Why Obamacare Doesn’t Work for the Middle Class

 I was late to the Obamacare debate. I just got an email on January 8th saying that I was no longer eligible for Medicaid (yes, Medicaid) and that I had to buy my own health insurance by January 15^th in order to be covered by February 1.

I had seven days to make a decision.

I went to see a so-called “insurance advisor” at the clinic I generally go to as my primary care provider (because I usually don’t have health insurance and they offer a sliding scale fee structure). The insurance advisor plugged in the income for my temp job into the New York State of Health website and, according to the website, I was entitled to $287 per month in subsidies.

But that figure was only based on my income through April. If I earned any income after April (which I would have to do in order to, you know, continue eating and paying my bills), I would not be entitled to those subsidies and would, in fact, have to pay them back.

Unfortunately, Obamacare only provides subsidies if you make less than $45,960/year¹.

Now, $45,960 may be a large sum of money in East Buttfuck, Arkansas, but if you’re making $45,960 in New York City, you’re barely paying your bills.

According to a recent New York Times article, in order to be considered middle class in Manhattan, one needs to make between $80,000 and $235,000².

Unfortunately, the median income in New York City is $50,711³.

In other words, in order to benefit from Obamacare, you have to be truly poor.

Now, we’re used to poor people being written off and treated like shit. What’s new with Obamacare is that middle class people are being written off and treated like shit.

And, unlike poor people, middle class people vote.

Ironically, it’s because of Obamacare that I’m in my current predicament. Since, under Obamacare, companies are only required to offer health insurance to “full time” (i.e., not temporary) employees, I haven’t been able to find a job that lasts more than a few months for the last two years! (Some companies have also been reducing their workforce to under 50 full time employees in order to avoid having to provide health insurance.)

Companies don’t care if you have health insurance. Why should they? They’re in business to make money. As far as they’re concerned, health insurance is your problem. That’s why it should be the government’s job to provide health insurance (i.e., through a single payer system), like it is in almost every other country in the civilized world.

So now, not only do most Republicans want to repeal Obamacare, but many middle class Democrats like myself want to see it repealed (or, at least, improved).

But, contrary to what Republicans have been saying, Obamacare is not a “government takeover” of healthcare. It’s a government capitulation to the healthcare industry.

According to a recent story on 60 Minutes, the health care industry got everything they wanted in Obamcare.⁵ And why shouldn’t they? The insurance industry spent $2 billion on lobbying the government last year.⁶ (The pharmaceutical industry spent another $3 billion.)

The only people who didn’t get what they wanted were the public.

Obamacare is creating an entire class of middle class criminals whose only crime is not having enough money to buy their own health insurance.

They’re either going to have to get rid of it altogether or increase subsidies for the middle class.

Otherwise, my only hope of getting health insurance is finding a “full time” job that provides it.

But first, I have to find a “full time” job.

1 http://www.financialsamurai.com/subsidy-amounts-by-income-limits-for-the-affordable-care-act-obamacare/

2 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/realestate/what-is-middle-class-in-manhattan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

3 http://project.wnyc.org/median-income-nabes/

4 http://www.grayreed.com/NewsResources/Legal-Updates/50305/Obamacare-and-Seasonal-Workers

5 http://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/ZiXofnyJSjH0KpbyJA_EPIoVLkb6Hc9Y/dissecting-obamacare/

6 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i

Has the World Gone Crazy?

 Between the recent killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, the resulting tension between Mayor DeBlasio and the New York Police Department, and now the senseless killings of several staff members of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world has gone crazy.

I suppose it all started back in July, when some New York police officers choked Eric Garner to death while arresting him for selling lose cigarettes on a sidewalk in Staten Island.

When a grand jury decided not to indict the police officers, people took to the street in (mostly) peaceful protests.

Then, just when it appeared as if a constructive dialogue might actually happen, a mentally ill man from Maryland shot two innocent police officers who were sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn.

He said that the shooting was in response to Eric Garner’s death, but this was a man who tried to commit suicide and shot his ex-girlfriend before he shot the two police officers. This was clearly not a rational person.

In his remarks after the grand jury decision, Mayor DeBlasio said that he had had a talk with his son about how he should behave in front of police officers. This apparently offended the NYPD so greatly that PBA president Patrick Lynch declared that the Mayor had “blood on his hands” for the murder of the two police officers.

