Journey of Light…and Darkness

I recently read Marcus Anthony’s novel THE MIND READER. As regular visitors here know, Marcus has frequented the blog and we’ve posted some of his synchronicities and other musings. For those unfamiliar with Marcus, he’s an Australian Phd futurist and author who until recently was living in Hong Kong. His blog delves into psychic and spiritual matters as well as a intuitive take on the future that goes beyond the nuts and bolts outlook of many futurists.

I was curious about his novel, especially because he refers to it as semi-autobiographical. THE MIND READER tracks the spiritual initiation of a floundering Australian college student, Greg Marks, who somewhat naively steps into a group – Journey of Light – under the domain of a powerful but imperfect leader. In order to develop psychically, Marks must assume the mantle of other members of the group – invading their emotions, thoughts, and motives– and play out their worst issues, often in front of the person he is depicting. Of course, the same happens to Greg as other members dive into his psyche.

I found the somewhat ruthless and cultish interior workings of this group fascinating, and as a committed non-joiner, it was decidedly unappealing. Working with such a group no doubt can speed one’s spiritual and psychic development, but it’s not without a price. Did it work for Greg? Yes and no.

Within a few months, Greg becomes quite competent in reading minds and connecting with his inner child, a major part of the inner work. But as he develops his abilities and sees into people’s thoughts and motives, his ego gets the better of him. As a result, he opens himself to powerful dark energy, especially after he foolishly confronts a group of skeptics in their own territory.

It took me quite awhile to read the 500-page book, because of other stuff going on. But I kept coming back and looking forward to see what happened next to Greg. It’s a good read for anyone pursuing spiritual development or even thinking about it. Greg is a flawed but sympathetic and believable character. Julie, the leader of JOL, on the other hand, didn’t appeal much to me. Greg, who becomes dependent on the group, gets kicked out not one but twice. I don’t think I would’ve lasted more than one session under Julie’s tough love.

In fact, in reading the book, I was reminded of a personal experience. Years ago, I connected with a group that was meeting in a desert setting in the Southwest. The focus of the group was dream development and, in fact, I was there in the dream state. At the same time, I felt I was there physically. I questioned the leader of the group, who was someone quite famous, and he instantly banished me to ‘fifth-degree kindergarten,’ whatever that is. I bolted upright in my bed, baffled by what I was doing there, then realized it was all a dream. A short time later, the leader of the group had a new book out. It was called The Art of Dreaming.

Don’t let my prejudices against self-proclaimed ‘gurus’ keep you from reading Marcus’s book. The first part is a bit slow, as we follow Greg through some typical college angst. It could’ve been shortened, but the pace quickly picks up once Greg gets involved with the JOL group. It’s a good ride and a good read.

Rob


							
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Abraham/Hicks Workshop, Dolphins, & All the Rest of It

 

from Megan’s website

At the recent Abraham/Hicks workshop that Megan and I attended, Abraham suggested several techniques for raising your feelings of well being. “The better you feel, the more you allow.”  So I’ve been trying these techniques for three days now and have enjoyed the results.

Here’s the technique:

Meditate for 15 minutes each day

Go outside in appreciation of the plant life and talk to them. Vocalize your appreciation.  

In a notebook,  write down what you appreciate about five different areas of your life.

Look upward and outward and acknowledge and acknowledge that there are universal forces watching over you, helping and guiding you, inspiring you.  

In a notebook, jot down what you will do today and what you would like the universe to do today. 

Since I have trouble sitting still for longer than five minutes, unless I’m in a meditation class, my meditation consists of moving around our backyard, appreciating the beauty of the plants and trees. I talk to them. Abraham noted that Esther walks through her garden daily, talking to every plants and flower and stone. “You’re my favorite flower, my favorite stone, my favorite tree…”

This morning, Nika followed me.

I then sit for a few minutes and think about what I would like to accomplish today – and what I would like the universe to do for me today. I write it down. And here’s where it’s gotten interesting.  On three consecutive days, under the universe column, I’ve asked for unexpected money to arrive; for positive surprises for Rob, Megan, and I; for strong sales for our books. I don’t know how these requests will unfold, but feel that reality around me, as if it’s already happened.

