Dear Editors:
My Grandpa Willet Cornwell (1886-1948)was a resident of Newark Valley from about the turn of the 20th Century or so until he built homes and lived in one in the Watson Boulevard / Hooper Road area of Endwell. He had a home, sawmill, farm in Newark Valley. His farm was on Irish Settlement Road. He had dairy cows within the village of Newark Valley.
During the 1940s and from his farm on Irish Settlement Road, he sold hay to Cuban horse farmers. My father transported the hay to New York City barges where the hay was loaded and then transported to Cuba. We believe that a library colleague of mine, her family exiled from Cuba when she was 12 years old and Castro confiscated her family horse farms in the area where we believe the hay from Newark Valley was being sent.
In 1948, Grandpa Cornwell was living with in Endwell. My father, just out of the war, was living with them in Endwell, but working for Ross Tappan & Sons (Newark Valley), as he had been doing before his service in the Pacific. According to the story shared with me by my father during his last few months alive, in early 2018, Grandpa ended up in a hospital (TBD, what hospital?) in 1948. After a few days, according to my father, Grandpa Willet learned what the hospital bill was going to be. He realized he did not have the funds to pay for that hospital stay. He checked himself out of the hospital and went to his home in Endwell. My dad told me that he departed for work in Newark Valley one day and got a call that his father had died at home. Grandpa Willet was only 62 years of age at the time of his death.
As a result, lawyers swooped in and left my grandmother with virtually nothing. At some point in time, my father purchased an apartment building in Newark Valley.
Side note. That apartment building still stands, located directly across from the Brook Street junction with Main Street. It is located across the brook from a home I am told was built in the late 18th or early `9th Century. The home was known as the Silby home. Purportedly, it had been a tavern where the stage coaches could stop when coming through Newark Valley, where travelers could imbibe in the spirits of the day (something travelers today cannot do in Newark Valley, due to the dictatorial ones who insist no one should drink in an establishment in Newark Valley, following the lousy prohibition put in place by the WCTU and then enforced for “law and order” purposes by the Republicans under Herbert Hoover and others. The apartment building had been converted from a furniture store to apartments when my dad purchased it.
Nevertheless, my father moved my grandmother into an apartment he built in the back section of that building. That was where she lived until she passed in 1962.
This historical background provides information (in excess?) for what I am about to say.
here we are. The year 2022. Repeat. In 1948, Grandpa Willet Cornwell died because he was not able to afford healthcare. My dad was available to help his mother, but he always maintained a sour taste in his mouth for lawyers. That is how we all act, right? Don’t worry because we can overcome the obstacles, right? To me, I don’t ask WHY, but ask WHY NOT something better for all of us?
Private healthcare, according to tRump and the Republicans is what we need. Demonstrates just how much these people don’t know about “private” healthcare. I know what it was at one time. Three country doctors in Newark Valley, as a kid growing up here. That was PRIVATE healthcare. How many doctors does Newark Valley have now? We are lucky if we can get an appointment with the one doctor in town who comes from UHS and located in an office on Whig Street.
Let us return to the 1970s. The three doctors were all retiring. Newark Valley did not have a doctor. My mother, Margaret (Schoonmaker) Cornwell, worked on a committee in Newark Valley, acting as a health services coordinator so as to find a new medical doctor. They found a MD. A Jewish MD. Questions still remain whether the people here had a hidden agenda of anti-Semitism because none had experienced through physical exams, so tried to push the guy out of town. My mother defended him, for various reasons, but particularly for the sake of her family.
In light of the recently released Ken Burns documentary about the Holocaust, let me explain that it was discussed in the documentary about the anti-Semitism which was buried in hidden agendas of many white Gentiles in the USA who were claiming other “problems,” so as to keep the anti-Semitism buried. “Other things” which could be attributed to white Gentiles and others, as well. Even today, some who keep this a hidden agenda while identifying anything they are able to identify as being a problem. As fictional character, Perry Mason would often say, “don’t lie to me.” Now there was a representation of what a good lawyer REALLY is.
Other information about the 1970s which validates why rural areas went without private healthcare? (1) My mother mentioned that the problem the committee to find doctors in the 1970s found was due to the changes in society for a predominant love of money. Doctors were not going into practices as general practitioners (also known as primary care physician), but were looking to make money as specialists. As specialists, doctors needed to make more money in urban areas where the population was more dense than in rural populations. With the old private country doctors in Tioga County, they could refer, if necessary, to a specialist. Otherwise, the general practitioner took care of patients, from annual physical exams and other matters. I seem to recall that the “specialist” pediatrician my mom used for me was a Dr. Nichols in Owego. Only memories from my mom and what she said, not exacting research on it. When she used a pediatrician for me, it was in the 1950s.
