Seeking third world solutions to America’s problems.
On a budget? The mother in law cottage is only $16,800 for the 14 x 40 basic model. For the premium model, the 14 foot by 28 foot basic model, you get one bedroom, one bathroom and a living room and kitchen area. The basic model log houses from Green Garden Chicken come with all of the windows and doors in the floor plans and all of the insulation for the exterior walls and roof. The nice thing is, all of these small log homes are built by professional Amish cabin builders who can pre-build the log houses and deliver them to a property, or, bring out all of the supplies and built the home or cabin right on your property. The first option of having the cabin prebuilt is favourable since it’s done inside, in a controlled environment which means the weather will not affect the building process.
First time I started thinking about this write up was when I saw the advertising above for what they called the mother in law cottage on Facebook. This is a Wild West era settler type building which the makers say costs just $16,800 to build. It’s an all wood shack of a building that can be prefabricated and set up on any piece of land, even outside the grid. While the advert goes on to hint that the target for these houses are people looking to get cheap vacation homes, or have some log homes near the beach, it’s obvious that the homeless multitudes of people who live in containers in the bush, or are squatting with family and friends, are also targets – the main targets, in my book. Many people who have been pushed out by the high costs of home ownership, and rent, coupled with dwindling incomes and opportunities, are currently living in all sorts of shacks and containers in off the grid conditions. Such people are really the main targets of this basic, settler era building.
Seeing that advert got me thinking about how America the country is getting richer and more influential, while America the citizens are being forced to seek third world solutions to their problems because the country’s leadership belongs to a very privileged few who apportion all the wealth to themselves. It got me thinking that while the country has progressed, the lots of a very overwhelming majority of the citizenry has regressed. Housing as described above is just one area of concern.
Another area where citizens abandoned by their government are being forced to seek third world solutions is healthcare. I recently saw an article about how some doctors are devising a new method for providing healthcare for citizens called Direct Primary Care. This is a system where people pay a monthly fee to doctors as a sort of retainer fees so they can see the doctor for their medical needs when they need it. Included in that monthly fee are basic checkups, same-day or next-day appointments, and — a big boon to patients — the ability to obtain medications and lab tests at or near wholesale prices. Other touted benefits of Direct primary care include near-constant access to a doctor — talking via FaceTime while the family is on vacation, or taking an emergency trip to the office to get stitches after a bad fall on a Saturday night. Because direct primary care doesn’t take insurance, there are no co-pays and no costs beyond the monthly fee.
But, one very important thing the Direct primary care proponents have not taken into cognizance, either by omission or commission, is the fact that these clinics who offer this system still operate in the astronomically inflated American healthcare market where costs are, on average, ten times higher than what obtains elsewhere. What this means is that anything that is not covered by your monthly fee, you have to go pay for by yourself in the market because you have no insurance. Therefore, your Direct primary care is all well and good until someone suffers a major health issue that will involve a major medical procedure or treatment. Sure you can obtain medication and lab tests at wholesale prices, but you cannot obtain that on any major medical issue – like, say a surgery or cancer treatment – for example, so, you’re left on your own. This is why those who can afford it, also buy health insurance so they have something to fall on if they get really sick.
The Direct primary care system, despite its fancy name, is an ‘on your own’ healthcare system, and basically what obtains in very poor third world countries with no healthcare plan. Citizens are left to cater to their health well being anyway they can, and most end up dying from health conditions because they cannot afford the care they need. Americans are beginning to resort to this third world systems because the government of the world’s wealthiest nation has decided that her citizens are not deserving of free healthcare as a right. When you had the presidential candidate of a major political party say that single payer healthcare will never happen in the United States, it becomes easier to understand why Americans have to resort to such desperate measures.
When you cannot afford health insurance, with the attendant co-pays that add to the expense, you have to try and cover yourself in some form, and that’s when a scheme like this becomes something to even consider. “He that is down,” they say, “fears no fall.”
