Omens and Signs

I am watching Bob Schieffer's s for the show on President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.
Of course, it brings a tear to me eye.
However, we no longer have the time to spend so much time on history. We have things to do. Omens may abound.

I find the problems with President Obama's Affordable Care Act to be ominous.

I remember that in July or August of 2008, my mother was trying to cash in a CD or annuity she had with a bank in order to invest it in a luxury condo project in New York. She had a series of problems which extended over three months or more, all of which slowed things down.
My parents never asked my advice on anything, but I did look into this. The housing market was sky rocketing, and maybe I should get a piece of it.

But her problems made me focus on it. I thought of Caesar stumbling at the door on the Ides of March. I told her that perhaps there was a omen here, and that she should rethink the whole things.
Of course, she did not even hear me, probably. To get my mother to hear you, pay attention, and understand what you are saying takes an enormous investment of time. My brother's boy had an retinal operation the other day, and my brother said that in talking to our mother, he found she would slip immediately into some other story of some other person's eye ailments... or even ailments that had nothing to do with vision.

There are signs of trouble all around. A failure of such a nature is truly bizarre. So what's going on? A failure like that in the country that founded the Internet!
So now both political parties are working - not necessarily together - to fix it, but probably don't have any idea what's will happen.
To make matters worse, I can find no rational explanation for the "irrational exuberance" of the cost increases in American health care. It absolutely makes no sense, other than as a "irrational" phenomenon. The last irrational phenomenon was the Housing Bubble, and that brought us all grief.
Health Care costs are similar. The 1% of the rich cannot use enough health care and clinic time to support the wide range of health services at an elevated cost.

Then it will crash.
Again, maybe what we are seeing is the early tremors of that catastrophe.


--
note


(I have found it takes an unusual investment of time to communicate with my mother.
She had an X-Ray bill for $40 for a new pacemaker, and Medicare did not cover it; it did not cover it for the first time since she and my dad became covered by Medicare 25 years ago. So I said for her to get me the billings and documents, and she immediately started on a tirade about how Obama Care is making the elderly pay for their X-Rays.

This time I firmly told her to be quiet and to not say anything further about Obama Care. If she wanted to talk and complain about it, fine, but she would no longer waste my time chattering about it when what we were doing was looking into the $40 billing!

She got the message, then the papers.
We called the X-Ray people and they mentioned the possibility of the wrong Diagnosis Code. So we went to her doctor's office, and then to the hospital billing department.
We got it done.
But it was not easy to get her on board at first.)