Hasta La Gadget!

Step 1. Make sure you torch your fertilty-diminishing 30s by marrying or shacking up with the few remaining inappropriate men you refused to date (or marry) in your 20s.

Step 2. When finished slumming in real life, try slumming online for a year or two, until your stated age in your dating profile (late 30s) only attracts grandfathers in their 60s. But you are a late bloomer and you believe in true love and you will not be deterred in holding out for what you deserve. Good for you! Not really but…

Step 3. By now you should be good and 40 and profoundly single. Unintended benefit: You’ve also been alone long enough to get your own personal, professional and financial crap together. Then, at the tender age of 40-something, you meet the man of your dreams, the future father of your vision-boarded children. And he even wants children as badly as you do, and he even wants them with you!

Congratulations! You are now well on your way to being an Old Mom!

Step 4. As in all attained plateaus, you doggedly aim for higher peaks. You want at least a kid. You will not let social norms or rampant ageism get in your way. You are a young-ish, vital 40-something, able to touch your toes, patient, resilient, and you know you will be a good (if older) mom.

And at the risk of sounding like a hormonal old feminist-mom, which I am, it’s sexism at it’s finest when we have admired men who fathered well into old, OLD age yet we reserve buckets of judgment against women who have children later in life. I experienced this firsthand while in the arduous process of adopting. Six birth mothers rejected me after asking my age. Not one of them asked how old my husband was. As a result, I am now more aware of how I attach judgment or diminished expectations to older women. Women-on-women ageism is just another form of self-sexism. Hence, This Old Mom uses the word ‘old’ because being called old used to upset me. But the only way to overpower a fear is to embrace it. So, let’s take back the night on ‘old’. Anyone with me? Anyone?

Step 5. Don’t let ANYONE tell you you are too old to be a parent. One man made that mistake with me, but then, after I yelled at him, he admitted he made his kid by drunken accident at age 19. All he could be for his kid was young. Not to knock young parents, but women are waiting to have children because they have options. My mother had three children by the age of 23 because her options were limited.

Step 6. Intercourse. Depending on your age, (and even that is no clear indicator), intercourse is most people’s first choice for baby-making. Intercourse is convenient, cheap, (if not down right free), and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. I have two friends who were told by doctors they would never conceive via intercourse and did exactly that- both of them at 46. And they lived on the same street in massive Los Angeles. I cannot tell you how many times I drove or walked down that street, praying to catch pregnancy. While intercourse didn’t work out for my particular Old Mom goals, (we just use it recreationally now) perhaps it will work for you.

Step 7. Fertility. It’s a fascinating time in the world of fertility – possibilities abound. Due to being unrich creative professionals, we tried acupuncture, herbs, and Step 6 a lot. When we failed at everything else, we ruled out fertility clinics. However we have many friends who went domestic or international with their sperm/egg/uteri donation needs. Of course ‘egg donor’ is a misnomer- it’s all for sale. Some health insurance policies might cover some fertility procedures. Strap on your Google goggles, do the research and even see the world through an overseas fertility clinic, which is far cheaper than domestic fertility clinics.

Step 8. Foster/Fost-Adopt. After failing at Step 6 and Step 7, we entered the Foster/Fost-Adopt system and took the classes, excited about becoming intentional parents- parents completely on purpose. Currently, there are around 56,000 un-parented children in Los Angeles alone. And the ratio of registered foster parents to foster kids is low and dropping all the time. If you have a spare bedroom and the will to improve an at-risk child’s life, foster care is a powerful option. There are also organizations that place foster kids with families on the weekends. Explore the many ways you can improve the life of an at risk child. Kidsave is providing miracles for foster kids every weekend.

Step 9. Adoption. After spending three years trying each of the above steps, and due to an incredible gift, we were able to enter the wild world of adoption. Based on how long it might take and our ages, we went with domestic adoption. Within six months, we became parents. There are much cheaper options than hiring an attorney. Adopttogether is one of the crowdfunding adoption sites. Go for it!

Step 10. Congratulations. By now you should be good and old and good and tired because you have a child… just in time for menopause.

This post was originally conceived as the mission statement of This Old Mom, my website/blog devoted to becoming an Old Mom. Please visit my site thisoldmom.com if you are are an old mom or just old mom curious.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Layoffs are set to begin next month at a Carrier factory in Indianapolis that made national news last year for making a deal with President Donald Trump to keep workers in Indiana. 