Here’s what has unfolded: we received unexpected checks, got royalty statements for our e-books that show healthy sales; Aliens in the Backyard continues to show strong sales; and Megan sold her most recent painting, featured in the above photo, for $500! Here’s her website.

As Abraham said during the workshop, Treat every day as a buffet.

 

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What They’re Saying about Daylight Savings

We leaped forward an hour in time today, with the start of Daylight Savings. Thanks to Adele for sending!

 

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Esther Hicks’ Bird Synchro

Tomorrow, we’ll be on the H20 network with Dia, at 1 p.m. EST, to talk about Aliens in the Backyard. Hope you’ll join us!

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Megan and I attended an Abraham/Hicks conference today (March 7), the first I’ve been to since the death of Esther’s husband, Jerry, about a year and a half ago. We arrived an hour early so we could get good seats and ended up in the fourth row. We had a perfect view of the “ hot seat,” where members of the audience sit when Abraham picks them to come forward with their questions.

The workshop started promptly at nine a.m. and the instant Esther strolled out in her stocking feet, the audience gave her a standing ovation and cheered.  She greeted everyone hello, then shut her eyes, bowed her head, altered her breathing, and went into an altered state. When her eyes opened again, Abraham started talking.

At one point, he said that when Esther was on her way to the hotel the day before, she felt Jerry around, felt him appreciating the beauty of the South Florida landscape – the palm trees, the vast blue sky,  the perfect weather.  Esther, he said, began to miss him terribly. Even though she is aware of his spirit’s presence, she missed talking to him, exchanging ideas, interacting with him in the physical universe.

So Esther got checked in at the hotel and went to her room. As she was opening the door, she heard noise inside and wondered if the room was occupied. The door swung open and she saw that the room was empty. But out there on her balcony, perched on the back of a chair, was a large black bird just chattering away. It remained there for fifteen or twenty minutes, staring in at her, and she stood there listening to it, watching it, and knew it was Jerry, talking to her.

Birds often act as messengers between the living and the dead and this story certainly seems to fall into that category.

Abraham explained this as a coincidence, in which the bird picked up Jerry’s impulse to speak to Esther, and was attracted to her desire to speak to him, and found the right chair, on the right balcony. And Esther, Abraham said, was attuned to her need for communication with Jerry. For us, it’s a perfect example of spirit communication through synchronicity. Whatever you call it, whatever label you give it, the end result is the same: Esther recognized what it was.

 

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Jenny’s High Strangeness

One of the individuals who contacted us after our appearance on Coast to Coast is a 36-year-old therapist and mother of three who lives in Florida. Like many people who experience encounters,  she’s doesn’t want to jeopardize her family or her professional reputation by using her real name. So we’re calling her Jenny.  She sent us “the high points” of her experiences. The phoenix seems appropriate for the image!

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I frequently listen to Coast to Coast but I have never contacted anyone regarding the strange history of my family and myself until hearing your responses to the callers. Two of them described some of the experiences we can totally relate to. It was reassuring because who can you really talk to about these experiences without sounding nuts? I have a graduate degree and a professional reputation to uphold. No one in my family has been diagnosed with any mental illnesses, other than alcoholism. So, we are not schizophrenic or paranoid. We are not in denial either. 🙂 Nor do we take antidepressants or any drugs.

I am originally from Orange County NY (which I later learned is aka the UFO capital of the northeast, especially Pine Bush.) The first strange situation occurred when I was about two. I lived in an old, restored, Victorian mini-mansion. My mother saw a red glow at all the windows, from the kitchen. She said that above the house was  a massive craft the size of a football field – or bigger – glowing with red lights.

I don’t remember any of this – I was only two years old – but I was at her side.  My mother described her absolute terror and panic, and said the next thing she knew, she and I were back in the kitchen and it was two hours later.

According to my mother she saw these things or lights or crafts only with me. She has told me she often felt they followed her home at night when I was in the car with her and remembers running into the house extremely frightened after driving home from the grocery store or a relative’s house. (Sounds like mental instability but if you met my mother you would know it’s not) She refers to them now as “those damn things” when she talks about it with me as an adult.