I recall Dr. Nichols performing as Harold Hill in the Ti-Awahga Players 0production of The Music Man.
(2) According to various sources, the private health insurance situation changed. H.R. Haldeman (Watergate burglar) under Richard Nixon, had created an underwriting firm for health insurance. This opened the door for supply0-side economics in private health care. According to some sources, this opened the door for medical specialists while GPs went by the wayside and there was no interest in pursuing a GP career. How many times, today, have we witnesses a shortage of GPs, except for those IMMIGRANTS who come here from other nations. No Americans wish to pursue such a career. Amazon brags about developing careers in technology and robots instead. And educators who know best are shelved in trying to encourage education for anyone who can find a niche in what our society really and truly needs. Our reputations as educators are tarnished by lawyers who take control and blame all the public education problems on the faculty.
Then we have to listen to the BS from tRUMP and Republicans about “private healthcare.” Let me discuss this matter.
- A public hospital doctor who saw this coming when Reagan began to work for privatization of healthcare and hospitals. What that MD, now deceased, predicted will happen with privatization, is coming to fruition, sad to say.
- Rick Scott of Florida (and now in the U.S. Senate)who made most of his wealth through privatization of hospitals
So, when my dad told me, in 2018, about the details of what happened to Grandpa Willet in 1948, I was furious. As an educator in Florida, I had to face the influence of then-governor Rick Scott, the lousy man who plead the 5th many times when he was investigated for Medicare fraud. Even tRUMP has said that anyone who pleads the 5th is likely guilty. This Scott man was instrumental in replacing our retired college president, a man who came up the ranks of education (and had done very well; I can list his accomplishments), with a lawyer with no background in education, as president of the college. It almost felt like a deja vu moment with regard to lawyers, especially from what my dad explained about his sour and bitter taste towards lawyers, due to what they did when my Grandpa Willet was unable to pay hospital bills and died, as a result of all of that.
I can also go into a mountain of more recent experiences with this private healthcare we are experiencing today. It is all worth considering. However, when the money we all put into Medicare is being embezzled and the possibilities are a lousy man who sits in the U.S. Senate now, getting away with “murder” (as we sometimes say in a figurative way), people don’t think that it is our LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS which are being stolen from us. That is because some stupid people; put the name of “Medicare Tax” on it. I guess that was to open the doors for thieves like Rick Scott, as they attempt to say, “government is the problem” and then degrade the ideas of healthcare for all by tarnishing the ideas with false ideas that it is “socialism.” I just mentioned how it is NOT socialism, but long-term CAPITALIST investments. Sad to say, but I have been writing this for the past 20 years or so and NO ONE picks up on it, for the good of WE THE PEOPLE. (Same thing with FICA – a LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENT IN POOLED RESOURCE FOR ALL AND NOT TO BE USED FOR ANYTHING BUT WHAT IT IS INTENDED TO BE USED).
Should there be those who are doing Medicare and Social Security fraud, stop calling it taxes so they can be more firmly convicted in their fraud. Doesn’t anyone get what I am saying? Senator Elizabeth Warren, listen up and stop the crap about the “rich paying more for it” and we can put these frauds away by defining unethical stuff like robbery from LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS MADE BY THE PEOPLE.
Yes, to fund things, we also need to remove the cap on investments in Social Security which means the top wealthy ones pay less out of their income than the rest of us do. Yes. That needs to stop. In fact, the wealthy are making a big deal about this gap because THEY ARE TREATING IT LIKE AN INVESTMENT NOT A TAX, while these wealthy pigs screw the rest of us.
Senator Warren, we are behind you. We hope you have a handle on what I am saying in this essay, whether Medicare for healthcare or Social Security for retirement. Both run hand in hand once we all choose to retire, especially if we are FORCED into an earlier retirement than what we might desire, due to health conditions.
One more thing about healthcare. Obamacare is based on a model of a Republican governor. It needs to be reformed, not destroyed. The fascist Republican leadership today wishes to destroy, not reform. Such people can be motivated by any errors in Obamacare which need fixing because people find an error and they instantly get on the bandwagon of errors. One such error with Obamacare is that it ends at age 65. Then, everyone is forced into the really lousy privatized Medicare established by George W. Bush and the Republicans with its lousy donut hole, subservient to private health insurance and big pharma. In other words, subservient to supply-side Reaganomics by the fat pig oligarchy.
