[FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar

Thu Jul 10 16:14:22 EDT 2025

It gets worse for Gen X:

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of steve smith
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2025 12:45 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar

Marcuswrote:

The spending mostly comes from the elderly. 

With a guaranteed minimum income, AI displacement, and the universal agreement that "one should not spend more than they make", I think this graph suggests we revisit the world of Logan's Run forthwith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RNDovT38J0

  <https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/logans_run_still_and_peter_craig_-_inset_-_getty_-_h_2018_0.jpg> 

and if you need to get THAT dystopian image out of your mouth, 
I recommend Sean Connery's role as Zardoz, though not so keen on his costumery !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzsw07QFe4s

  <https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrI4Zw8_ru2oXV4joQgVbJQvZOkuAzC82Ne8RNGAycbBCOyf3SHbyLLCnHnOBs8_kKSfUQ8rjXXfaKR_i1pYu7nKzwf-I56h_XRvMxI2k-uyzuJbRjvZL7aIyiStjcpumxlJwaOQ/s1600/zardoz+pb.jpg> 

What is that blip-step in the chart at age 85?  A data anomaly?  A signature of something in the Medicare code that allows/requires folks 85 and over a little extra payola?  Or something that happened in 1940, effecting the health of all adults born before that year?  

I can't believe I"m on the (far) left side of that curve.  That sure looks like a sysiphean hill to slog up?  Until last year I had never spent more on "health care" for myself than a bottle of Ibuprofen or pack of bandaids.   Wait, I did spend $900+ a year in penalties for not spending 2-4 times that on insurance I was choosing not to use... does that count. (I don't blame Obama, but the "mandate" wasn't one of my favorite of his actions)...   

I finally let Social Security start paying me my "pension" and they pressured me into letting them send a chunk of that to Medicare, so I let them do so and now I need all kinds of medical care I didn't need before.  After all I need to get "my money's worth"? 

Actually at the same time (to spite my face/wallet?) I hired a doc who has an office next to the old Pojoaque PO and Carwash (for the locals) for $90ish/month to "keep me healthy".. she doesn't take Medicare (or any form of insurance) and makes housecalls (if it is important and appropriate)....   she talked me into all kinds of lab tests and then medications to balance my various numbers (which is working, though I can't see a change in my umwelt over it)...   She also convinced me that the debilitating pain in my hips was never going to get better on it's own and that while *I* might enjoy hobbling around, it was damned hard for everyone else to watch (kindof like the argument for mandating seatbelts and motorcycle helmets) so I let her send me to the radiologist who confirmed "yep, those hips are toast!" and showed me how the round balls in the round sockets were square-stubs in roundish sockets...  

So Uncle Sam (or Donald or Biden or Kamala) has been paying the test labs and the radiologist a pretty reasonably small fraction of what they bill for those services and I get dinged for various bits of it (deductibles and copays) which is annoying but given the fancy buildings and machines they are maintaining, "only reasonable"?   So to keep her from pressuring me for colonoscopies and full-body calcification scans I agreed to see an orthopedic surgeon who looked at my Xrays and agreed with the Radiologist "Yep, those hips are toast!" and then proceeded to talk me into letting him cut each leg off, remove the hinge, and put it back on with tungsten-ceramic hinges guaranteed to last a lifetime (if I don't have the bad form of living too long as Marcus chart suggests I *might*).   So as you all know if you read past the subject lines of my massive missives, last year about this time they put me under, cut the first leg off (left a few shreds attached for blood/nerve/lymph) and stuck in the hardware, revived me, insulted me with an overnight stay in the hospital I didn't want, etc... then sent me to someone (physical terrorist) who was supposed to teach me how to "walk right" again.  After that all got better, we did it again.  

Meanwhile if I believed the billing departments a the doc, the hospital, the radiologist, the anesthetists, the physical terrorists, the hinge-makers, the silver-bandage suppliers, the blood thinner folks, the blood thickener folks, etc.  it was going to cost Aunt Kamala upwards of $70K for me to have fresh hinges (and hopefully a lot less misery).   But nope!  not only did Aunt Kamala get sent packing (thank you Elno and Bozo and the Zuckster and Rogan and Lex and ??)  but it seems those numbers are all for show.   I'm pretty sure (if I sorted the numbers out), the total payments from Uncle Donald for both hinge replacements was order $18k with me forking over, myself the price of a cheap used car ($6k) for all that abuse and residual damage.    Who pays full price?  

So I guess I owe the rest of the country a few years of my allotted ~$6k/year.   I pay cash for meds I want to (believe I do not) not need, and I pay my Doc by auto-transfer monthly, and if  I do go for the colonoscopy, I might instead buy the Dominatrix-of-choice DaveW recommends, a decent endoscope and tip her extra to "take pictures" while she's working out her own daddy issues on me.    I think GPT or Claude or Gemini would be eager to look those pictures over  and tell me if it is time to go back under anasthaesia and "the knife" or continue on in blissful less-ignorance (willful for sure).  I don't know if Doc Stephanie will want to consult, but if George and Dan say "those are benign polyps", that's good enough for me?!

I'm not sure what poverty level is these days but minimum wage suggests that the average poverty-earner doesn't make a lot more than the rest of you are expected to pay for me or access to the big fancy buildings with expensive automobiles parked in the Staff Lot to entertain my multiple hypochondrias?  I already pay about $2500/year to uncle Donald (from what he grudgingly pays ME out of my lifetime savings account called Social Security) and about half more that to Doc Stephanie and the Pharmacy...   it is all so very complicated?

And what does all this mean to folks in the Donbas, or Raffah or the south side of LA or an immigrant work camp in Iowa that is about to be raided?   It means I'm a spoiled, old white guy with nothing better to do than rant to others not that unlike me (except for all the details)... 

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