The next incident I was involved in, which I remember, happened when I was 7 or 8. My mother was away at a church retreat and my two older brothers and their girlfriends were babysitting me. I don’t remember much of that evening but I know they were drinking beer. I vaguely remember going to bed late.

The next thing I know, I wake up in the backseat of my brother’s girlfriend’s car parked in the driveway at about 3 AM. I don’t have a shirt on. Or shoes. No coat or gloves. It was freezing cold, the middle of winter, probably 15-20 degrees outside, middle of the night, upstate New York.

Confused and scared, I sat there crying and terrified. I knew I’d gone to sleep in my own bed. I realized my brothers would never hear me, so I ran back inside the house and went back to bed. Everyone was asleep and the house was quiet. I always thought I got to the car by sleepwalking, even though I’m not a sleepwalker. Then, as an adult, I heard some of the other stories of possible abductees winding up somewhere different than the last place they remembered being. 
I don’t have any memories of being aboard a craft or of alien beings. (Thank God)

About a year and a half ago, here in the county where I live, I saw something that looked like it belonged in that movie Abyss.   Fortunately, I had a witness with me – my boyfriend, who is as total and complete non-believing skeptic. When he saw this thing with me, he jumped out of the car screaming, using the “F” word and repeatedly said that it “was from another world! That was a real UFO! That was not the government!” He was in total shock. Nothing other than a sighting, but definitely the strangest thing I have seen yet in my 36 years.  There was no sound at all. Just this glowing, undulating object flowing through the sky above us at night with iridescent colors.

In the 1990s, I went to two different dentists who were completely baffled by this small object that kept showing up on my X rays, apparently in my nasal cavity. They were totally puzzled and asked many questions. That made me uncomfortable. I had no idea what it was and they said even if I hit my head as a child, nothing could have gotten lodged there.

Another strange thing happened that I didn’t give much thought to until I started reading about female abductees. Almost three years after my son was born, I was pregnant, I had every symptom. I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I’ve been told you can have a false negative but not a false positive. So, we told friends & family  and started planning. I made my doctor appointment and completely accepted we were having our second child. When I went to my appointment, I was not pregnant.  I didn’t have a miscarriage or pain but I was not pregnant. About 4-6 weeks later, I became pregnant with my middle child.

The point that really bothers me, which probably prompted me to contact you more than anything, is my youngest daughter’s experiences. After we moved to here, she woke up with these lines all over the bottom of her feet a few times. It was as if someone took the very first 2 layers of skin off the bottom of her feet, in patterns. It was bizarre. I took a lot of pictures. My first thought was a parasite or flesh-eating bacteria or something terrible.  One resembled hieroglyphic writing or symbols. It happened two or three times and she had no idea what it was and it caused no pain.

Last spring break she came to me one day. She was confused and concerned and had her hand on top of her head. She asked me what was wrong with her head. I looked and at the top of her head, toward the back, she was missing hair, a perfect circle almost the size of a half dollar was gone.  It had regrowth, like peach fuzz, all the same length. I asked if she had played with scissors or a razor. I asked her sister if she had. I could tell by their reaction that no one had anything to do with it and my little daughter was devastated. She wore her hair up in a ponytail until recently. They had been on spring break for over a week and with me at all times. It was so disturbing and puzzling.

With all these experiences and hearing those callers with similar experiences, I felt I had to contact you and ask you why? Do you have any idea as to what is going on or why this happens? I don’t share this with anyone other than my mother because she knows I wouldn’t lie. When my daughter was missing that patch of hair and the thought occurred that she could have possibly been abducted, I felt very angry and violated. I’m over protective as it is, but when something so out of your control possibly happens to your child…it’s an awful feeling.

Are you familiar with these type of experiences ? Please share your thoughts when you have a moment. I appreciate your time very much. It is a lonely feeling when bizarre, unexplainable events happen throughout your life, especially to your children, but you have no idea how, what or why and you can’t talk about them with anyone. I truly look forward to your response and am open to a phone call if you have any questions.

 

Posted in encounters, synchronicity, UFOs | 10 Comments

Ripples of Synchronicity

Here’s an interesting post on synchronicity from Clay Sellers, whose blog is called, Rethinking Complexity: Studying Systems for a Humane and Sustainable World.

