I hear you, Tara. I find that people who have been lucky enough to remain employed through these turbulent years don't fully grasp how the combination of mass layoffs across sectors, a shrinking pool of white-collar jobs, and a hiring bias against age and experience have all come together in a perfect storm. Nothing, not the dot com crash nor the 2008 economic crisis nor the Covid crisis prepared me and so many peers for long-term unemployment, rationing medical care, and the frustration of having done everything "right" - in terms of education and career, only to be sidelined in our peak earning years. You speak for not hundreds, but thousands of people who are trying to navigate this new territory.
It's the new Trump economy. Homelessness, unemployment, and poverty, while the privileged have easy sailing, enjoying their tax loopholes and extra benefits.
My monthly ACA healthcare bill went from $460 to $790 due to the cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill. I’m upside down on the supposed tax savings from the BBB. Who’s talking about that?
Meantime, Dr. Oz and others say we should delay retirement. Sure, that’s what I planned to do until I was DOGEd. Now I remain unemployed despite over 400 applications, excellent education, and terrific work experience. Zero chance I’ll find a job in this environment. Ironically, I went fed because I was worried about age discrimination in the private sector.
For what it's worth, I am sorry this is happening to you. It sucks and it's awful.
One thing to consider is just not carrying health insurance until you find a new job that provides it. Because the health insurance offered to single users alone, is sort of a ridiculous loop that you can never afford when you are unemployed. Why? Because you don't have enough money!! Makes sense right? (smh).
I liked when Biden made it so all medical debt would not ruin a person's credit score, but trump took that away from everyone. However, I think it will be back. Vote blue no matter who. Really. Republicans lied to the American people and continue to let him destroy us. They do not care about American's healthcare, they care about the money they get via donations from the pharma industry.
So, let's say you rack up a medical debt due to an accident. Don't stress over it. Either don't pay for it at all, or pay what amount you can afford to pay every month. I am truly hopeful dems come up with Universal Healthcare for all. We've all been ripped off by medical companies for a century already. Do not let it run or ruin your whole life.
Stop paying for health insurance you don't intend to ever use because it's too expensive to use. lol see how silly it sounds? Because it is. Just my thoughts, good luck with the job hunt, I hope you get your YES soon. :)
I'm fortunate enough to be employed, but the LEAST expensive family option for healthcare through my employer is half my take-home pay. My wife is in a similar situation. We have a 10-year old to cover too. So, we can either piece together care from different insurers that's still too expensive, or we can forgo it altogether and put that monthly insurance payment into savings. I think that's what we're going to do. To build on what you said, even with insurance one big medical event is going to bankrupt most of us anyway, so why bother?
I don't think any meaningful change is going to come until people simply stop paying for this crap - whether it's overpriced insurance, taxes, or money to corporations and businesses that actively work to hurt us.
Lol agreed, I think of it this way, the government bailed out the banks millions of dollars during the 2008 housing crisis they, the bank, created. So, my $5k or so outstanding medical bill isn't hurting anyone but insurance companies. I am done caring if they destroy my credit.
Many medical payments on your credit report are even wrong. I had one carrier trying to charge me $5k for my son's ear surgery that my other health insurance carrier had already paid for at the time of the surgery. (My son's father passed away, so for a while as a baby he was on medicaid supplemental insurance, who fully paid for this surgery).
Amazing, but there it was on my credit report - the hospital claimed not to be paid, yet they were by Medicaid, and my former employers insurance carrier that was trying to double bill the hospital - turned me into credit for not paying a bill that was already previously paid. It's just a ridiculous cycle.
FYI, I worked for a mortgage bank for 4 years, we treated and considered medical debt with less concern than other debt. You could have quite a bit unpaid and still qualify for a home loan. But that was years ago, in a kinder America, now I am sure you would not.
Exactly right. Credit reports are so arbitrary. My student loan company made a mistake and didn't apply my payments to one of my loans for several months, so it was reported to the credit agencies as a missed payment. My credit took a ding and I didn't do anything wrong, and there's no way to fix it except wait.
I'm very disillusioned with the whole system. It seems to exist not to "promote the general welfare," but to enrich politicians and protect the wealthy.
I’m sorry, Tara. I’ve lived through three layoffs in my fifty-six years of working, and I will never forget the absolute terror of all of it. Family to feed, bills to pay, honor to one’s own principles, all crashing down at once. My heart hurts for you. I wish you all the best.
I’m with you, Tara. A 19 year old with no knowledge of what I did or how I did it fired me simply because I was still on standard probation for new federal employees. I remain unemployed, likely due to my age. I cannot afford to live in the DC area without a job, so I am moving to a lower cost of living area a few hours away. This means leaving my home of 25 years and, far worse, my adult children. I needed to work for several more years. Age discrimination in the private sector led me to think federal employment would be more secure. Sigh. Good luck to you.
