Well, I finally got to see the plans I qualify for on the federal exchange.

[Dragonfli]

309. I came from a similar background, we went from lower middle class to struggling poor when my

step-father was laid off from Bethlehem Steel when off-shoring first began, it was started when cheaper Chinese steel was opened up and our steel industry was for all intents and purposes dismantled as manufacturers used the slightly cheaper (yet inferior) Chinese steel to feed their bottom line.

It was also the beginning of large companies being suddenly allowed to steal pensions to pay their debts and somehow legally renege on paying the benefits of those pensions to the workers THAT PAYED THE MONEY into the pension fund via a large deduction from each paycheck the entire time they worked there. My step father had worked there for 25 years and had earned a pension from the fund, but was told to go pound salt. The company got to keep it thus enabling management to leave well off with no pain (they kept their pensions and health insurance after all the closings).

I went from a humble but managing home (renters not owners) with employer provided health insurance that managed decent meals and even Christmas presents to the poorest neighborhood in Buffalo, nearly overnight. In our new series of apartments (we moved allot usually from bad to worse apartments) I also went from being an honor student in a good school to a prisoner in a school that could not afford many books or teachers and actually chained the doors (literal chains strung through the handles while we were inside, one wonders where the fire marshals were). My step father went from a decent guy to a miserable drunk that was abusive and unable to get work good enough to do better for us. I went from an honor student to a 14 year old kid that skipped school to work for local house painters under the table to feed money to my mother that did what she could with part time work to help the family but who payed a price for "shaming" my step father by working and trying to supplement his income. When I realized that my presence made it worse for her (my presence angered him) I left home at 15 and his abuse leveled off to just verbally destroying her, a small victory but all I could help with as she would not leave him.

I flopped from house to house afraid of the system, always poor homes that oddly enough were the people willing to help and shelter me, the poor were who took care of me, not the middle class people of the 'burbs, so I learned very well what they all lived first hand. When the schools caught up with me my step father did one final thing that was somewhat kind, he let me claim I lived at his house and kept me out of the system that had put many of my peers in abusive foster care. I got the judge to allow me to quite 3 months before my sixteenth birthday after a year of truancy because I told him I would quit then anyway legally and he saw no need to punish me by placing me in custody which I thought wold be a done deal. I kept working in the trades and flopping until my first apartment at 16 with six others. After a while I became skilled in three separate trades and by the age of 25 I was finally able to get out of poverty but still (not knowing anyone in the carpenters or painters union to get me in) remained uninsured because none of the non-union small contractors that I worked for offered health plans to employees.

Health insurance remained out of reach until I was married, middle aged and shifted my carrier to furniture building and mill-work (an environment that offered expensive but available insurance). when I finally tried to use it for my wife we discovered she had breast cancer that because she avoided using the insurance because it would hurt our budget, she let go longer than she might have (until I demanded she get checked out what she thought was a cyst that caused her pain). The insurance company made sure that before her many treatments ended in her death, ALL OF OUR SAVINGS and CREDIT were wiped out, so I know insurance is too expensive even if you do have it and can use up savings and credit for the many added costs they use to discourage care.

I know just about every perspective there is on health care, including medicaid that I use now because after the funeral I had to end the policy because debt left me no money to continue the policy. My health deteriorated for lack of care until I could no longer work, untreated high blood pressure, un-diagnosed pulmonary hypertension that leaves me breathless walking to the bathroom and an undiscovered hepatitis c, that appears to have been attacking me since the homemade tattoos I received among my many room mates as a teenager, so long it seams that my liver ravaged by cirrhosis is border-lining decompensation already. I have known my health sucked because I had to keep reducing hours but could not get care until I couldn't work at all anymore and finally with no income became eligible for medicaid about two years ago. A fun side fact, I applied for SSD two years ago because I couldn't work and had more than enough paid in to qualify, except I was refused, twice, the second time by a magistrate that ruled that although only light work could be done by me at this point I should still be able to get a job in an office, what bullshit, I did some drafting and design work at the wood-shop so he felt at my age a career in office work is open to me somehow, ignoring many of the symptoms that would require even that could only be done part time at best and with many days called in sick, sure easy judge, I'll get right on that, there are likely hundreds of employers dying to hire me at late middle age and with severe health problems in a new carrer as "office worker" (another clueless soul)

One thing I've learned is this insurance solution is more of a problem than many realize. Another thing I know is several differing levels of poverty and that during my whole life only true liberals and other poor people were ever willing help me or anybody, I have rebuilt and created additions and furniture for hundreds of cul de sac "middle classers" and know their blindness and often lack of empathy very well.

I did not just offer a guess as an opinion, I offered a lifetime of experience and I am quite sure I got it right. Still so few believe what I posted about the class issue is true, only true liberals and other poor people, sort of as expected.