Last month, during my sojourn through the amazing beauty of Sedona, Arizona, I decided to do something I have never done in my life nor have I ever really wanted to do: I visited a psychic to receive a spiritual “reading.”  For most of my life, I have moved in the world of rigid organization and technology and that association has never encouraged me to seek the insight of someone who claims to have a finger on the pulse of spiritual ebb and flow of life.

As I sat before this mystic, a Native American surprisingly down to earth and not at all who I would have expected, the following admission came out right at first: “All my life I have really wanted to believe in magic, but I have never trusted Magicians,” I said.

Smiling and nodding, she pointed out that most people are skeptics, some more than others, and that she had no expectations and offered no promises other than to be open, honest, and kind. As the reading progressed—once again, not at all the spooky, mystical session laced with uplifting or ominous predictions—she simply talked about my past, my present, and my future. There were none of the “clarifying questions” I’d seen or heard in so many televised readings, only her declarations about what she felt or believed I’d experienced yesterday, what was around me today, and what I might look forward to tomorrow.

I won’t ramble on about all that I felt or that I took away, but want to relate one aspect of our discussion that rang a bell so distinctly I almost believed I’d actually heard the ringing. As she spoke about my past moving into my present, she declared that I am increasingly touched by synchronicity. I involuntarily smiled, for that word seemed suddenly so appropriate.  Harkening back to Carl Jung’s concepts, I noted that synchronicity describes events that don’t seem to be at all causally related, but when contemplated together, present significance or meaningfulness. Since I’d only the previous week held a conversation with a colleague where we’d also earnestly discussed synchronicity, I smiled at the irony in the close temporal and ideological connection between the two discussions.

As a now out-of-the-closet systems theorist, I am rarely surprised by connections of all sorts. Connections pervade my worldview and help define how I process purpose, and direction, and design in life. I often employ that associative concept that uses the analogy of ever-widening ripples caused by tossing a pebble into a pond to describe how a tiny action can have continuing, significant effects. If I then overlay the idea of synchronicity onto those circles, I arrive at an interesting theory of life and its harmonies: ripples of synchronicity.

Just for a moment, find a quiet spot (even though that’s very difficult to do these days) and consider all of the echoes around you; all the events and even artifacts that hint of harmony. Look at the shapes to which you’re drawn—wine glasses and vases and palm tree trunks. Then, perhaps, listen to the wind and the rhythms that the moving leaves and branches provide. Patterns that recur all about you become apparent. After that, look to the skies and the regularity of the clouds and the joyful flow of day and night. Finally, take joy in thinking of the friends and family whose mannerisms you can easily foretell and who finish your sentences, bringing laughter from both of you. These places and sights and souls embody a reassuring synchronicity that brings to you both comforting patterns and delightful surprises in ever broader loops and swirls that carry you out from that pebble of birth.

And if that isn’t magical, perhaps I’ve been missing the point.

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‘Right in your backyard’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-0Ebn3qrBE

Here’s a video of a speech by Paul Hellyer, former Canadian minister of defense. He has gone from Canadian politics to exo-politics. He’s a strong proponent of governments releasing UFO documents and revealing their involvement in UFO/alien matters.

The synchronicity for us comes at the 5:56 minute mark when Hellyer inadvertently gives our book a plug…and the crowd cheers. We laughed when he heard it and had to play it again.

But a better plug –and a real one–comes to us from Whitley Strieber. Here’s what he had to say:

Trish and Rob MacGregor have written a sobering, engaging and important book about the mysterious subject of alien abduction. When I read it, I was reminded how little we know about this incredible, complex and enigmatic subject, and just how much light this insightful book sheds on it.

If we are going to understand this phenomenon, books such as this are essential. Read it and wonder: what have we missed about our world? Perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened.

Aliens in the Backyard is a treasure.

Whitley Strieber

 


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The Nigerian Connection

JFK’s counterpart

When we first started our blog four years ago, we used to get occasional peculiar synchro stories from a Nigerian man living in London. The theme of his synchros have always been the same, comparing Nigerian political figures with American ones. He searches backgrounds to find commonalities linking the cross-Atlantic figures. We were never certain what these connections were supposed to mean, or infer, but we posted several of them.

