hi, rarebird. i sympathize with your mother's arthritis predicament. it is lamentable that we have swallowed the placebo of universal health insurance like we have swallowed the placebo of universal fractional banking. having been self-insuring for the last 15 years or so, i do not have the difficulty in acquiring adequate supplies ahead of various needed medications.
i was able to convince our skeptical doctor of our need for mulitple scripts to be filled at multiple locations so that we as a family could accomplish our stated goal of medication requirements. i trust you will be able to devise a similar plan. i do not care if insurance will pay only a 30 days supply or not. that is part of the fractionalized nature of insurance co-pay plans for all drugs for those who do not choose to be self insuring.
i am not familiar with that drug regimen. however, there is a medical, backroom type, researcher of considerable note currently occasionally posting on this thread that probably could probably offer a cogent comment or two, if you ask him via private email. he, of course, knows who he is and would have to privately email you first and reveal his willingness to talk shop off the record. i trust he'll do so.
speaking of trust, isn't it just a pip in matters of urgency as brough to the surface by y2k to have to trust to a total cyber-'reality' such as e*mail to get straight answers to some of our consumer medical questions. oh, the weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth that is yet to befall us well into the next millenium.
yes, it IS amazing how unprepared the vast majority of people are.
in our own personal lives and i'm now it is a familiar strain to those like William Peavey, C.K. Houston, John Mansfield, and obviously yourself, what an 'inconvenience' this whole preparation thing has been.
it is no mystery to me why folks are unprepared. THIS PREPARATION STUFF IS WORK! HARD WORK! PRIORITY RE-SHUFFLING WORK! LOGISTICALLY a nightmare in our current housing, water, transportation, banking, food storage, fuel storage, medical supply storage, paper storage work.
and if THAT list wasn't sufficient enough to wilt the most weathered knees of a salty, career navy man like my tough old dad, the tremendous psychological CRANK/YANK from walking in the current technological world reality of all those conveniences to planning to do without the majority of them and ALL AT ONCE with no phasing out or gradual downsizing is enough to make most sane people I know, not only laugh uncontrollably at our family prepartions, but to also shun us when we need them the most.
leaving all this technology behind is a grieving process. and if there is anything we don't have time for in this world it is for DYING. Anything to do with dying, whether it is the gradual loss of second amendment freedoms, or dying computer hard drives, we hate dying in this nation. it is so far removed from the agrarian cycle of birth and death and birth again, that we are RUN HEADLONG the other way if something looks like change, especially change brought about by death of something or someone.
regarding your comment about henry kissinger, i would like to make sure you understand the man was quoted as saying he was taking all of his money out of BANKS, plural.
you ask if I think it is safe to keep any money in a bank or brokerage account. i guess safety from open outright theft is one matter i don't worry about. but theft by means of non-accessibility is totally something else. if you would ask a holocaust survivor if their passbooks and documentation of family wealth in the banks of germany and switzerland were safe, they'd probably say yes. if you'd ask them today if they can access it, they'd have to say NO, but we are suing them in a class action trying to get at least some of it back.
so, the answer to safety is yes, they've built a reputation on safety allright. afterall, just imagine how much effort you'd go to to get your fractional $1.00 out of every hundred you've put in there? it is already gone. of course it is safe in the bank. IT ISN'T THERE ANYMORE TO TAKE OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE, unless you are at the head of the line, so to speak.
as far as your gold bullion idea, i would like to share in private my supportive thoughts on that idea. check your pm.
regarding tring to sell when they skyrocket, it is my experience that those making markets will not have enough shares themselves to allow the prices to rally until they get their inventory filled, so i'm not expecting any great rally attempt in gold shares for a very very long time.
why don't you actually, physically buy a goldmine and wait? real estate will survive and that is what an actual goldmine is, a piece of real estate. a study of the depression showed real estate changed hands and rebuilt the fortunes of those who had cash to pick it up for cents on the dollar. funny thing is, that is what goldmining real estate is going for NOW: rock bottom prices PRE-y2k.
you couldn't give me a paper equity position in the current producers.
their costs are fixed and their balance sheets are bloated beyond belief by the corporate padding that can only occur in the lifestyles of the munks and von fricks of this world.
the fabulous money in hard times is always made by those fortunate to be early owners in an actual small (yes, labor intensive) operation in a good area that just needs the price of the product to be higher.
there are several such areas all over this great nation. the other way to make the big bucks, of course is in the holding of the product goldmines produce. thanks for writing. |
