Posted November 8, 2013
Clocks of all kinds, including grandfather clocks and grandmother clocks, have been top of mind in news reporting in recent weeks. Just today we read an article about the Affordable Healthcare Clock, presumably referencing the time remaining both the have the recent and some still current website glitches fixed by the end of November at the latest, as scheduled, to the same clock countdown news notion being applied to people having only a certain time window to apply and be registered with an Affordable Health Care Insurance Policy, more commonly known as ObamaCare, before they risk losing their coverage entirely. The people perhaps most concerned and susceptible to “getting lost” in the system, many of whom may be grandparents and even own their own grandfather clock, are those with pre-existing conditions which either would have made them not eligible for any health insurance in many cases, to those who may be somewhat to very ill, and are either currently covered but their insurance may be canceled, or are currently covered but may want to take advantage of policies which may have overall better coverage, and possibly at less cost, particularly in many instances when government subsidies may kick in for those individuals. These individuals may (or in many cases may not) be the least able to fend for themselves, and have the most to gain or lose by having everything fall in place in time so they will miss no deadlines. In other clock news, just today President Obama formally apologized to the American people for having, we believe in good faith, telling Americans that if you like your existing policy and existing doctor, you can keep them. The main reason that fell by the wayside is that insurance companies, rather than perhaps rejiggering policies which did not meet the minimum standards of the Affordable Health Care Act, by and large it seems they simply canceled those policies. Some no doubt may be worse off, and many no doubt will be better off, and all no doubt will have better coverage than they had before should the “unthinkable” happen to them. As the clocks count down, the Country will hopefully set it with an alarm so that people will realize that with so many more covered with insurance, and with fewer visits being necessary to Emergency Rooms for the uninsured, along with about 100 other factors, more people will have many fewer financial and health care risks, more people will have coverage and better coverage, and overall we should continue to see a continuing slowdown in the rise of healthcare costs, which assuming the quality is the same or better, can and will make a tremendous difference to the state of the USA economy and our longer-term competitiveness.
Should we be calling this Health News for Clocks, or perhaps Grandfather Clocks Health News.
Clocks and counting down have played a big role in other countdowns. There was the pre Government Shutdown Countdown. Then there was the timer clock for How Long the USA Government had been shut down. There was the Ohio Grandfather Clock outside the US Capitol Senate assembly room, in the Ohio Corridor of the Senate Building section, which stopped suddenly and mysteriously during the Government shutdown.
Now everyone is counting everything, including using clocks and timers and counters and countdowns to measure:
Number and types of problems with website for Affordable Care Act.
Number of days until everything, or mostly everything, should be fixed.
Numbers of people who have successfully signed up for this new health insurance — not only on Day 1 but week 1, week 2 and on and on.
Numbers of people who have visited, with a count by type of problem encountered.
How these numbers may effect midterm elections for the House and Senate.
We could keep going for hours.
This started as a post of News for Clocks, so here is more. It was reported just today that the US Economy clocked an impressive 2.8% growth in GDP, significantly higher than expected, in the 3rd Quarter. Great clock news! With the Senate passage also just today of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), Anti-gay bigots are getting their clocks cleaned! A not too cynical interpretation of today’s events and prior history would be that Democrats and Republicans both made clear that they agree on something significant: Gay rights are currently a winning issue for Democrats and a losing one for the GOP.
One thing is for sure whether we are talking wall clocks or grandfather clocks or mantel clocks, which is don’t count out the clocks factor. Clocks and time immortal even made there appearance this past weekend with Daylight Savings Time (DST), where we all had to move our clocks back an hour, it being the Fall Season.
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