This Year's Apple Crop Up 1000% From Last Year!

I find today's headline about the Michigan apple crop particularly  -- delicious, shall we say? -- because it comes at a time when people are quite literally stocking up on shotgun shells and canned goods in preparation for...wait for it...

...OBAMACARE. 

I kid you not.  Shotgun shells.  Canned goods. 

There is a retired banker just a few miles from where I am sitting, waiting eagerly for Obamacare.  When it kicks in, he is fully expecting the world to turn into a disaster movie.  He is all ready, with his guns and ammo stockpiled against the day when he will be living behind barbed wire, gunning down marauding packs of looters.  Obamacare, mark my words, is going to make this white-collar retiree into the ACTION HERO he's secretly wanted to be since he was a teenager.

A co-worker of mine says it will be the "end of America."  When I ask what he means by that, he never responds.

A recent article explained that the labor unions, whose votes made Obamacare possible to a great extent, are going to lose everything they've gained in the way of better health benefits...because of Obamacare.

It goes on to explain that the employer mandate included in the Affordable Care Act will basically put an end to full-time work.

Other news sources explain that Obamacare will drive medical costs UP.  It will force seniors to support young, healthy people who will OPT OUT of the system en masse, making the seniors' healthcare premiums impossible to pay.  (Even though most seniors have Medicare and do not pay health-insurance premiums.)  (Even though young, healthy people have a lot less in the way of medical costs.)  (Even though those who opt out will pay a fine to help cover any costs they do incur without insurance.)

Meanwhile, yet ANOTHER source describes the health-insurance mandate as a form of slavery, forcing young people to foot the bill for seniors. (Which they always have anyway, because they are the ones making the money that supports the legacy costs and Medicare funding of their retired colleagues.)

See the two paragraphs above.  If young people are supporting the old people's costs and old people are supporting the young people's costs, um, ISN'T THAT THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING A NATIONAL HEALTH PLAN?

I was at a presentation this week about the new wave in mental health services, which is based on research findings that a mentally ill person dies 25 years earlier on average than a person without a mental illness.  Services are being set up nationwide to make sure people are getting mental health AND physical health treatment, not mental health OR physical health treatment.  OK, that sounds reasonable. Especially in light of the rumors that Obamacare is supposedly going to provide mental-health parity -- meaning that you get as much mental-health coverage as you do medical coverage, with the same co-pay.  But when I asked the presenter how he expects the program he's running to be altered when Obamacare finally kicks in, he smiled grimly and painted a picture of all the doctors disappearing from the field because they won't be able to make enough money to live on, so that nobody will be able to use the coverage they have under the Obamacare program.  What will the mental/physical health people have to work with then?  Funny, isn't it, that he stays in a job that he seemingly expects to disappear out from under him in a year or so?

Funny, isn't it, that he explained to me that the core of Obamacare is about lowering reimbursements to those poor, struggling doctors, when that other opponent of the plan quoted a couple of paragraphs back says it will somehow drive medical costs UP out of reach? 

I suggest that sales of shotgun shells and canned goods are up because people are to ready to believe every damn fool thing they read in the news.