Some police officers then responded by turning their backs on the Mayor at the two slain officers’ funerals (despite explicit instructions from their commissioner, William Bratton, not to do so) and instituting a work slow-down.

In the ensuing debate, I’ve felt like I’ve had to prove that I’m not “anti-cop” by saying things which I think we can all agree on: namely that the execution-style murder of two innocent police officers is horrific, and that one should respect police officers, do what they say and not argue with them.

But some people (especially those in the conservative press) have created a false dichotomy whereby, if you’re against police brutality, you’re somehow “anti-cop.”

The situation really came to a head for me yesterday when I read two diametrically opposed editorials in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. (There was a scarily similar dual reaction the same day on Twitter to a documentary on PBS about the NRA called Gunned Down.)

I felt like I was staring in a funhouse mirror as I read The Wall Street Journal editorial and the comments that followed. Conservatives used the same tactics as liberals to give the exact opposite point-of-view. And the comments that followed were so uniform, it was as if the commenters were reading from a telemarketing script.

On Twitter, conservatives have the same clever sayings and the same clever graphics that liberals do.

And that raises another issue: The level of debate in this country (world?) has been reduced to 140 characters. Or an Internet meme on the level of Grumpy Cat or The Most Interesting Man in the World. (“I don’t always shoot people but when I do, I use an AK-47!”)

I fear we're becoming two societies (Democrat/Republican, liberal/conservative) who only listen to those who agree with us.

I must admit, I'm sometimes guilty of that, as well. I’ve blocked some people from my Facebook news feed just because I can’t stand to read their misinformed comments. And I can’t even watch Fox News or else my head will explode.

Then this morning, I woke up to the news that Islamic terrorists had entered the offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed several staff members.

What seems obvious to me but not these cowards is that terrorism never works. Yes we’re profoundly sad that innocent lives were taken for no reason, but then we go on.

You can’t stop the free flow of information in the Age of the Internet. It’s about time these idiots figure that out.

The Interview: Gay Panic vs. Nuclear Annihilation

 First off, let me just say how affirming it was to sit in a movie theater with my fellow New Yorkers to watch The Interview. Normally, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see an adolescent comedy about a plot to kill the leader of North Korea, but I was so pissed off at the idea of a foreign dictator telling me what I can or can’t see that I was like, “You know something? Fuck you, North Korea! I’m going to see this!”

And, no, that police command station assembled one block from the movie theater did not make me nervous at all.

Now, to the movie itself.

Much has been made over the fact that The Interview may be the first movie to depict the death (albeit humorously rendered) of a sitting head of state. (And a psychotic head of state with nuclear weapons, to boot.) Less has been made over the fact that The Interview is, essentially, a 90-minute riff on what I call “gay panic.” That is, the discomfort many heterosexual men feel at the idea that they may be (or be perceived), in the slightest way, homosexual, and the fact that, for many heterosexual men, this is the worst thing you could possibly be.

As a gay man, sitting in a movie theater with (I would assume), mostly heterosexual men laughing at one of my defining traits as a human being, could make one, how shall I say, uncomfortable.

The oddity of this spectacle is further compounded by the fact that it is being portrayed by an actor, James Franco, who has made something of a career lately out of playing gay men (Allen Ginsberg, Hart Crane, a fake documentary about the movie Cruising). And, of course, need it be said? James Franco is ridiculously handsome.

So, imagine a movie in which James Franco and his polar opposite in the looks department, Seth Rogen, do everything but have intercourse onscreen (and do, in fact, kiss each other, say they love each other, drink fancy cocktails with umbrellas in them and—horrors—listen to Katy Perry music).

Indeed, the amount of phony homosexuality on display is ratcheted up so high that you have to laugh—and that, I suppose, is the point.

There’s also a cameo at the beginning of the movie by Eminem where he “admits” to being gay during an interview on a tabloid TV show. So is Eminem making fun of gays or poking fun at his image as a homophobic rapper? Truth be told, I can’t even remember why he is allegedly homophobic (I don’t really listen to rap music) and, besides, didn’t he already silence those complaints when he performed with Elton John on the Grammy Awards?

Then again, I suppose if we’re going to go down that road, an equal if not larger grievance could be voiced by Asians (or at least North Koreans), for being portrayed as the world’s laughing stock. Or women, for being portrayed as sex objects whose only reason for existence is to please men.