Tara, I hear your pain. The world has never really been fair, but in your case, in this particular administration’s rule, it’s so bent and twisted, inequality and injustice prevail at scale. And you were caught in that mix by a sociopath dressed up as a businessman. Unfortunately, this is a system I recognize, like you, from the inside. I grew up in South Africa under apartheid, where the machinery of the state worked flawlessly—for the white minority it was built to serve. Healthcare, education, infrastructure, all of it functioning smoothly, provided you were white. Outside that circle, the same government that ran efficiently for some produced an even worse form of what you describe, Tara. The black people had no phones, no way of writing to a representative who didn’t even know they existed, and their only hope was to hang on to a passbook which granted them the right to try and find work. Most of them couldn’t even read it to determine if it was still valid. The cruelty was never a malfunction. It was the system operating precisely as intended for the people it was never designed to protect.
What your essay makes plain is that America doesn't need an apartheid statute to produce an apartheid outcome. You just need a government that guts contracts on a billionaire's whim, then guts the health coverage that would have let the people he displaced survive the fallout, and calls the whole thing efficiency. The view from the top is always rosy, because the people at the top built the glasses. Marie Antoinette is alive and well and living in the White Palace with titanium fencing and a bunker six stories down, and while the King admires his reflection in the new Reflecting Pool—what an ironic name, these days—a growing share of his subjects are rationing which symptom to treat this month because they can't afford all of them. Cake for him. Swill, and a ranked list of which pain is affordable, for everyone downstream of his decisions.
That's not a metaphor stretched to fit. It's the same architecture, rebuilt in a country that told itself, for two hundred and fifty years, that it would never bow down to a king.
All this points to the critical need for some form of a one-payer health care system. And maybe even Medicare for all. Give Medicare the authority to negotiate drugs, hospital costs, primary and specialists' care. Leave private insurers to prey on the rich. Other countries have good, workable versions of this. DOGE may have forced the necessary national conversation to the forefront. It is simply wrong that this country has the most expensive system for far less than optimal care. Marian Wright Edelman was certainly on right when she said, "We don't have a money problem; we have a values and priorities problem."
I hear you, Tara. I find that people who have been lucky enough to remain employed through these turbulent years don't fully grasp how the combination of mass layoffs across sectors, a shrinking pool of white-collar jobs, and a hiring bias against age and experience have all come together in a perfect storm. Nothing, not the dot com crash nor the 2008 economic crisis nor the Covid crisis prepared me and so many peers for long-term unemployment, rationing medical care, and the frustration of having done everything "right" - in terms of education and career, only to be sidelined in our peak earning years. You speak for not hundreds, but thousands of people who are trying to navigate this new territory.
It's the new Trump economy. Homelessness, unemployment, and poverty, while the privileged have easy sailing, enjoying their tax loopholes and extra benefits.
My monthly ACA healthcare bill went from $460 to $790 due to the cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill. I’m upside down on the supposed tax savings from the BBB. Who’s talking about that?
According to some "experts" 40 is retirement age.
Over the hill used to be a joke.
Now it's reality.
If anyone has had a lifelong career, finding employment over the age of 39 is nearly impossible.
Skills don't matter, youth does.
But hey, at least they're cute.
Meantime, Dr. Oz and others say we should delay retirement. Sure, that’s what I planned to do until I was DOGEd. Now I remain unemployed despite over 400 applications, excellent education, and terrific work experience. Zero chance I’ll find a job in this environment. Ironically, I went fed because I was worried about age discrimination in the private sector.
For what it's worth, I am sorry this is happening to you. It sucks and it's awful.
One thing to consider is just not carrying health insurance until you find a new job that provides it. Because the health insurance offered to single users alone, is sort of a ridiculous loop that you can never afford when you are unemployed. Why? Because you don't have enough money!! Makes sense right? (smh).
I liked when Biden made it so all medical debt would not ruin a person's credit score, but trump took that away from everyone. However, I think it will be back. Vote blue no matter who. Really. Republicans lied to the American people and continue to let him destroy us. They do not care about American's healthcare, they care about the money they get via donations from the pharma industry.
So, let's say you rack up a medical debt due to an accident. Don't stress over it. Either don't pay for it at all, or pay what amount you can afford to pay every month. I am truly hopeful dems come up with Universal Healthcare for all. We've all been ripped off by medical companies for a century already. Do not let it run or ruin your whole life.
Stop paying for health insurance you don't intend to ever use because it's too expensive to use. lol see how silly it sounds? Because it is. Just my thoughts, good luck with the job hunt, I hope you get your YES soon. :)
I'm fortunate enough to be employed, but the LEAST expensive family option for healthcare through my employer is half my take-home pay. My wife is in a similar situation. We have a 10-year old to cover too. So, we can either piece together care from different insurers that's still too expensive, or we can forgo it altogether and put that monthly insurance payment into savings. I think that's what we're going to do. To build on what you said, even with insurance one big medical event is going to bankrupt most of us anyway, so why bother?
