"OWS - Where have they gone?"

[MADem]

54. How nice of you. I pay for my medical -- it's not expensive as I am a military retiree.

Were I not, as a MA resident, I could get affordable insurance. Were I broke, the state foots the bill.

My entire state is a "nearly free clinic" for the poor. It doesn't rely on volunteers who could die, move, or decide they don't want to volunteer anymore, either. The "urgent care clinic" is something below the level of an emergency room, that does walk in service around the clock, and they're popping up everywhere, so it's not like people have no choice but a family doc or the ER, anymore. And if you need hospital care, you get it.

Example: I know someone who was unemployed, whose unemployment insurance had run out, who had a massive stroke. Commonwealth Care paid for top notch hospital care, a month in the best rehab facility in the state (the one Teresa Hines just came out of, in fact) and follow on care and a visiting nurse. No charge. He got a brace for his leg made, also free. He's now on disability and managing to keep his head above water. He sees a doc regularly -- that's free--and he does pay for his prescriptions, about 12 bucks a month for four prescriptions, and he gets free test strips and needles for his diabetes.

Your example is not typical, you know. One swallow does not a summer make. The energy OWS generated did not produce the expected fallout and the Great Big Change that was promised--that is the point I am making and I believe it is a valid one. A few people in a bus volunteering to give free medical care is nice, but it's just one place. And it's not original by a long shot--when I was a university student without medical insurance, I went to a "free clinic" too, in a basement of a "bad neighborhood" tenement--and that was many, many decades ago. A crew of people preventing the sheriff from foreclosing on people here or there is nice, but it's a band aid on a gaping wound. It's not the "Wall Street Accountability" that was advertised.

The OWS people spent too much time yelling at the wrong people about unimportant stuff. Instead of demanding their right to camp out in winter, they should have used those millions people sent in to rent a cheap place and run their operation out of it. They ignored the big issues and spent too much time hollering about their right to pitch tents in parks, while those "banksters" laughed all the way to the bank, because their opponents were so easily distracted.

And then it just....melted away.