The fact is, that if one can suspend one’s inner PC police, the movie is actually quite funny. And, by employing more Asian actors than pretty much every other Hollywood movie put together and showing them poking fun at themselves, it has the ironic effect of humanizing them.

Now if only Seth Rogen and James Franco would just fuck each other and get it over with.

A Love-Hate Relationship: Homeland vs. The Affair

 The last few Sundays, I’ve been having a love-hate relationship with Showtime. I love Homeland. I hate The Affair.

I’ve recently become acquainted with the term “hate-fucking.” Is there such a thing as hate-watching?

Let’s start with Homeland.

I didn’t watch the first few seasons of Homeland, but I decided to give this season a try because I’d heard such good things about it. (A previous attempt at trying to watch last season didn’t work because the plot was already too far along for me to catch up.)

This season started great and got better. And it was also a new story line, so if you missed the first few seasons, like I did, you could start from scratch.

This season’s arc had Carrie (Claire Danes), a bipolar CIA agent, pursuing the Osama Bin Laden-like character Haissam Haqqani in Pakistan. Along the way, she has a make-believe affair with Haqqani’s young nephew, a slowly simmering attraction to her hot fellow agent Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend), and has to deal with a bunch of backstabbing coworkers that make your typical office politics look like a walk in the park.

While the season finale was relatively subdued compared to the rest of the season (Carrie returns home to the United States while Quinn, after swearing he wouldn’t, returns to Pakistan), there were some moments that were so suspenseful, it was truly difficult to watch.

And I haven’t even gotten into the sadomasochistic relationship between the U.S. Ambassador Martha Boyd (Laila Robbins) and her traitorous husband or their double-dealing Pakistani counterparts.

Really, a plot summary couldn’t possibly do the series justice.

Let’s just say that by the end of the season, I needed some of Carrie’s bipolar medication!

Now let’s talk about The Affair.

What started for me as a harmless bit of real estate porn turned into…well…just porn!

Holy crap! Dominic West was naked more often on this series than Lena Dunham in Girls! (Not that I’m complaining…)

But the histrionics were ratcheted up so high, it was more like watching a soap opera than the True Detectives-like mystery they were aiming for. (How creepy was that Fiona Apple song at the beginning?)

Noah and Helen Soloway (Mr. West and Maura Tierney), a Brooklyn couple (he’s a teacher and writer, she runs a home furnishings store) are vacationing with their family in Montauk when Noah is drawn to a young waitress (Alison Bailey, played by Ruth Wilson) at a seafood restaurant.

They immediately begin a torrid affair, but this is no ordinary affair. You see, Alison’s young son died several years ago and she and her husband are still in mourning. Meanwhile, Noah has to deal with his rich in-laws who are constantly belittling him.

While the series shows the very real devastation infidelity can wreak on a marriage, Noah and Alison are so self-destructive that after a while you’re like, “Oh, well, I guess they’re gonna fuck again.”

OK, so we know that—in America—sex is a greater taboo than violence and infidelity a more serious crime than murder. But if you’re going to have a morality tale about infidelity, go big or go home. I’m talking Fatal Attraction.

That movie was more believable for being a one-night-stand gone wrong than the long, drawn-out Affair. And Glenn Close (as Alex Forrest) was so deliciously evil, she practically verged on camp. (As much as I loved Cher in Moonstruck, I still think Ms. Close deserved the Oscar that year.)

In the Affair season finale, when Noah is finally arrested for a murder we never saw him commit, all you can do is yawn.

P.S. The Comeback is a bit of a disappointment this season, too. I guess the first season (nine years ago) set the bar so high (and reality TV set the bar for humiliation so low) that it was hard to top. (I also think that the show-within-the-show, Room and Bored, added a much-needed dimension.) This week’s episode, where Valerie wears a wire to the restaurant where she and her husband are trying to repair their relationship, approached some of the cringeworthy-ness that made the first season so good.

Sometimes I think, this isn’t a comedy about show business, it’s a documentary.

White Riot

“White riot — I wanna riot

White riot — a riot of my own.”

—The Clash

When I looked at the front page of today’s New York Times, I was so furious, I felt like I was having a heart attack.

The lead story was about how, in a move that was typical of what’s been happening in this country lately, House Republicans snuck in a last-minute giveaway to banks in next year’s budget before leaving for vacation, and the only member of Congress who spoke out against it was Nancy Pelosi.¹ Even Obama caved in to Republicans! (Again! Roll over, Obama!)

