Category: #editorial

Why I Hate Insurance Companies

jamie

Insurance seems like a good idea. You pay some money each month in case bad stuff happens. If bad stuff happens, somebody else pays to fix the damages.
But then it creeps into every corner of our lives. We insure our cars, our homes, our health, and more. Our lives.

Then the insurance company decides to cancel your policy. When they think you’ve become a bad risk (for whatever reason they choose), they can just decide to kiss you goodbye. Sometimes they don’t even explain why. That would make it easier for you to appeal their decision…if you can figure out how.

So, now you can’t drive because you can’t get car insurance. Or your bank calls in the mortgage on your home because they get notified that their investment is no longer protected. If you can’t find coverage, they can foreclose on your house.Losing your health insurance can literally kill you.
Some states have laws to protect your rights, and help for those who can’t find insurance at all. I’m guessing it’s far from universal, and if anything like NY, hard to even find out about, much less apply for help.

Which brings me to our tragic tale, which I think is important to show the kind of absolute testicular vise-grip that the insurance industry has over our lives. They make the rules, and they expect us to bend the knee. This writing is me, refusing to yield.

Welcome to New York (NY welcome sign pic)

New York State is a beautiful place. Utica is a wonderful little city. But the insurance company that shares it’s name, UTICA National Insurance? Not so much. #UticaNationalInsurance is a legit dumpster fire. I don’t usually rant specifically about a named company unless I’m convinced that the world needs to know just how bad we’re talking about. Oh, It’s BAD.

Utica National Insurance is actually a Texas corporation, so they are just exploiting the name (Utica logo pic)

A few weeks after we moved in, UTICA started sending nasty notes threatening to cancel the policy if we didn’t cooperate with their inspection. Apparently, we’d been ignoring calls from “Mueller Reports” that were inadvertently blocked as spam. Seriously. “Mueller Reports.” Oops. My bad.

It ain’t much, but it’s all ours.
#NoMortgage #OurFarm (Pic)

OK. So, we bought a cute little fixer-up farm house, in a little upstate town near Ithaca, NY. We knew it needed some work, but nothing major. We had it inspected. Everything was basically working, and there were no major safety risks. As we waited for the closing our old house, we made a list of all the things we wanted to fix, once we had the money from the sale.

A couple days later, the inspector showed up and I walked around with him throughout his visit. He was helpful. He pointed some stuff out. There were some obvious things, like a missing railing we weren’t sure was required. I pointed out a couple problems I’m sure he also saw, and explained how we would be addressing them. He didn’t test anything. He just looked at it.

He also asked a lot of questions that we, as brand new homeowners, knew nothing about.
-We didn’t know the wood stove was installed professionally, because it was here when we got here. One demerit.
-We didn’t know that the older heating system was an EXCELLENT system, with a LIFETIME WARRANTY on the heat exchanger, fully transferrable. We didn’t know, because we didn’t have it serviced yet because we just moved in. Two Demerits. Now UTICA wants a perfectly good furnace REPLACED.
-The inspector pointed out a small amount of moss on the garage/kitchen roof. He said it should get cleaned off before it becomes a problem, but it’s wasn’t that bad. UTICA says: REPLACE the ROOF. In the middle of winter. Demerit #3.
-We bought the house knowing that siding on one wall needed to be redone. Three windows in the same wall also were slated for replacement. Thanks to a leaky oil tank found in the yard of our old house during the sale, causing months of delays and lack of cash, this project got pushed to this coming Spring. UTICA of course wants all the siding replaced and repaired in the middle of winter. Demerit #4.
-There’s an old wooden Bilco-style door to the basement that needs replacement this spring. Water leaks around the door and there’s some seepage due to standing surface water and lack of gutters and drainage. The water dried up completely this winter, so it’s not from plumbing. A drainage and gutter project is the top of the list for when the ice melts and the ground thaws this spring. Demerits anyway. #5 and #6.

There’s probably a couple others I missed, but the point is, most of these are minor hazards at best, in terms of safety and risk. Some are blatantly wrong, like demanding a furnace be replaced or a wood stove be inspected because we didn’t have the chimney cleaned before we moved in (and because the inspection they DID wasn’t good enough).

Here’s the worst though. Two days before Christmas…no shit, December 23. I get an email from my agent. She tells me, she just talked to the adjuster from Utica. They want a whole bunch of stuff fixed in 45 days, or they will cancel 30 says later. She included the “Mueller Report” that I was required by law to get a copy of.

