It doesn't care about: your race or your political beliefs. It doesn't care if you are an activist or are passively observing. While it's obvious that division permeates every walk of American life, Medicare doesn't divide.
Medicare helps those that believe the same as you, it also helps those that don't. If you know the rules that govern Medicare well, you will realize what I already know: Medicare doesn't discriminate against your financial status, or your educational background. Even if every bias known to man has personally affected you, Medicare rules apply without prejudice or judgement of your prior, current, or future philosophy.
In fact, Medicare unifies.
How? When YOU do the best to protect yourself, you are protecting the next person.
How? You don't leave an unpaid bill, you have $, resources and confidence to buy and eat, which helps your neighbor, either directly or indirectly.
Medicare unifies people whether they want that help or not, whether they 'deserve it' or not, whether they are your friend or enemy.
The sole bias? The properly informed vs the uninformed.
There is a reason I haven't commented on the tragedies we have seen on every news outlet: Maximize Your Medicare has been doing its part to unify, whether you knew it or not, whether you thought about it or not.
Have I faced discrimination myself? Look at the responses to my videos and Facebook advertisements. It would be easy and convenient to simply cease providing the information that few understand. But, I can't do that either.
Has bias has affected me in the past?
Of course. There is an idea of a glass ceiling which prevents women from equal pay and career advancement (all true, the evidence is overwhelming): I faced a very similar one, subtle and insidious. I didn't reach the levels at companies (some of that is my personal fault, it's nuanced). You think that educational level mattered, that the cost of the clothes we wore mattered? No, it didn't: their diplomas said Harvard and others at the top, similar to my own.
Some who doubt my experience may have attempted to say that I was provided with a silver spoon in my mouth. If that silver spoon was that I was provided with unconditional support from my parents, then the answer to that is yes. Beyond that, the answer is no. Many think that I haven't faced it in the past, you're wrong. The result is that when someone else says "you haven't faced what I have, all this time," you can see why I can think, "Yeah, maybe I shouldn't comment, because I don't understand that, specifically, because I never had to deal with that."
Do I face this now, even when assisting people regarding Medicare or their financial matters? Yes. Blatant racist comments, in my presence, against others. Should I have stood up and left? Perhaps.
Then again, I don't get to pick and choose that watch my videos, listen to my presentations in public, read my book. I don't get to blast the Facebook posts and social media rants of those that I oppose, because that person, their mother, their grandmother, all get their shot at Medicare, on equal footing.
I realize that all are granted the same rights and options as others, and even if it is helping them to further beliefs that I do not share, there's the bigger picture. Maximize Your Medicare applies to all equally, and that if everyone is properly informed, the greater whole is better off.
That's my story, and I'm sticking with it,
Jae
SVSU OLLI: June 10, 930A EDT
Zoom
This is NOT going to be the standard "Medicare Info Session." At all. We will leave Medicare specifics until the autumn.
The fact is that cliches and our society have created commonly-held beliefs, that aren't true. Those distortions stay intact, because they are "easy to remember." But they are distortions nevertheless, the unfortunate result is that your decision-making can be affected.
The fact is that can attach your common sense, in order to understand things that may have seemed mysterious and scary to many. We will attempt to bring down those barriers.
A limit to the out-of-pocket cost for insulin. Click here to read. Note: a first look at this doesn't mean that a person avoids the coverage gap. Further, it seems that the "relief" is paid, in part by those that are not prescribed insulin. This comes from a discount, in part, from the Medicare system. A discount granted isn't the same thing as "pharmaceuticals are dropping the sticker price" of insulin. Therefore, that money has to come from somewhere. As always with pharmaceutical distribution, very complicated.