The company said in a filing last month that 338 workers would be laid off on July 20.

“The jobs are still leaving,” Robert James, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, told CNBC on Thursday. “Nothing has stopped.”

The plant became a campaign talking point in February 2016 when the company announced 1,400 jobs would be moved to Mexico. 

After the election, during the transition, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who was governor of Indiana at the time, announced a deal in which the company would keep nearly 1,000 jobs at the plant and invest $16 million in the facility in exchange for $7 million in tax breaks over 10 years. 

Not all of the jobs were saved.  

“We are moving forward with our previously announced plans to relocate the fan coil manufacturing lines, with expected completion by the end of 2017,” the company said at the time, according to the Indy Channel. The station reported that 600 jobs would move to Mexico.

Trump said in December that the plant’s workers would have a “great Christmas” as a result of his deal.

That won’t be the case this year. A letter filed with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development last month said an additional 290 jobs would be cut on Dec. 22. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

YouTube TV seemed an adequate addition to the increasingly crowded streaming television market, but it launched back in April with a modest area footprint, operating in only five US cities for its first few months. Today, they’re expanding availabili…

Two watchdog groups have sued Donald Trump over White House records, accusing the president of illegally destroying communications that must be preserved by federal law.

The suit — filed Thursday against Trump and the Executive Office of the President by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive — focuses on an “auto-delete” app reportedly being used for messages sent from the White House that erase messages after they’re read. 

Such communications could involve correspondence among the president, aides, advisers, contractors, lobbyists and others. They’re part of a “historical record” that belongs to the public and must be preserved, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act of 2014, notes the suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The law requires the preservation of communications in the White House and vice president’s office.

Yet “evidence suggests that President Trump and others within the White House are either ignoring or outright flouting these responsibilities,” the suit states.

“The American people not only deserve to know how their government is making important decisions, it’s the law,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “By deleting these records, the White House is destroying essential historical records.”

CREW spokesman Jason Libowitz told HuffPost that the only reason for the Trump administration to delete messages is to “keep them secret from the American people.” He said it’s part of a “larger, troubling pattern” of information suppression in the Trump administration, which also includes deletion of the president’s tweets.

The suit cites a vanishing tweet on Trump’s account about meeting with U.S. generals at Mar-a-Lago. Such tweets, involving official government business and policy statements by the president, are also subject to the Presidential Records Act, the suit argues. 

Trump repeatedly blasted Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, but those emails were still recoverable.

The lawsuit against Trump cites a report in The Washington Post that White House staffers use an app called Confide, which sends encrypted messages that “self-destruct” once they’re read. The Wall Street Journal also reported similar use of the encryption cloaking app Signal for White House messages. The use of the apps “knowingly prevent the proper preservation of records,” the suit charges.

Using “encrypted messaging apps that prevent any kind of preservation raise serious concerns that presidential records are at risk,” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. Presidential records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act while a president is in office. But they are accessible by law five years later — provided they have been preserved.

The suit demands the records be preserved against efforts by the president and his staff “that seek to evade transparency and government accountability.”

The White House hasn’t yet commented on the suit.

CREW also sued Trump in January, accusing him of violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution by collecting foreign income through his various businesses. The clause forbids a president from receiving payments from foreign governments. In one example, the Kuwait Embassy in February booked space and services for an event at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., that was estimated to cost as much as $60,000.

More than 190 Democratic lawmakers also sued Trump last week over the emoluments clause, saying he had accepted funds from foreign governments through his businesses without congressional consent in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=58f62ccfe4b0da2ff8636f8a,5940b8fee4b0d3185485cd2e

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The deductibles are too high.

You’ve heard consumers say this about their health insurance policies, particularly in the last few years since Obamacare became law. And if you’ve been paying attention to politics, then you’ve heard Republicans promise to bring those deductibles down.

Now Senate Republicans have officially released their proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act and, based on the available information, they are going to break that promise in a very big way. If the GOP proposal becomes law, then it’s likely out-of-pocket costs for people buying coverage through healthcare.gov or one of the state exchanges would tend to be higher, not lower ― unless these people were able and willing to pay even more in premiums.

The explanation is wonky, and the verdict is not definitive because the Congressional Budget Office and other independent experts haven’t had a chance to produce detailed projections yet. But it doesn’t take a formal analysis to understand what Republicans are trying to do here.