Utica National Insurance – The Grinch the Stole Christmas (Grinch Pic)

I reviewed the report. It didn’t specify exactly what needed to be fixed. It was just the report that Utica’s adjuster supposedly based his decisions on, not the decisions themselves. My agent’s list of items needing to be addressed seemed random and incomplete. I also told her that re-roofing in January wasn’t going to happen, and that UTICA needed to be reasonable on their time frame. I further advised her that I would wait until I got the official notification from Utica, and respond directly to Utica upon receipt.
I never got a thing. Not a word, from UTICA or my agent. Until this past Saturday Feb 26 when I got a cancellation notice. 30 days. March 27. Alrighty then.

So, apparently the 45 days have been ticking away, and Utica felt no need nor obligation to actually contact me directly until now. Why actually give me 45 days to fix stuff in the middle of winter in Upstate NY?

It’s pretty clear that they don’t want my business. They’ve been treating me like a criminal or confidence man, since they wrote the policy last summer.

As if I was plotting some heinous future insurance fraud or something. Which is ironic as hell, considering we were the victim of a fraudulent hit and run auto claim, and UTICA REFUSES to actually investigate themselves, forcing me to fight with the police for information that UTICA should be requesting, not me. The police inspected our vehicle (and found no damage) 60 minutes after the supposed accident. All Utica needs to do is pick up the phone and dial the numbers and talk to the cops. Ask for the full report. Nope, that’s my job.

UTICA would rather persecute their customers. They are going to cancel our insurance because the furnace looks old and there’s moss on the roof. Meanwhile, a road raging asshat files a false police accident report that 3 people in our car can testify never happened, and they REFUSE to investigate, putting the burden of proof (and to keep my rates from going up due to a hit-and-run claim) squarely on me.

Are you kidding me? How can they do this?

How can Utica National Insurance be this inept and stay in business? How is it that huge insurance companies can do whatever they want and get away with it? Because they have the biggest Congressional lobbies on K Street. Because they know we can’t do anything to hurt them. Because their profits are ‘regulated’ too.

Jamie Gray (pic)| Writer Refuses to Bend the Knee to Insurance Dictatorship.

Did you get here? If so, I love you. Thanks for reading my rant. ~jg

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Fuck Insurance (Especially health insurance).

jamie

All insurance is a scam. Health Insurance is a fucking crime.
You have insurance, you think, ‘Cool I’m covered’. But nope…you still have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. How is that fair?

Insurance should be fucking insurance. I get sick. I’m insured. Insurance fucking pays, not me. It’s not really insurance if they get you coming and going. You pay all that money up front…every month…hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands per year. Sometimes they take it right out of your paycheck, before you ever see it.

Then you get sick. You give em the card, cross your fingers and pray. Deductible here. CoPay there. Deny this. Pro-rated that. You get out of the hospital, and before your recovery is even complete, they start coming: A bill from this doctor you don’t remember. A charge for this test and that screening. You haven’t even gotten back to work, and you’re buried in red ink.

What the fuck people. How is THIS the ‘best’ healthcare? If they save your life and then take your house to cover the cost…and that’s if you HAVE insurance. If you don’t, good luck even getting the services you need. When they know they aren’t getting paid, they somehow manage to do the barest minimum. Imagine that. For-Profit Hospitals putting profits above the best healthcare for all. WhoDaThunk?

Fuck Capitalism. Services like healthcare, police, fire, EMS, ambulance, military, prisons, education. These should NEVER be privatized. Everyone has the right to the best services we can provide when it comes to health and safety. People shouldn’t have to worry about paying the bills for these services. It should be included in our taxes, even if they are a little higher.

Separate but equal doesn’t work any more in healthcare than it does in education. Haves and have-nots alike should be protected from harm as citizens of an advanced and equitable society. Exploitation and greed have no place competing with the Hippocratic Oath for healthcare dollars. Those dollars are best spent on research, not drug commercials, dividends and CEO salaries.

The only way you do that is to get rid of the insurance companies and big pharma. Our universities, properly funded by tax dollars, could be an amazing core of medical research and medicine development…for the good of ALL, not just the shareholders and board of directors. No more price gouging on critical medicines. No more rationing of new medical treatments to the well-to-do and connected.

