Welcome to the Anglo Swiss World: Creative Challenge #222 - Yesterday

Welcome to the Anglo Swiss World: Creative Challenge #222 - Yesterday
 too funny , love it

Creative Challenge 222

What would we be without yesterday, 
Our past is the window to what we are,
The steps in the path of life's highway.
Love and laughter, the pain and sorrows,
Each battle won or lost, we made it this far,
Grateful that we have reached today
As we go onward toward our tomorrows.

~tee~

My friend the bird

This tiny bird kept me company during the long winter days, Iwas in a wheel chair and so was stuck in the house. there must have  been something good in that tree because that bird kept coming back.

Creative Challenge # 221~Fly~

The fly on the wall saw it all, 

The ducks had no say on this hot day

When the kids came to play, the fly flew away

~tee~

Looking back, a repost from multiply 2009

Funny how time flies. I was uploading my music and my pictures to my new computer. Talk about looking back! Kind of hard to believe that at 15 ,I was busy with girl scouts, my softball team, stock car races and friday night movies and trip to the A&W for a burger and a 5 cent root beer after the movie. That young snip of a thing had no idea what she was going to let herself in for, and thats an understatement!
Don't get me wrong, no matter what twists and turns my life made. No matter the hardships and disappointments. All the successes overwhelm all of the bad. We never forget the bad times. We put them away and hope they stay where we put them. I know some people live for the bad times, ( the poor me) syndrome and thats sad for them. To remember the good, the funny, the wacky times is what makes memories sweet.
Now days I wonder at the noise I hear called music. I wonder at the craziness of young girls trying to be old before their time. I am happy looking at sappy pictures listening to sappy music. The statler song, "the class of 57" is more like my life than what I see and hear today. Its probably just as well I am old, I do not have to to pretend to like any of it.
I can bet when my grand children are old , their grand children will say" OH GRANNY GET WITH IT" Times have changed. Of course they will have changed and lets hope the future gets a chance to find this out. Its when they stop changing that we are in trouble.

Faces

To all of the universe
How many faces do we show the world.

I remember being told that God sees everything.

As a child I was careful to be a good girl, God was watching. I took that to heart, even as an adult that reminder from my mother still niggled at the back of my mind. After reading how many emails about good luck and God loves me if I send the emails on to twenty other people. Or that God knows I am having trouble figuring out a problem. Maybe he/she does but by golly I really need to know does God do Emails?
Who the heck writes these things? I do not think God has people doing mass mailings to clog up the air like the lumberjacks swearing in a winter so cold that the swear words stayed frozen in the air until the spring thaw and then all any one could hear were the swear words as they thawed. I wonder if we will get drowned in the chain letters and  that are forwarded every second, Or will we start seeing these words as they float past us?

Time line for Obama care

2012

• Medicare cuts to dialysis treatment begin.
• Require information reporting on payments to corporations.
• Medicare to reduce spending by using an HMO-like coordinated care model (Accountable Care Organizations).
• Medicare Advantage plans with a 4 or 5 star rating receive a quality bonus payment.
• New Medicare cuts to inpatient psychiatric hospitals (7/1/12).
• Hospital pay-for-quality program begins (fiscal 2013).
• Medicare cuts to hospitals with high readmission rates begin (fiscal 2013).
• Medicare cuts to hospice begin (fiscal 2013).

2013

• Impose $2,500 annual cap on FSA contributions (indexed to CPI).
• Increase Medicare wage tax by 0.9% and impose a new 3.8% tax on unearned, non-active business income for those earning over $200,000 or $250,000 for families (not indexed to inflation).
• Generally increases (7.5% to 10%) threshold at which medical expenses, as a percentage of income, can be deductible.
• Eliminate deduction for Part D retiree drug subsidy employers receive. 
• Impose 2.3% excise tax on medical devices.  The result of this tax will be fewer innovative and life-saving medical devices, as this article demonstrates.
• Medicare cuts to hospitals which treat low-income seniors begin.
• Post-acute pay for quality reporting begins.
• CO-OP Program: Secretary of Health and Human Services awards loans and grants for establishing nonprofit health insurers.
• $500,000 deduction cap on compensation paid to insurance company employees and officers.
• Part D “donut hole” reduction begins, reaching a 25% reduction by 2020.

2014

• Individuals without government-approved coverage are subject to a tax of the greater of $695 or 2.5% of income.
• Employers who fail to offer “affordable” coverage would pay a $3,000 penalty for every employee that receives a subsidy through the Exchange.
• Employers who do not offer insurance must pay a tax penalty of $2,000 for every full-time employee.
• More Medicare cuts to home health begin.
• States must have established Exchanges.
• Employers with more than 200 employees can auto-enroll employees in health coverage, with opt-out.
• All non-grandfathered and Exchange health plans required to meet federally mandated levels of coverage.
• States must cover parents /childless adults up to 138% of poverty on Medicaid, receive increased FMAP.
• Tax credits available for Exchange-based coverage, amount varies by income up to 400% of poverty.
• Insurers cannot impose any coverage restrictions on pre-existing conditions (guaranteed issue/renewability).  The danger here is that people will wait until they are sick to obtain health insurance policies, which will ultimately cause private health insurance companies to be unable to offer new plans.  
• Modified community rating: individual or family coverage; geography; 3:1 ratio for age; 1.5:1 for smoking.
• Insurers must offer coverage to anyone wanting a policy and every policy has to be renewed.
• Limits out-of-pocket cost-sharing (tied to limits in HSAs, currently $5,950/$11,900 indexed to COLA). 
• Insurance plans must include government-defined “essential benefits ” and coverage levels.  The result of this mandate will be fewer consumer choices and higher prices for these comprehensive plans. 
• OPM must offer at least two multi-state plans in every state.
• Employers can offer some employees free choice vouchers for health insurance in the Exchange.
• Government board (IPAB) begins submitting proposals to cut Medicare.
• Impose tax on nearly all private health insurance plans.
• Medicare payment cuts for hospital-acquired infections begin (fiscal 2015).

2015

• More Medicare cuts to home health begin.

2016

• States can form interstate insurance compacts if the coverage with HHS approval (2016). 

2017

• Physician pay-for-quality program begins for all physicians.
• States may allow large employers and multi-employer health plans to purchase coverage in the Exchange.
• States may apply to the HHS Secretary for a limited waiver from certain federal requirements.

2018

• Impose “Cadillac tax on “high cost” plans, 40% tax on the benefit value above a certain threshold: ($10,200 individual coverage, $27,500 family or self-only union multi-employer coverage).

Creative Challenge~ Orange~

A repost but it fits the theme

 

I see the the sun as the eye of the universe

with the golden to red orange glow of the iris
with the moon as its pupil seeing us,
all knowing, and gone in a blink of the eye.

~tee~