A couple of years passed and we had not heard from Augustine and just a day or two ago, he came to mind and I wondered what had happened to him. So this morning (2-23), I was surprised – well, maybe not so surprised – to find an e-mail from Augustine with more of the same. This time he takes three American presidents and finds Nigerian counterparts, or at least connections between the American and Nigerian figures.

We’ll post it, more or less, as it was received.
> Between the U.S. and Nigeria by Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth, London, England. <

There are interesting developments betwen the United states and Nigeria in respect of
John F.Kennedy (JFK) and John Kayode Fayemi (JKF), Barack Obama and Abiola Ajimobi, and Bill Clinton and Olusegun Obasanjo

JFK and JKF are both Catholics
JFK and JKF both attened three different universities
JFK Harvard, Princeton and London School of Economics
JKF, University of Lagos, University of Ife, and Kings college London
JFK fought in the second world War
JKF is a PHd in War studies
JFK was into Civil rights and JKF into Human rights.
JKF assummed office on October 15 2010 the the 48th anniversary of the most important event in the JFK administration.-The Cuban Missile crisis when the world stood on the precipice of a Nuclear War. Over 100 million would have been killed
JFK was President of the U.S. and JKF Governor of Ekiti State

>Barack Obama and Abiola Ajimobi <
Obama and Ajimobi were bot fathered by Muslims
Obama and Ajimobi were both senators.
Obama from Chicago, capital of mid west America, home of the  world”s  first skyscraperthird largest city in the U.S., founded in the 19th century
Ajimobi from Ibadan, political capital of south west Nigeria, home of the  first Nigerian skyscraper,third largest city in Nigeria also founded in the 19th century.
Obama and Ajimobi are both associated with a citizenship controversy.
Obama, president of the U.S. and Ajimobi, Governor of Oyo State.

> OF Bill Clinton and Olusegun Obasanjo (Not my original  by an anonymous writerl) <
Clinton and Obasanjo are both Baptist and both served as Presidents  of the U.s. and Nigeria for eight years
Clinton and Obasanjo were both born on a Tuesday
Clinton has the name, seven letters, starting with w and ending with M, William
Obasanjo has the name , seven letters, starting with M and ending with W, Matthew

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Alien Hybrid Breeding Program?

from The Center for Touch Drawing

Monday evening, March 4, between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. eastern, we’ll be on Dark Harvest Radio Program with Dan Marro to talk about Aliens in the Backyard. Hope you can join us!
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Some abductees are shown horrifying scenes of destruction to the planet. The implication is that humanity is responsible for these disasters and that a hybrid breeding program is a necessary step to ensure the survival of both humans and aliens.  So what’s involved in this program?

“Hybridization appears to progress in states,” wrote David Jacobs in The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda. “It is clear from abduction reports that it starts in vitro with the joining of human sperm, eggs, and alien genetic material. The result  of this union, which is “grown” partially in a human female host and partially in a gestation device, is a hybrid being who is a cross between alien and human.”

It sounds like a pitch for a movie or a horror novel. When you think about it longer than a minute, the full impact hits you. If this is true – and evidence gathered over the decades by researchers suggests that it is – then we are confronted with even more questions. How many human abductees have been impregnated and then had the fetus removed? Do the fetuses reach maturity? If so, where are they kept until they do? Is the ultimate goal of this program the take over of the planet? The human race? Are the scenes abductees are shown of global catastrophe going to happen? And what does the government know?

If it’s true that people worldwide are being abducted, floated out through windows and walls, and lifted into space craft on beams of light, then perhaps the aliens are the actual terrorists. No wonder, then, that they aren’t landing on the lawn of the White House, or announcing themselves in armadas as they did in Independence Day.  If this hybridization program exists,  secrecy may be key to its success.

Sound too weird to be true?

(Excerpted from Aliens in the Backyard)

In high school, Diane Fine was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis disease, had three surgeries by the time she was in her late teens, and was told she would never get pregnant.  While living in a college town in upstate New York in 1979, she went to her family doctor because she was feeling so constantly exhausted and frequently nauseated. He conducted a urine test and pelvic exam and informed her she was two months pregnant. He was as shocked as she was.

