The VA as model for Nationalized Single Payer System

While I was in Ground Radar tech school in Mississippi, I had A LOT of time on my hands, so I turned to Facebook to reconnect with some friends from high school. One of the topics turned to the ACA, and how the VA was THE model to emulate. This was early 2014, February or March, and the suggestion came from one of the smartest women I've ever met. Which is what disturbed me most.

Now she's a great person and I'd describer her as a libertarian leaning Democrat. College educated, well read, independent in her thinking, and completely ignorant of the realities present in the VA. I'd seen some shenanigans in my time with Uncle Sugar as a Rater for the VA, but even I had no idea how bad it really was at the time with the scheduling fraud that was rampant around the country. In hindsight I truly wonder how close the counrty was at the passing of the ACA to having a national single payer instead. Had the ruling party simply have trotted out what most people thought was fantastic care at the VA as how it would be, I wonder if they could have passed it...

Hopefully more and more people are waking up to the reality that an incentive based model is always going to offer better care than a non-profit. That's Profit, for those who don't like dirty words or Charity for the religious amongst us who worry about how they treat their fellow man more than how many cars they can fit in their garages.... All men are created equal, but all men are not the same. Some win in the lottery that is life, genetically, financially, or simply in where they're born. To punish any for this in my mind is no different than discriminating against someone for being born a certain color, handicapped, or gay. To take from them as punishment for success no different than holding another down to prevent them from their Pursuit of life, Liberty and Happieness.

It's going to be interesting moving forward to see how the big problems facing our nation play out. As Winston Churchill reportedly said, "Americans will always do the right thing when they've exhausted all other options."

The Journey to a Homestead

In the fall of my last year coaching women's basketball (2008) I took a step back and began to take inventory of my life. I had a dozen nice suits, a Honda Del Sol, and a sweet Jeep Rubicon (that I owed roughly $15,000 on) and no real assets to speak of other than a few thousand dollars in my retirement account. All told I was right at $60,000 in debt.

I'd been exsposed to enough successful people by this time that I knew I had to make a change in my life, but I had no idea how or where to start, so I do what I always do when I have a question, I turned to Google and begun to research how to get out of debt. I found Dave Ramsey's plan which can be boiled down to this:

1. Pay cash, if you can't pay cash you can't afford it, whatever it may be.

2. If you have a bank loan on the car sell it and drive a beater. (I stupidly fought this for a year.)

3. Attack the smallest debt with all your money, and progressively, ruthlessly, and unwaveringly start paying off from one to the next.

4. Get a second job and be even more heartless in killing the cancer that is debt. I was already a drilling guardsman, so I had another avenue, GI Bill cashola.

5. Get a savings fund of $1000

6. 6 months expenses

7. Start putting away 15% of your monthly income, and then pay off your house as fast as you can.

It really is that simple. It's a matter of how much do you want to be free?

I was a motivated young man. I had a plan, and I worked that plan. I decided that I was going to give being an assistant one more year, and if I didn't get a head coaching job it was time for me to find a job with real earning potential. Knowing what young coaches are supposed to look like I got up at 5:00 three times a week and lifted my guts out. I messed up a ton, ate out too much, cared about not wearing the same shirt twice in a month at work, but I was still searching.

My mom had always kept a garden when I was growing up, I knew how much better I could eat if I was raising it myself, but I didn't have the skills. In the Spring of 2009 in the midst of my search for gardening knowledge I found Jack Spirko and The Survival Podcast. He was Dave Ramsey with a country twang, a healthy bit of profanity that I could appreciate, and a man working a plan. I was hooked. For what it's worth and for the faint of heart, he's not leaving in a bunker (nor his mother's basement) wearing a tin foil cap, he's good ol' boy who was in the rat race, and decided he was going to get out.