That’s what socialized medicine could be. It doesn’t have to be a poorly designed and inequitable system. There are plenty of examples of socialized medicine around the world that are models for a better standard of care than ours.

Healthcare is a human right, in a society that has advanced to the point where we CAN CHOOSE between profit and doing the right thing.

Do we really want to be THAT country? The one that chooses profits? Because WE have a choice. ~jg

New York writer and musician, Jamie Gray

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Better is Better

jamie

It’s a circus. A dog and pony show, of lies, half truths, and propaganda, moderated mostly by the honor system, as actual journalism has devolved into a mass-media marketing scheme. Competing corporate overlords selling the particular brand of fear they think you’re most likely to buy. When in truth, they should be afraid of YOU.

Here’s the thing about modern American politics: They want us to argue, to the point of complete distraction if at all possible, about big picture shit that is really hard to change. Both parties want the same thing.
They want us at each other’s throats over masks and vaccines, instead of just wearing them. They chide us on, to defend or attack the right to be an idiot vs. social responsibility and acting in the common good. Respecting the rights of all the other idiots.
But what they DON’T want us to do is to learn to communicate with each other.

Uncle Sam is a Corporate Tool.

They ply us with contradictory information. Some of it’s true, but they make it all seem true. That way when we discuss it, nobody can easily agree on the facts. Close scrutiny will reveal the truth eventually, but who has time for that? By the time the truth comes out, the ‘facts’ don’t even matter, thanks to the hype.

It’s a circus. A dog and pony show, of lies, half truths, and propaganda, moderated mostly by the honor system, as actual journalism has devolved into a mass-media marketing scheme. Competing corporate overlords selling the particular brand of fear they think you’re most likely to buy. When in truth, they should be afraid of YOU.

Corporate News is Not Journalism. Take the time to find The Truth.

Someday, I hope Americans will wake up and realize they deserve better than lip service. We deserve great things.

‘We live in the greatest country in the world’. That’s what they say. I beg to differ.

The greatest country in the world would be at the top of every list. Education. Happiness. Poverty. Healthcare. Crime. Violence. Civil rights. Wellness. Climate change. Sustainability. Incarceration. Mental health. Innovation. Productivity. Renewable energy. Manufacturing. We don’t lead the world in ANY of these important issues.

Poverty in America rivals many ‘third world’ nations. Education sucks. Don’t get me started about healthcare. It’s fine if you can afford it.

The United States of America: It’s fine if you can afford it.

We may have the most powerful military in the world, but even that’s not going to last long. We’re diving deeper and deeper into a national debt we can never repay, to fund wars on terrorism, which are really just thinly veiled political power plays, economic plunder at the expense of the indigenous people who really just want to be left alone to live their lives.

If every American could just go to the doctor without worrying about money, that would be great. If every kid had the opportunity for a GREAT education, and no one had to worry about being homeless in their old age, people would say THAT is great. If we sent food to the hungry, instead of missiles and tanks to their government: greatness.

People in many countries live a better life than we do, here in the States. Free healthcare. A social security system that works. Clean power fueling sustainable industries. Great free education for all. We have plenty of opportunities to become a great country. Truthfully, we’ve been a greater country before. The MAGA folks are at least partly right. We were far from perfect, but we used to lead the world in something other than greed and exploitation, before we lost our way.

We’ve given the keys to our future to a few powerful people, people who control corporations, which control our government. Corporations are very good at doing one thing: maximizing profits. THAT’S how they’ve managed to get people to work sixty hours a week and STILL not earn a living wage. Life isn’t better than it was fifty years ago for most Americans. Even most rich people don’t feel like things are better. Many wealthy people are preoccupied with losing everything, all the time.

Protecting rich people is so much more important than protecting poor people.

Why? Because, the rich are better than everyone else, of course. Wealthy people are simply more entitled to human rights than other people, simply because they have money, and…they’re just fucking entitled. That’s just ‘how it is’.

We let this happen. We allow a system to exist that causes this to be true, despite our ability to make demands enforced by democratic action (OUR VOTES). The system doesn’t have to be like this. It doesn’t have to be like it used to be, in order to magically get better. Think about that. It just makes no fucking sense.

Vote. It counts. Otherwise the minority, GOP assholes wouldn’t keep trying to suppress it.

The system has to get BETTER to get better. Better for EVERYONE, not just the elite. Not just for some people. Better in the things that matter. Change must benefit the majority to have a positive effect. Better.