I don't think any meaningful change is going to come until people simply stop paying for this crap - whether it's overpriced insurance, taxes, or money to corporations and businesses that actively work to hurt us.
Lol agreed, I think of it this way, the government bailed out the banks millions of dollars during the 2008 housing crisis they, the bank, created. So, my $5k or so outstanding medical bill isn't hurting anyone but insurance companies. I am done caring if they destroy my credit.
Many medical payments on your credit report are even wrong. I had one carrier trying to charge me $5k for my son's ear surgery that my other health insurance carrier had already paid for at the time of the surgery. (My son's father passed away, so for a while as a baby he was on medicaid supplemental insurance, who fully paid for this surgery).
Amazing, but there it was on my credit report - the hospital claimed not to be paid, yet they were by Medicaid, and my former employers insurance carrier that was trying to double bill the hospital - turned me into credit for not paying a bill that was already previously paid. It's just a ridiculous cycle.
FYI, I worked for a mortgage bank for 4 years, we treated and considered medical debt with less concern than other debt. You could have quite a bit unpaid and still qualify for a home loan. But that was years ago, in a kinder America, now I am sure you would not.
Exactly right. Credit reports are so arbitrary. My student loan company made a mistake and didn't apply my payments to one of my loans for several months, so it was reported to the credit agencies as a missed payment. My credit took a ding and I didn't do anything wrong, and there's no way to fix it except wait.
I'm very disillusioned with the whole system. It seems to exist not to "promote the general welfare," but to enrich politicians and protect the wealthy.
I’m sorry, Tara. I’ve lived through three layoffs in my fifty-six years of working, and I will never forget the absolute terror of all of it. Family to feed, bills to pay, honor to one’s own principles, all crashing down at once. My heart hurts for you. I wish you all the best.
I’m with you, Tara. A 19 year old with no knowledge of what I did or how I did it fired me simply because I was still on standard probation for new federal employees. I remain unemployed, likely due to my age. I cannot afford to live in the DC area without a job, so I am moving to a lower cost of living area a few hours away. This means leaving my home of 25 years and, far worse, my adult children. I needed to work for several more years. Age discrimination in the private sector led me to think federal employment would be more secure. Sigh. Good luck to you.
The PAIN, the CRUELTY, the HARM that this man and his party have caused! All so UNNECESSARY! I am deeply sorry for your suffering.
Tara, I hear your pain. The world has never really been fair, but in your case, in this particular administration’s rule, it’s so bent and twisted, inequality and injustice prevail at scale. And you were caught in that mix by a sociopath dressed up as a businessman. Unfortunately, this is a system I recognize, like you, from the inside. I grew up in South Africa under apartheid, where the machinery of the state worked flawlessly—for the white minority it was built to serve. Healthcare, education, infrastructure, all of it functioning smoothly, provided you were white. Outside that circle, the same government that ran efficiently for some produced an even worse form of what you describe, Tara. The black people had no phones, no way of writing to a representative who didn’t even know they existed, and their only hope was to hang on to a passbook which granted them the right to try and find work. Most of them couldn’t even read it to determine if it was still valid. The cruelty was never a malfunction. It was the system operating precisely as intended for the people it was never designed to protect.
What your essay makes plain is that America doesn't need an apartheid statute to produce an apartheid outcome. You just need a government that guts contracts on a billionaire's whim, then guts the health coverage that would have let the people he displaced survive the fallout, and calls the whole thing efficiency. The view from the top is always rosy, because the people at the top built the glasses. Marie Antoinette is alive and well and living in the White Palace with titanium fencing and a bunker six stories down, and while the King admires his reflection in the new Reflecting Pool—what an ironic name, these days—a growing share of his subjects are rationing which symptom to treat this month because they can't afford all of them. Cake for him. Swill, and a ranked list of which pain is affordable, for everyone downstream of his decisions.
That's not a metaphor stretched to fit. It's the same architecture, rebuilt in a country that told itself, for two hundred and fifty years, that it would never bow down to a king.
I have ALS from COVID.
All this points to the critical need for some form of a one-payer health care system. And maybe even Medicare for all. Give Medicare the authority to negotiate drugs, hospital costs, primary and specialists' care. Leave private insurers to prey on the rich. Other countries have good, workable versions of this. DOGE may have forced the necessary national conversation to the forefront. It is simply wrong that this country has the most expensive system for far less than optimal care. Marian Wright Edelman was certainly on right when she said, "We don't have a money problem; we have a values and priorities problem."