The essential reality of the repeal effort ― one worth keeping in mind over the next few days, amid all the legislative negotiation over policy details ― is that Republicans want to reduce government spending on the poor and middle class. And less government spending for these people means, almost inevitably, that they will pay for a greater portion of their medical care.

Either fewer will have insurance, the insurance they have will offer less protection, or both. It’s just a question of who suffers and how.

The Senate Bill Envisions Smaller Tax Credits 

Today, with the Affordable Care Act still in place, people who buy coverage on their own (rather than through an employer) are eligible for tax credits that offset the cost of their premiums. The size of the tax credit varies depending on income, age and the price of a typical policy in a community. The idea is to make sure people who have the least money or face the highest premiums get the most help.

If the Senate bill becomes law, people buying coverage on their own would still be eligible for tax credits and, superficially, those credits would function a lot like the ones in place now. The value would go up or down depending on personal income, age and the price of the typical local plan. But the Senate bill alters the definition of “typical” ― or, to put it as the health care experts do, it redefines the benchmark for setting subsidy levels.

That’s a big deal.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the benchmark plan is a “silver” plan. Silver plans have an “actuarial value” (AV) of 70, which means they should cover roughly 70 percent of the typical person’s medical expenses. Under the Senate proposal, the benchmark plan would be a policy with an AV of 58 ― in other words, a plan that would cover just 58 percent of the typical person’s medical expenses. That’s pretty close to what, under the Affordable Care Act, qualifies as a “bronze” plan.  

Bronze plans have lower premiums than silver plans because they cover less. And so using a quasi-bronze plan as the benchmark rather than a silver plan means reducing the financial assistance people get to buy insurance.

One way to think about it is a straightforward reduction in the subsidies. Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, said it’s basically equivalent to a 15 percent across-the-board subsidy reduction. 

Another way to think about the difference is to think about the kinds of plans these diminished subsidies are supposed to buy.  

Smaller Credits Lead To Weaker Coverage            

In 2016, the median deductible in a silver plan on healthcare.gov was $3,500 a year, according to the Center on Medicare and Medicaid Services. This, roughly speaking, is the plan that Obamacare is designed to help consumers get. In 2016, the median deductible in a bronze plan on healthcare.gov was $6,300. This ― again, roughly speaking ― is the plan that Senate Republicans want to help consumers get.

That’s a huge difference. And it’d be even bigger for low-income consumers because, under current law, they are eligible to buy special plans with even lower out-of-pocket spending. The federal government makes this possible by paying insurers extra to offer these plans.

Under the Senate bill, the federal government would stop doing that, meaning that low-income consumers would be choosing from the same menu of plans and would be exposed to the very same out-of-pocket costs as higher income consumers. 

Somebody making $20,000 a year could easily see deductibles increase dramatically, from $1,000 (the average deductible for lowest-income consumers in 2016, according to Aviva Aron-Dine of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) up to that $6,300 average. And for somebody at that income level ― think a home care worker or retail clerk barely covering costs like food and rent ― even modestly higher out-of-pocket medical costs would be crippling. 

The Senate bill does make other changes to the tax credit formula, and it invites states to seek waivers that would eliminate some of the existing regulations that affect the kinds of plans insurers offer. Some people would likely end up saving money, either on premiums or out-of-pocket costs or both, and it’s an open question how this all works out for the millions of people who buy coverage directly from insurers rather than through the exchanges. Next week’s Congressional Budget Office analysis should help clarify that.

But on the exchanges, at least, the Senate bill “cuts tax credits for virtually all consumers by linking them to less generous coverage,” Aron-Dine says, adding, “For most of the roughly 9 million people who get subsidized coverage today, that would mean a choice. Pay significantly more in premiums to keep similar coverage, or keep premiums similar with much higher deductibles,” 

Conservatives Never Really Hated High Deductibles

None of this should be surprising. A core principle of conservative health policy is that people should face higher out-of-pocket expenses ― that they should have “more skin in the game” ― because, in theory, people would shop more aggressively for better prices or simply avoid getting medical care. 

For the last few years, Republican politicians acted as if they felt differently, and it’s entirely possible many of them had no idea that, by campaigning to reduce out-of-pocket costs, they were deviating from this bedrock piece of conservative orthodoxy.

It will be interesting to see how these Republicans react once they grasp what the leadership’s plan would actually do ― assuming there’s enough time for that reality to sink in. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.