Right next to that story was an article about how "the share of prime-age men...who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s...."²

That’s right! The same people who voted to bail out the banks six years ago voted to allow them to continue doing the very same things that necessitated their bailout in the first place! They also threw in a measure increasing by tenfold the amount of money people are allowed to contribute to political parties.

The same people who refused to extend unemployment benefits five times last year, voted to give banks a major loophole, thereby increasing the chances of another financial collapse and another bailout at taxpayer expense.

And, of course, none of the parties responsible for the financial collapse were ever prosecuted. (Why should be we surprised, though, when just the day before the Times reported on the C.I.A.’s involvement in and cover-up of torture. None of the people responsible for that were ever prosecuted, either.)

But I digress.

Meanwhile, the front page of the New York Post was all about Hollywood producer Scott Rudin calling Angelina Jolie a “minimally talented spoiled brat.” (This from a man whose own ego is so huge he goes through 50 assistants a year.³ Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!)

People went to work, as usual. The subway droned on with its Orwellian announcements about giving up your seat to the elderly and “if you see something, say something.” (I mean, really, if you need a subway announcement to lecture adults about manners, you’ve already lost the battle.)

The operating principle in this country (if not the world) today seems to be "How much can we squeeze people before they literally riot?" Not figuratively riot, but burn buildings and cars riot.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the black community (along with supporters of other races) justifiably angry about the killings of young black men by white police officers.

What I want to know is, Where’s our riot? 

Granted, the financial collapse affected everyone—white and black—but the difference is that so-called “white collar” criminals are rarely punished, while blacks are sometimes killed over minor offenses.

Where’s our outrage?

I think the problem is that people simply don't know how bad things are. Everyone’s working so many hours, they don’t have time to read the newspaper. And the TV news is about as substantive as Entertainment Tonight.

Meanwhile, the moneyed powers that run this country (if not the world) continue to get richer and more powerful.

I’m surprised shows like Real Time with Bill Maher, Moyers & Company, The Daily Show or The Colbert Report—anything that questions the existing power structure--are even allowed to air, considering that six corporations control 90% of the media in America.⁵

Think I’m being alarmist?

Recently, there was an article in the Times about how Russian oligarchs are scooping up stakes in media companies.⁶

But we’re special because we’re America.

Yeah, right!

1 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/us/congress-spending-bill.html?_r=0

2 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/unemployment-the-vanishing-male-worker-how-america-fell-behind.html

3 http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/leaked-sony-emails-reveal-angelina-jolie-called-a-minimally

4 http://gawker.com/5663946/scott-rudin

5 http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6

6 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/world/oligarchs-of-eastern-europe-scoop-up-stakes-in-media-companies.html

Hand to Mouth: My Story

I recently started reading Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, Linda Tirado’s book about her experience with poverty. While my experience may not be as bad as hers, my experience may actually be more common.

Like 20% of the US workforce¹, I’m a temp/contract/project-based/freelance worker (not by choice, I would hasten to add, but because those are the only jobs available). Partly as a result of this, I’ve been unemployed for half of the past two years.

I also have no company-provided health insurance and no paid time off.

Last year, I made so little money, I qualified for Medicaid. Some people would be thrilled to have health insurance. I’m embarrassed I qualified for Medicaid. (The only problem with Medicaid, of course, is that many doctors and dentists don’t accept it.)

As we head into Thanksgiving and the holiday season, I’m grateful to be working (for the time being), but I could very easily be unemployed again by Christmas.

That’s because full-time, “permanent” jobs are disappearing. Forget about retirement, I’m struggling to stay employed until I reach retirement age!

Last year, I made numerous press appearances on behalf of the long-term unemployed. But despite my many efforts (which included writing letters to Congress and posting over 5,000 tweets), unemployment benefits were not extended and the entire issue has disappeared from the headlines.

In light of the new Republican majority in the Senate, I feel that this issue is more important than ever.

Not only are full-time, “permanent” jobs disappearing, it’s becoming harder than ever to get the few that remain. It’s no longer enough to just submit to a job interview. There’s now often a phone interview that precedes the actual job interview, and several follow-up interviews after that.

But that’s not all.

Background checks are also now a normal part of the hiring process. And for a recent job, I not only had to go through a background check, I also had to submit to a drug test and be fingerprinted!