I say, how about we try making things ‘better’ first and THEN maybe we can talk about ‘great’.

Greatness isn’t just a claim you make to impress people over cocktails. Greatness is easily recognizable. Greatness lasts. Truly great things stand the test of time. Some even improve with age. ~jg

Jamie Gray – Musician & Writer

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Uncommon Sense

jamie

Common sense is a paradox. Having common sense is not common at all. What seems common sense to you, may not be obvious to other people, and many people just don’t have any common sense at all. Some people just act irrationally. Even if they claim it’s by design, that doesn’t make it sensible.

So much about life today is paradox. Almost no one is who they seem, as much as who they want you to see them as. Even our leaders have abandoned Truth and Logic for lies and deceptions.

I’ve always thought that most people ‘get it’. I figured, a small minority may be clueless, while most people understand things. More or less. That’s what I thought. Used to think.

…our Leaders have abandoned Truth and Logic…

It’s easy enough to look back and ask if what you did made sense, but it’s also hard to look at our mistakes objectively. It’s much easier to ACT as if we’re smart and just ignore our own ignorance.

Lately, it’s become clear that those of us who truly think about what we’re doing, and whether it makes sense, we are a drastic minority.

Talk about a paradox. ~jg

Jamie Gray – Musician, Writer, Thinker

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Or 1 N Big 9 S 8 Brother A 4 Well

jamie

…”They have some pretty slick AI that screens for connections and the tell-tale hearts of anti-american hostility and malcontent. It sniffs it out chunks of terrorist cholesterol from the Internet’s arteries, as gigabytes of data streams past their hidden packet snatchers.”…

They know you already. You don’t have to believe it for it to be true, and knowing the truth doesn’t make you crazy. Unless they need you to be, and generally speaking, they don’t.

So…Once the NSA knows-that-you-know that they ‘listen’ to everything you do online, it’s basically #GameOn. Are you a subversive? Who are your followers? Who do you follow? Are any of them ‘terrorists‘? Because since 2001, that’s the best way for the .gov folks to shut down the voices that are violent. Preach revolt. Or maybe just make too much sense. 

We’re Watching. ~The NSA

I know they’re watching me. Because they watch everything. Everyone. They have some pretty slick AI that screens for connections and the tell-tale hearts of anti-american hostility and malcontent. It sniffs it out chunks of terrorist cholesterol from the Internet’s arteries, as gigabytes of data streams past their hidden packet snatchers. Filters the digital goo. Combs thru it all, looking for nuggets of evil against Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam Towers Above The Danbury CT Railroad Museum

Good ol’ patriotic malcontent used to be ok, back in the day. You can still say the government sucks, if you’re careful, but thanks to the MAGA Revolution, we now know that even patriots can be terrorists…and so does the NSA. Even a gentle grumble can raise the AI hackles these days, which flags you for human eyes to review your dossier. Everyone’s got a dossier if they have any sort of online presence at all. I bet you think you don’t, but if you’re reading this, you know me, so they definitely have you in their crosshairs too.

The good news is, as long as you don’t go too far, they would rather just keep watching. Of course, if you suddenly ‘radicalize’ by plotting violence, or maybe worse, disappear from the Web, don’t be surprised if that generic panel van parked on your street is full of feds with heat tracing cameras and parabolic mics. These are scary times…it makes sense. Sort of. In hugely Orwellian fashion.

Jamie Gray|Musician and Writer

I suppose I should worry. I talk a lot about revolution and rebellion. I DO think the government sucks. But I’d never condone violence, except in self-defense. And I’d never advocate for a coup. I think we SHOULD overturn our government…from inside. Through VOTES and legislation and policy. Kick the moneychangers out of the temple of democracy, so to speak. Voting and peaceful protest. Through free speech, empathy and kindness, educating people to see the corruption that is right in front of them, and show them how to be a part of the solution rather than a victim of a system that pretends to care.

I’m not a threat to anybody’s safety. I’m an advocate for a better America. One that takes care of the little guy…and the victim. An America like they told us about in Civics class. Do they even teach Civics anymore?

