Agree on VA and unions. Sometimes VA is PITA, won’t help us expats, but beats privatization by miles.
Yes, the VA is a pain in the ass sometimes. Still, in my book, it beats the profit driven, private sector insurance dominated health care system where insurance agents, members of the real death panels, that has nothing to do with health care, decides our fate, if we live or die.
I was born into a family living in poverty. I was three or four when my dad was hired into a union construction job and poverty was left behind. He retired in his 50s after one of his 30 something coworkers died in his arms on a hot day.
I joined the Marines out of high school and ended in Vietnam after book camp at MCRD.
Our parents never graduated from high school.
I went to college with help from the GI Bill, part time jobs and eventually a student loan to get through the fifth year after the GI Bill ended.
At 30, I earned my teaching credential through a year long urban residency and taught 30 years in one school district in a middle and then high school with dangerous, multi-generational street gangs and a child poverty rate of 70% and higher. That was a union job. When I retired in 2005, I took a 40% pay cut and left without medical.
Because I’d served in combat, the VA became my medical provider in 2006. I don’t care how many people complain about the VA medical system. After having had private medical as a teacher, I think the VA is a lot better that what I had as a teacher.
I grew up in a union family. What would have been called a mid to lower middle class family. My dad, a despicable man, was railroad union all his life and never gave up union rights even as he moved into management. Probably the only honorable thing he did. Mom was an old time school teacher, you know when they actually taught, that was union. She retired after 40 yrs. when I entered the Marine Corps in 1964. When I got out I went straight to the boilermaker’s union hall and signed up. The retirement plans along with the medical the unions had brought paid through their care until death without costing me or the estate one single dime, including nursing home. Unions made the middle class what it was and while they have had problems they are the only solution to employee rights and care. Union forever!
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