And Republicans say the unemployed are lazy.

As Ms. Tirado points out in her book, when you’re living “hand to mouth” (or paycheck to paycheck, like 25 million Americans²), there’s no margin for error. I recently went into a panic because I thought I was going to need a dental implant. In fact, whenever I have a medical problem of any kind, I’m more worried about the cost than the health implications. (I once got out of a taxi on my way to a hospital emergency room and walked because it was stuck in traffic! Needless to say, I didn’t even consider paying $500 for an ambulance, even though I had insurance at the time.)

The root cause of all this, of course, is globalization, a force way beyond the control of any individual worker (or perhaps even any individual country). But isn’t there something our government could be doing to ease the pain of globalization on the middle-class? And rather than using their earnings to buy back their own stock or move their corporate headquarters overseas (so they don’t have to pay taxes), couldn’t companies use that money to create jobs or give people a raise?

Instead, our government has been silent (which is not surprising considering they’re bought by the very corporations that are causing this problem) and companies are sitting on record profits.

The other reason jobs are disappearing is because companies simply don’t want to pay for health insurance. In fact, I would argue that this is now the only reason the temp industry even exists: to eliminate any legal obligation companies might have toward their temporary employees. (It’s not like they’re actually finding people jobs!)

That’s why we need a single-payer system. Not just because every other civilized country in the world has one, but because it’s ridiculous to expect a for-profit enterprise (and that includes health insurance companies) to do anything that’s not in their own self-interest.

So as we head into this holiday season, you know what I’d really like for Christmas?

A full-time, “permanent” job with benefits.

Happy Thanksgiving.

1 http://nypost.com/2014/06/14/temp-to-hire-boom-diminishing-job-security-benefits-for-millions/

2 http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/25/news/economy/middle-class-paycheck/

Birdman Doesn’t Fly

 I had high hopes for Birdman, coming as it does with a well-known director (Alejandro Iñárritu, of 21 Grams and Babel), a first-rate cast (Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, and Emma Stone, among others) and a premise that really interests me: a formerly successful, aging movie star questioning the career and life choices he’s made.

In Birdman, Michael Keaton plays the former star of an action movie franchise featuring the titular character, who tries to stage a career comeback by starring in, directing and producing a play based on the book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by the well-known writer Raymond Carver. During previews, one of the actors in the play’s cast is injured by a stage light and is replaced by Edward Norton’s character, a somewhat pompous, overly serious theater actor. The play appears headed for disaster when a theater critic for a New York Times-like newspaper threatens to “kill” the play. But then there’s a last-minute plot twist involving social media that turns the play into an unexpected hit.

The acting here is good (particularly a low-key, slimmed-down Zach Galafinakis as Michael Keaton’s lawyer), but I was distracted by such things as the camera work and the actor’s appearances (“Why is the skin around Michael Keaton’s ears so pulled back? Did he have a face lift?” “Edward Norton has a hot ass!” “Emma Stone has a beautiful face and her eyes are really green!”). The film appears to have been shot in one continuous take. I realize this is a major technical achievement, but it distances the audience from the movie, and even people who aren’t film school graduates might sense that there’s something “wrong.” Also, weird events happen throughout the movie for no apparent reason. (Keaton has the ability to move objects just by pointing at them, a drummer mysteriously appears in various places playing the movie’s percussive soundtrack, a homeless-looking man appears on the street reciting Shakespeare). I don’t know if Iñárritu is trying to create an atmosphere of “magical realism,” but this is distracting, too. We’re led to believe the film is taking place in the “real world,” not the world of superheroes, where we’re used to people flying around. Although Keaton’s Birdman character is referenced throughout the film, he’s not really a part of the main action. He mainly appears as a voiceover, narrating Keaton’s inner doubts.

The screenplay is also a weird mixture of high-brow and low-brow, dropping names like Roland Barthes while at the same time indulging in adolescent sexual humor.

Birdman comes with a critic-proof device: the character of the aforementioned theater critic about whom several digs are made of the “those who can’t do criticize” variety. That’s a bit disingenuous. Who goes to a movie (or in the case of this movie, a play) not wanting to like it?

Perhaps what the makers of this movie didn’t consider is that some people love the art form they’re critiquing so much that they’re truly disappointed when something doesn’t live up to their expectations.