempen necktie”.
As @Ray Thompson and others have been trying to point out ObuttWadNoCare has taken over THE ENTIRE Health no-longer Care system. Even if you do not have ObuttWadNoCare you are burdened because it is “the system”. We are really in a single payer system now, just that the oligarchs are allowing the insurance companies to run it and profit.
If you carefully look and read around the obfuscation in the annual reports of the insurance companies you will see that real profits have never been higher for the insurance companies.
The flip side is that the profits for hospitals (the private ones in particular) have never been lower. The Big Hospitals, like Providence (who my Daughter works for), are doing better partly because they can more efficiently handle all the new reporting and billing infrastructure because they can efficiently spread the work around within their “administrative infrastructure”.
As I learn more and more about the state of our health no-care systems the more pessimistic I become and realize that we will never go back without of innocent people being very adversely effected.
We are really in a single payer system now, just that the oligarchs are allowing the insurance companies to run it and profit.
Thank you ! I have been trying to figure out how to say this for a while.
As I learn more and more about the state of our health no-care systems the more pessimistic I become and realize that we will never go back without of innocent people being very adversely effected.
The innocent people are being affected TODAY. Health insurance has become a NIGHTMARE. And this was designed by the health insurance companies and the bureaucrats.
And BCBS used to be a non-profit company. How in the world did they change BCBS to be a for-profit company ?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a system of nominally private ownership with extensive government control called fascism?
Ding,
Ding,
Ding.
Shouldn’t Antifa be protesting by now?
I hear that Antifa originally intended to call themselves Antinaz, but were afraid they’d be confused with an OTC medication for queasiness.
Agreed, pAntifa are nauseous.
Just say No. Nancy Reagan would be so proud.
Just say No
The teller should be reprimanded or fired. Tellers, and bank personnel, are told to always do what the robber demands. No other options. Money can be replaced, lives cannot. That was my training even being the director of IT. She may have been brave, but she was also stupid and could have gotten killed.
Well, yah, that’s my expectation, too.
It’s still funny.
We are really in a single payer system now, just that the oligarchs are allowing the insurance companies to run it and profit.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a system of nominally private ownership with extensive government control called fascism?
Yes. And the concept of oligarchs works well with fascism. Isn’t fascism the system where the government picks the business winners ? Or is that plain old socialism ?
BTW, the phrase is not extensive government control, it is total government control.
We’re just two or three votes away from that now.