This is a lengthy essay about healthcare. But what can be done otherwise when people just look for what they can agree, according to their perspective and never considering being humble enough to learn and gain wisdom? What can be done when a lousy person from Australia pushes his agenda with his Fox media and people are listening. In the end, people are spending more time on Fox and social media and then complain if an essay is “too long.” That is bizarre because I would bet people can spend less time reading a lengthy essay, time spent doing stupid things on social media or listening to Fox Commentary for long periods of time; or trying to spend a large amount of time maintaining technology in the home in order to do the social media and other bizarre stuff. There was a day when I could retrieve a newspaper from the doorstep, sit in an easy chair, and read the newspaper and perhaps do puzzles or games in it. We could do it in less time than we see people spending on social media and often doing crappy stuff. Go ahead. Defend the Internet and social media, rather than reading this lengthy essay about healthcare in America and, particularly, in a rural America which is suffering.
Tioga Herald 
Healthcare
Dear Editors:
My Grandpa Willet Cornwell (1886-1948)was a resident of Newark Valley from about the turn of the 20th Century or so until he built homes and lived in one in the Watson Boulevard / Hooper Road area of Endwell. He had a home, sawmill, farm in Newark Valley. His farm was on Irish Settlement Road. He had dairy cows within the village of Newark Valley.
During the 1940s and from his farm on Irish Settlement Road, he sold hay to Cuban horse farmers. My father transported the hay to New York City barges where the hay was loaded and then transported to Cuba. We believe that a library colleague of mine, her family exiled from Cuba when she was 12 years old and Castro confiscated her family horse farms in the area where we believe the hay from Newark Valley was being sent.
In 1948, Grandpa Cornwell was living with in Endwell. My father, just out of the war, was living with them in Endwell, but working for Ross Tappan & Sons (Newark Valley), as he had been doing before his service in the Pacific. According to the story shared with me by my father during his last few months alive, in early 2018, Grandpa ended up in a hospital (TBD, what hospital?) in 1948. After a few days, according to my father, Grandpa Willet learned what the hospital bill was going to be. He realized he did not have the funds to pay for that hospital stay. He checked himself out of the hospital and went to his home in Endwell. My dad told me that he departed for work in Newark Valley one day and got a call that his father had died at home. Grandpa Willet was only 62 years of age at the time of his death.
As a result, lawyers swooped in and left my grandmother with virtually nothing. At some point in time, my father purchased an apartment building in Newark Valley.
Nevertheless, my father moved my grandmother into an apartment he built in the back section of that building. That was where she lived until she passed in 1962.
This historical background provides information (in excess?) for what I am about to say.
here we are. The year 2022. Repeat. In 1948, Grandpa Willet Cornwell died because he was not able to afford healthcare. My dad was available to help his mother, but he always maintained a sour taste in his mouth for lawyers. That is how we all act, right? Don’t worry because we can overcome the obstacles, right? To me, I don’t ask WHY, but ask WHY NOT something better for all of us?
Private healthcare, according to tRump and the Republicans is what we need. Demonstrates just how much these people don’t know about “private” healthcare. I know what it was at one time. Three country doctors in Newark Valley, as a kid growing up here. That was PRIVATE healthcare. How many doctors does Newark Valley have now? We are lucky if we can get an appointment with the one doctor in town who comes from UHS and located in an office on Whig Street.
Let us return to the 1970s. The three doctors were all retiring. Newark Valley did not have a doctor. My mother, Margaret (Schoonmaker) Cornwell, worked on a committee in Newark Valley, acting as a health services coordinator so as to find a new medical doctor. They found a MD. A Jewish MD. Questions still remain whether the people here had a hidden agenda of anti-Semitism because none had experienced through physical exams, so tried to push the guy out of town. My mother defended him, for various reasons, but particularly for the sake of her family.
Other information about the 1970s which validates why rural areas went without private healthcare? (1) My mother mentioned that the problem the committee to find doctors in the 1970s found was due to the changes in society for a predominant love of money. Doctors were not going into practices as general practitioners (also known as primary care physician), but were looking to make money as specialists. As specialists, doctors needed to make more money in urban areas where the population was more dense than in rural populations. With the old private country doctors in Tioga County, they could refer, if necessary, to a specialist. Otherwise, the general practitioner took care of patients, from annual physical exams and other matters. I seem to recall that the “specialist” pediatrician my mom used for me was a Dr. Nichols in Owego. Only memories from my mom and what she said, not exacting research on it. When she used a pediatrician for me, it was in the 1950s.