He deemed her pregnancy to be high risk because of her previous surgeries and referred her to a clinic in Burlington, Vermont to see a specialist. The trip took three hours by car and included a ferry ride across Lake Champlain. On the day of her appointment, Diane set out early with her two roommates.  They hoped to explore Burlington before her late afternoon appointment.

“It was a gorgeous spring day,” she recalled. “Our drive was going as planned. We passed Dannemora Prison and the town of Dannemora. After this, things got very strange.”

Dannemora is part of the town of Saranac Lake  and the prison Diane refers to, Clinton Correctional Facility, was a maximum security facility that opened in 1845. From 1900 to 1972, Dannemora also housed a hospital for the criminally insane. Both the town and the prison became synonymous among many New Yorkers for the place where the criminally insane were confined. Lots of dark, negative energy, in other words.

Just after passing through Dannemora,  Diane and her roommates encountered a dense fog, visibility shrank to zero. If you’ve ever been caught in dense fog, then you know how eerie it can be – vague shapes around you, that strange dampness in the air, the odor of wetness and earth. It’s creepy. They looked for a place to pull over until the fog broke up, and  spotted a gravel driveway off to their right. They pulled  in and found themselves outside a large old barn that had been converted into a bar/restaurant. They went inside to wait out the fog.

Diane recalls that the couple behind the counter were older, white-haired, short, no more than five feet tall, and friendly.  She and her roommates ordered sodas and when she sipped it, she thought the taste was strangely sweet, thick, and warm as it went down.  “I had never tasted anything like this before. And I have no memory after this point, until two hours later.” That was when Diane and her roommates found themselves at the ferry station, ready to cross the lake to Burlington, with no idea of how they’d gotten there.  They couldn’t understand how it had gotten to be so late in the afternoon.

They arrived at the clinic just in time for her appointment. She was called into the examining room, where the nurse practitioner read the doctor’s referral that Diane was eight weeks pregnant.  She examined Diane and immediately seemed confused and called another woman into the room. The second woman also read the referral and examined Diane. The two women conferred for a moment, then the nurse practitioner announced, “This is an unpregnant womb.”

Diane was deeply shaken. “Was the referring physician mistaken?” she asked.

“No, your urine test was positive and he examined you thoroughly. His diagnosis couldn’t be wrong. But you are not pregnant.”

Diane panicked. She suspected that what had happened in the fog, with the missing time, was connected to the fact that she was no longer pregnant. But this was before abductions were a part of pop culture so she didn’t have any idea what had happened. Her distress was so acute the clinic gave her a valium, then sent her on her way. When she told her roommates she wasn’t pregnant, they were as bewildered as she was.

They headed home along the same route and before reaching Dannemora, they looked for the converted barn. “We found the gravel drive, but it didn’t lead anywhere. The building wasn’t there. It was just gone, like it had never existed.”

She and her roommates never discussed the incident again. It was too weird to talk about and Diane was deeply traumatized. Five years later, she read stories of missing time, missing babies, and aliens.  “That’s when I knew for sure what had happened in the fog, in that barn bar. My baby was somehow removed from my uterus during that missing time.”

An event that mainstream science considers impossible occurred near a prison whose name was synonymous with insanity. Diane recognized the synchronicity. “It’s a dark trickster,” she said.

Diane has never recalled any details of what happened during those two hours of missing time.  Yet, in 1991, twelve years after that experience, she was abducted again and taken to a nursery on an alien craft, where she was shown a sad, sick little baby. “She needed love so badly. It broke my heart. This is when they actually indicated that they had some of my children. Is that a harvest or a kidnapping?”

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Diane’s experience is by no means an isolated incident. So what’s going on? Is there an alien breeding program? If so, what are the implications?

 

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Health Care in America

Recently, one of our friends from the dog park had an attack of colitis and ended up in the hospital for a week. The cost for just room and board at the hospital for 7 days? Are you sitting down? $52,000. Think about that for a moment, let it sink in.