Most importantly, I’m not a threat to the status quo. Nobody actually listens to me. I’m just a crazy old guy on a couch, with a guitar, a remote control, and a lot of ideas. If I ask my followers to do anything, most of them might get around to doing something. 
If it’s not too hard or uncomfortable.
Someday. Soon, for sure.
One of my favorite songs puts it best: 
“I’d start a revolution…
…If I could get up in the morning”. 
~ Aimee Allen

Thanks for reading to the end. Please #Vote. ~jg

“I’d Start a Revolution (If I Could Get Up in the Morning)” Aimee Allen

Aimee Allen

Problems Solved. Available for hire.

jamie

I solve problems. I believe have a solution to everything. It’s who I am at the core, I suppose. Please don’t judge me if I try to solve yours.

When I look at the absolute mess in Washington DC, I see problems that need solving. Unfortunately, politicians aren’t very good at solving problems…at least not without creating more problems. Bigger ones usually. Expensive ones, dangerous ones, that cost us all.

“The US Capitol stands for what We The People are willing to sacrifice for the greater good.” ~jg

To me, things seem simple. There are gray areas, but by and large, there are simple, obvious solutions to every problem we face. We know must face them, but thanks to our bullshit pay-to-play political system, we usually choose to wait until it’s a fucking emergency.

Because God forbid we take one unnecessary fucking penny of profits from our corporate overlords. The economy will come crashing down and everyone will lose their jobs, if Amazon stock doesn’t continue to rise.

Well, Bezos can blast himself into space and fucking stay there, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a fucking pirate. No one should make billions of dollars in a pandemic. Even if it’s not TAXABLE income (so it doesn’t really count anyway). Give it BACK!

“Bezos can blast himself into space and fucking stay there, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a fucking pirate.”

I truly believe we can solve all of our problems. But the American people need to become engaged in our government. The People should vote for Solutions, not for people who make those choices for us, based on bribes (that’s what political donations really are) from powerful people and businesses.

We can hold Congress accountable to the vote of the people on those ISSUES. Right now, career politicians only REALLY answer to the fat cats who bankroll their elite lifestyles, and pay for their manipulative political propaganda.

And…Oh yeah. We gotta stop electing lawyers and career politicians. Congress should be people like you and me, who serve a term or two and do the best job they can for ALL of the Country (not just their party). Then they go back to their lives as teachers, truck drivers, and chefs. Lawyers shouldn’t make laws. They can write the laws AFTER regular people tell them what we want the Law to MEAN.

Bottom Line? We’ll solve a fucktonne of problems with TWO easy fixes. Get rid of political contributions, and implement term limits for every elected office. Simple shit, man.

But what do I know. I’m just a guy on a couch. ~jg

Jamie Gray | Writer. Musician.
Just a guy on a couch.

Spin is Not, in fact Truth

jamie

If you’re only getting your news from one source, or from a handful of sources that publish opinion stories that you agree with, you aren’t getting the Truth. The Truth can only be confirmed by multiple, objective, independent sources. The Truth can only be confirmed with facts.

Rumors you read on Reddit or Facebook, or theory-based reporting from partisan ‘news’ outlets like MSNBC, FOX, OAN, NewsMax and others should be taken as such: they are THEORIES. That means you still need FACTS to confirm or disprove.

Being objective means you base your world view on EVIDENCE.

Because a bunch of comments on Tiktok posts say the same thing, doesn’t mean it’s true. ‘A lot of people say’ doesn’t make it true. It just means a lot of people THINK it’s true. If they’ve been lied to, and didn’t fact-check their information, how would you know?

I’m an independent. To stay objective, I read news from all around the world. I take each story in context of ‘Who Published It’ and ‘Who else can confirm it’. If I read an article in Russia Today, I take it as probable Russian spin, possible propaganda. Yet some of the stories are perfectly factual, confirmed by multiple other news outlets.

Musician & Independent Thinker, Jamie Gray

MSNBC will put a left wing spin. Fox will spin it to the right. If you watch BOTH of them and CNN, the facts will be the one’s they all agree on. Sometimes you may have to ignore one side or the other because they are ignoring the facts. Some of the ‘News agencies’ do that more than others, but that’s a rant for another time.

The bottom line is pretty fucking simple: Confirm EVERYTHING by other sources. MULTIPLE sources. Multiple OBJECTIVE sources. That’s the key. What facts are confirmable? Which ones are guesses? Spin?

The truth will set you free. It’s out there…you just have to take the time to look FOR the facts. So you can look AT the FACTS, not the spin they WANT you to believe. If they have to TRY to convince you, it’s probably bullshit. ~jg

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.