(2) According to various sources, the private health insurance situation changed. H.R. Haldeman (Watergate burglar) under Richard Nixon, had created an underwriting firm for health insurance. This opened the door for supply0-side economics in private health care. According to some sources, this opened the door for medical specialists while GPs went by the wayside and there was no interest in pursuing a GP career. How many times, today, have we witnesses a shortage of GPs, except for those IMMIGRANTS who come here from other nations. No Americans wish to pursue such a career. Amazon brags about developing careers in technology and robots instead. And educators who know best are shelved in trying to encourage education for anyone who can find a niche in what our society really and truly needs. Our reputations as educators are tarnished by lawyers who take control and blame all the public education problems on the faculty.
Then we have to listen to the BS from tRUMP and Republicans about “private healthcare.” Let me discuss this matter.
So, when my dad told me, in 2018, about the details of what happened to Grandpa Willet in 1948, I was furious. As an educator in Florida, I had to face the influence of then-governor Rick Scott, the lousy man who plead the 5th many times when he was investigated for Medicare fraud. Even tRUMP has said that anyone who pleads the 5th is likely guilty. This Scott man was instrumental in replacing our retired college president, a man who came up the ranks of education (and had done very well; I can list his accomplishments), with a lawyer with no background in education, as president of the college. It almost felt like a deja vu moment with regard to lawyers, especially from what my dad explained about his sour and bitter taste towards lawyers, due to what they did when my Grandpa Willet was unable to pay hospital bills and died, as a result of all of that.
I can also go into a mountain of more recent experiences with this private healthcare we are experiencing today. It is all worth considering. However, when the money we all put into Medicare is being embezzled and the possibilities are a lousy man who sits in the U.S. Senate now, getting away with “murder” (as we sometimes say in a figurative way), people don’t think that it is our LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS which are being stolen from us. That is because some stupid people; put the name of “Medicare Tax” on it. I guess that was to open the doors for thieves like Rick Scott, as they attempt to say, “government is the problem” and then degrade the ideas of healthcare for all by tarnishing the ideas with false ideas that it is “socialism.” I just mentioned how it is NOT socialism, but long-term CAPITALIST investments. Sad to say, but I have been writing this for the past 20 years or so and NO ONE picks up on it, for the good of WE THE PEOPLE. (Same thing with FICA – a LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENT IN POOLED RESOURCE FOR ALL AND NOT TO BE USED FOR ANYTHING BUT WHAT IT IS INTENDED TO BE USED).
Should there be those who are doing Medicare and Social Security fraud, stop calling it taxes so they can be more firmly convicted in their fraud. Doesn’t anyone get what I am saying? Senator Elizabeth Warren, listen up and stop the crap about the “rich paying more for it” and we can put these frauds away by defining unethical stuff like robbery from LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS MADE BY THE PEOPLE.
Yes, to fund things, we also need to remove the cap on investments in Social Security which means the top wealthy ones pay less out of their income than the rest of us do. Yes. That needs to stop. In fact, the wealthy are making a big deal about this gap because THEY ARE TREATING IT LIKE AN INVESTMENT NOT A TAX, while these wealthy pigs screw the rest of us.
Senator Warren, we are behind you. We hope you have a handle on what I am saying in this essay, whether Medicare for healthcare or Social Security for retirement. Both run hand in hand once we all choose to retire, especially if we are FORCED into an earlier retirement than what we might desire, due to health conditions.
One more thing about healthcare. Obamacare is based on a model of a Republican governor. It needs to be reformed, not destroyed. The fascist Republican leadership today wishes to destroy, not reform. Such people can be motivated by any errors in Obamacare which need fixing because people find an error and they instantly get on the bandwagon of errors. One such error with Obamacare is that it ends at age 65. Then, everyone is forced into the really lousy privatized Medicare established by George W. Bush and the Republicans with its lousy donut hole, subservient to private health insurance and big pharma. In other words, subservient to supply-side Reaganomics by the fat pig oligarchy.
This is a lengthy essay about healthcare. But what can be done otherwise when people just look for what they can agree, according to their perspective and never considering being humble enough to learn and gain wisdom? What can be done when a lousy person from Australia pushes his agenda with his Fox media and people are listening. In the end, people are spending more time on Fox and social media and then complain if an essay is “too long.” That is bizarre because I would bet people can spend less time reading a lengthy essay, time spent doing stupid things on social media or listening to Fox Commentary for long periods of time; or trying to spend a large amount of time maintaining technology in the home in order to do the social media and other bizarre stuff. There was a day when I could retrieve a newspaper from the doorstep, sit in an easy chair, and read the newspaper and perhaps do puzzles or games in it. We could do it in less time than we see people spending on social media and often doing crappy stuff. Go ahead. Defend the Internet and social media, rather than reading this lengthy essay about healthcare in America and, particularly, in a rural America which is suffering.
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Commentary, Healthcare, wellness, medicine
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