Friday, February 19, 2016

And another thing.......

Well that didn't work...!  Fourteen months later and my promise to post more yielded absolutely nothing.  My only excuse is that the same hindrances that kept me on the sidelines in 2014 raised their ugly heads in 2015 as well.  I am hopeful that 2016 will be different.

It is a bit in one way already.  According to the federal government I have already turned 60 years old.  Good for me that I've made it this far. Turning 59 1/2 on February 12th (an extra day because of the leap year) causes the powers that be to consider me to be 60, so I can now access my IRA & 401k funds without penalty. Yippee! I get my own money back.

On the writing front there is a strong possibility that I am the featured Op-Ed contributor to the Ellijay Times-Courier this week.  The hospital there is in danger of closing and it is all because of the short-sighted Georgia government not accepting the additional Medicaid funding due to them. Since over 20% of Gilmer county lives below the poverty level and the median income is $10k below the state average there are a bunch of people with an eligibility gap that seek free care at the hospital ER as their primary source of health care. Free care which gets no reimbursement to the hospital, which they eat, but can no longer afford to do.

So I wrote a letter to the editor pointing these things out. He liked it so much that he asked me for a photo and background info to run it as an Op-Ed piece.  Now this will not sit well with the Republican majority in Gilmer county as this viewpoint is farther left than they can see.  But it doesn't change the facts one bit and the hospital will still close, which is bad for business. Which is a very Republican stance, so I guess I am screwed either way.

Anyway, thanks to my good friend D-Ray for pointing out to me that The Soggy Footwell needed to be updated with something a little more current than December of 2014.