If the conversion chart I used is correct, that’s more than 33,000 pounds. Or nearly 40,000 Euros, nearly 51,000 Australian dollars, more than 53,000 Canadian dollars. Regardless of the currency equivalent, it’s a lot of money for just room and board. In other words, it doesn’t include lab tests, scans, doctors’ fees and all the rest of it.

No surprise, then, that most bankruptcies in this country are due to medical care bills. Fortunately, this woman has great health insurance that probably costs her and her husband an arm and a leg each month. Her part of the bill was under a thousand bucks.

Suppose she had been uninsured? Well, the law stipulates that anyone can be treated in the emergency room of a hospital whether or not they have the ability to pay. In 1999, when Rob leaped off his windsurfer onto a beach and landed on a broken beer bottle, the treatment in ER- without any kind of surgery, just drugs for infection and stitches by a podiatrist – cost more than two grand. We didn’t have health insurance and paid it off at a  hundred bucks a month.

In 2007, when Megan broke her ankle, the treatment for a cast  and a couple of follow-up treatments – no surgery- was over two grand. We paid it off in installments. In 1989 when Megan was born, we had catastrophic health insurance. I discovered it didn’t cover anything related to maternity. The price for two nights in a hospital to have a baby, without complications of any kind (except a long labor): more than $8,000 – and I hate to think of what it would cost more than two decades later.

If you are a self-employed individual in the U.S., in your forties or fifties, your health insurance – depending on your deductible and the details – will cost you more than $12,000 a year. And you’ll still have to pay some of the fees. If you are 65 years old or older, then Medicare kicks in and pays 80% of most bills after a small deductible is met. You pay around $100 a month or about $1,200 a year. But not every doctor – or even every state – will take patients on Medicare. If you make less than $25,000 a year (I think that’s the cutoff now), then you qualify for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor.  And that’s basically it. Those are your options.If you don’t fit somewhere in those categories, then you are an outlier, a mutant.

After our daughter was born, we dropped our catastrophic health insurance. Had we kept it, we would have paid out nearly a quarter of a million dollars in the last 20 years. And we wouldn’t have been able to send our daughter to college, travel, buy new computers when we needed them, and might not have been able to get a mortgage on a home or own two cars.

And yet, if you’re a member of Congress who serves even just one term, you qualify for premium health care for life. You make about $175,000 a year and are, of course, privy to many perks – like lobbying money from special interest groups. If you weren’t rich when you entered Congress, you probably are rich when you leave.

Since parts of Obama Care were implemented – with the full program going into effect in 2014 – I’ve noticed that doctors are more willing to give you discounts for office visits when you’re private pay. Large operations like the Cleveland Clinic – which has offices all over South Florida – are willing to work with you on the cost and payments. By 2014, all Americans will be required to buy health insurance – or pay a penalty. Those who are against the program say it won’t change anything, that emergency room freeloaders and illegal immigrants  will still be raising the cost for people with insurance.

But the problem with health care in America isn’t freeloaders or immigrants. It’s greed. Until profit is removed from health care, until private health insurance is eliminated from the equation, until the government extends Medicare to all, this system will remain profoundly flawed. Bankruptcies from medical care will continue to proliferate, people will continue to suffer through unbearable pain, and others will simply die. Aren’t we, as a country, as a human collective, better than that? I mean, really. We profess to be a christian nation, yet so much of what we do and don’t do is the antithesis of care for your sick, your wounded, your elderly, and disabled. Care for those who can’t care for themselves.

Some years back, my sister – a nurse – applied to work for an insurance company. Her job would be to look for anything in a patient’s medical history that would be grounds for dismissal in a claim.  She didn’t take the job because she didn’t think she could live with herself. Many more years back, I was a social worker who approved or disproved – people who applied for Medicaid, food stamps, help.  I lasted less than a year at that job and here’s why it ended: a married couple ended up in my office, seeking medical and financial help. They weren’t Medicare eligible yet. He had heart problems, she was a diabetic, they earned next to nothing. But the social welfare rules at the time stated that because they were married, without children living at home, I had to deny them.

In this country, if you want great health care, then run for federal political office – or go to prison. Yes, health care in prison is free.

 

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