About this page: This page and the other opinion type pages on this site reflect my views of various issues that are in need of attention in America. The opinions here are my own, and yours may vary, but, I try to keep to the fact as much as I can. This page is about what's wrong with America and how to fix it, as the title would suggest.
Many issues will be covered here, and solutions offered, which should be used. In addition to that, there will be some historical information about how things were in the past. In many cases, the things which I discuss can be found on the Web, or through asking older Americans.
The main issues in America which need to be fixed:
(Check back every so often for more stuff, as I make more of the pages that the general public can handle.)
Millions of dollars of taxpayer money is used to support sports teams (over 300 million in Florida, alone, according to senator Michael Bennett), yet, the government insists that they need to cut programs like Medicaid. If they can afford to pay athletes millions of dollars a year and pay for advertising on television and radio, certainly they can pay for their own stadiums and what-not! Odd that they want to keep the poor from having medical care while supporting billionaires with taxpayer money . . . But, this isn't like more civilized countries such as Canada, France, England, and many others, which has a good healthcare system provided for every citizen. It's America, where you have to pay thousands of dollars for things that in other countries, would be free, or would cost next to nothing. And, speaking of politicians using taxpayer money to pay for sports stuff instead of helping the citizens they're supposed to be serving, there's that Miami marlins stadium that cost 642 million dollars, and makes the city of Miami pay a property tax bill, as well. Guess where most of that 642 million dollars came from? You got it! From the taxpayers! For politicians, that's business as usual . . .
Big businesses that repeatedly screw over their customers like sony AKA sony corp who installed a rootkit on any of their customers' computers who tried to play some music CDs on their computers, tigerdirect with their rebate scam claiming that they would send you a rebate when you purchased something at their store, but, it never arrives.
Pharmaceutical companies that tweak their drugs in order to get new patents to protect their monopoly on their drugs for another 20 years. Of course, we're not talking about cures, here, because then they wouldn't have repeat customers, but, simply drugs that help with the symptoms. As you might expect, the pharmaceutical companies deny tweaking their drugs, claiming that it simply took that long to improve them and it takes nearly 20 years to develop a replacement. Sounds too ghoulish to be true, that big business would stoop to such levels, as to maximize their profits at the cost of those who suffer severe and nigh-endless pain? Think again!
Billions of taxpayer dollars are used to fund research in universities for new medicine to help those who are suffering from things such as cancer, and what-not. However, the universities hold the exclusive patent rights to any discoveries, and then they license those out to pharmaceutical companies and other private industries, and we end up with world-wide monopolies, and sky-high prices. This screwed-up system started back in 1980, when the United States Congress passed the Bayh-Dole act, which let the universities patent the research they performed under grants given to them by the federal government, which is funded by the taxpayers. There are a lot of other countries doing the exact same thing now. No doubt the politicians there, just like the ones in the United States, are being cattle-prodded into it by their masters, big business, and their lobbyists, who, as most everyone has figured out, by now, are the ones with the real power in the world. The universities, which many believed were for the public good, seem to be little more than research labs for big business, with a thin facade of education as an attempt to hide what's going on behind closed doors. Is it any wonder, then, that many adults, even college graduates, have a definite lack of generalized knowledge, appear over-specialized, with little curiousity outside of their chosen fields of study, or the latest overly-hyped product, movie, music, or hollywoodland gossip, and seem to have little common sense, which has become an oxymoron?
Big businesses such as verizon and kaiser permanente who want to cut workers' healthcare benefits, even though they are having record profits, or trying to raise rates on non-profits, teachers, and small businesses so they can give their CEO George Halverson a 6.7 million dollar paycheck and benefits, which includes eight different pensions. It certainly isn't needed to help keep the company afloat, since in the first half of 2011, they made 1.5 billion dollars in profits . . .
Government agencies such as the Florida Department of Children and Families AKA DCF (a state of Florida agency) who do not seem to be capable of handling a simple name change, even when you give them the authorized copy of the court document, let them make copies of your Social Security card, and I.D. Card from the state of Florida, and you tell them in person and in letters that all they have to do is to enter your new name into the Florida Medicaid Management Information System AKA FMMIS. They tell you for years that you are eligible for the QMB program (that pays for the Medicare premium, coinsurance and deductible) and send you reward letters saying you're eligible for it, but for some odd reason, they never seem to want to enroll you in the program by entering your new name in the Florida Medicaid Management Information System. Does backspacing out an old name and typing in a new one really take years, when it would only take most of us less than one minute? LOL When you ask them on the phone why you're not enrolled in the Medicare QMB program, or ask them face to face when you go over to their office in person, they say things like "it'll be looked into" which seems to be just another brush-off or an outright lie, because months and years later, there's still no letter or phone call from them, and you still don't seem to be enrolled in the program. So, the Social Security Administration keeps deducting your Medicare premiums each month, and, when you ask the SSA, they say that there is no paperwork on file, despite the fact that you went there earlier, in person, with the reward letter and let them make a copy of it. In addition to this, the Florida Department of Children and Families AKA DCF claims on their pdf files such as the Financial Eligibility Standards for July 2011 which is hosted on their very own site that people under a certain income are eligible to receive benefits such as the MEDS-AD program (which is listed on the aforementioned pdf file as full community Medicaid), and Low Income Subsidy AKA LIS (which is supposed to help with the costs of a Medicare drug plan) but, when you talk to them, they say that you cannot get things like Medicaid. When you attempt to contact the Florida Department of Children and Families about why you are still having to pay your Medicare premium that the QMB program is supposed to be paying for according to the reward letter you got from the Florida Department of Children and Families AKA DCF, they claim that you need to talk to the Social Security Administration about it, and, when you ask them for something to show how long you've been on the QMB program to show the Social Security Administration, they refuse to give you anything to give to them, while the SSA continues to say that there is no paperwork on file. This leaves people like me wondering if the only solution is to start posting all the information about who I've contacted in these agencies along with the time and dates and what they said, or get a lawyer to go after them, since this is costing around 100 dollars a month just for the Medicare premium alone, and I've been waiting since 2008! Makes you wish you lived some place like Canada. Even if you had to wait as long as a few months, it would still be a lot faster than waiting years before you could see a doctor in America, because you do not have the money to pay for it yourself!
Businesses such as RxAmerica who send you bills for 20 months of premiums totaling over 500 dollars, when the the government is supposed to be paying for it if you're poor enough.
School Violence: What Causes School Violence (mostly bullying, hazing, and intolerance)
Drivers killing bicyclists
Welcome to life in America. Bend over, please . . .
A few other pages on this site:
