Big Brother

Anyone familiar with George Orwell's classic, 1984, may ask themselves from time to time, is Orwell's notion of Big Brother a reality? Did Orwell's futuristic vision fall short of our current times? Well, have no fear curious readers, we are here to inform you, if you did not already know, that Big Brother is alive and well!

It may not be with computer screens in every house which we're all monitored. It may not be with megaphones placed across your town center spewing out slogans or instructions to live by. It's just more secretive than that. These modern day Big Brothers may sit behind closed doors. Their faces may be darkened behind a mesh screen while their lobbyist drones go out to do their work for them. Their accounting department may write the right person a special check. Yet, that almost makes it worse in a way.

If you're so proud of what you're doing, I say, if you're not in any interpersonal dilemma about what you do day after day to the normal folk trying to make their way in this thing called life, then I say, SHOW YOURSELVES! Come and stand in front of me and say, Yes! I'm screwing you over! I'm the one that is profiting off of your misery. I am the one that calls that shots for your life's decisions behind these 100 floors of glass walls. When you look up at the sky in search for your God to help you, you first have to get past my high rise. ME! I'm the one!

Are we being dramatic? Perhaps. Are we being a little fatalistic? I suppose that's possible. But what is reality? Reality is a different perception of space and time by each individual. Our vision of the same object that you may be looking at is probably very different. Reality is a construct of our own minds, in essence. So, whether of not we are being over the top here, our FEELINGS are as such, and therefore create our reality.

So what's happened to the Vollers to make them conjure up a Big Brother narrative to share with our loved ones? Answer: Corporate Greed.

It all starts with health insurance. Here we pay out XXX.XX amount of dollars per month to protect us from accident. Sure we get to go to the doctor anytime for illness and the like, but we are very healthy people. Not only do the Vollers rarely get ill, but we believe illness is our bodies cleansing process and that it shouldn't be impeded by medications. Fevers are there to kill bacteria. Beginning symptoms are felt as the immune system kicks itself into gear to learn all it can about a certain bacteria or virus. It then replicates it, produces antibodies and kills it, which in effect gives us a blueprint to fight it the next time it shows up. Basically, we heal naturally with nutrition, fasting, fluids and herbs for basic ailments. But we don't get "props" for being healthy and not using the insurance, nor can we choose to spend the money on preventative health. We pay as much as joe schmo who is on viagra, allegra, lipator, cardizem and prescription pain relief and who attends the doctor's office at least 10 times a year. Not trying to judge those that need that, but shouldn't we get the same rights to have covered how we treat ourselves?

Yet, in our current system, we need to prepare for that "what if." If we don't and the "what if" occurs, we're paying 2800 per day for a critical care bed. So when we read that our insurance covered a Certified Nurse Midwife, we had new faith in the system. HAZAA!! Perhaps soon we'd learn that we could dictate where our own health dollars go! Soon we could pick the "alternative health care plan" where naturopaths, homeopaths, anthroposophists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, therapists are covered instead of just MD's. Feeling good in the neighborhood, we were.

Fine print is a funny little thing. Who invented the fine print? Anyone know? We discovered our fine print stated that the midwife is only covered if they're affiliated with a hospital or a birth center that is within a hospital. Key word here: hospital. We called to plead our case. Hell, we were saving THEM 10,000 by doing a home birth and 8,000 by doing a birth center birth. And we were under the care of a Certified Nurse Midwife. She just didn't have to answer to the M.D. Doesn't that count for something? Plus, we were choosing where the birth of our child would occur. Imagine that! As a bonus, statistically planned home births have the same mortality rates as hospitals, but lower rates for all other birth complications. We could prove to them we was even safer at home.

Save your breath, Voller, some of you may say. As you've guessed they put the smack down on our birth center birth because it was run by midwives and not doctors. Financially, we could not cover this center on our own. Saddened but still resilient we returned to the plans of home birth. Although still not covered by insurance, it was quite a bit cheaper than a birth center, and having the baby at home was our original desire, so all is well.

Then the mail came.

Home Eq, our mortgage company informed us our interest rate would be rising from 5.75 to 8.7... an extra 266 added per month to our mortgage. With j still not working regularly, that would take all of our extra money per month we were going to use for our home birth. We felt blindsided by this. We were under the impression we were in a 3 year fixed. It's only been 2 years! Someone was confused, and it wasn't us!

We called our mortgage company. They let us know that WE were the ones confused. And it turns out we were. Fine print again. "Fine." Isn't that a word used to say how were are doing day after day? A synonym for "good." From here forward I call it, "Secret print." Anyway, our mortgage company informed us, that WE are fixed in the loan for 3 years (ie. can't shop around) but they are able to raise our rates after 2 years. Obviously we wouldn't agree to a company having financial say over us for a year, but it's in the secret print we've found. So, to get out of this, we need to pay a 1200 penalty fee in order to shop around for a new mortgage. We feel we have to pay this since every 6 months, the contract says they can raise it again up to 11%.

So, while Steve is on the phone, j, in the background, is ranting about the market.
"The market is soft," she stated. "Interest rates aren't going up, they're going down. So, basically," she called out, "you're raising our rates not based on anything but that you want more money."

Well, they couldn't argue exactly. They just offered the oh so hopeful antidote that if this market index at 5.4, which they are allowed to add up to 5 points to in order to get their current interest rates, goes down to 0, we could have our 5.75 rate back again. Thanks guys! What a pal! Oh, and then Elizabeth of Home Eq stated, we're actually getting a good deal! They could have raised our rate up those 5 points to be 10+%. But our contract stated it could only go up to 8.7 upon first rising. So, we were lucky!

Who else wants our money? You? How much do you want? You don't even have to give me a good reason as to why you want it! You don't even have to price it fairly. We're dishing out cash everyone. Get in line.

Alas, with great tears, our birth is moved to the hospital where we get a "free birth." All that money we saved for our home birth is going to the mortgage company.

We know there is light here. We are not ones to become defeated by circumstances. We believe in the process. We believe in the energy we put out in our lives. We believe in the power of our intentions. We're sure that this time offers great learning and great growth. But as REM wisely stated, "Everybody Hurts Some Time." So, I'm hurting, and I needed to let someone know. Thanks for listening.