Greetings. Here’s what’s new and upcoming. Today is the Leo New Moon. That was exact today at 6:01:24 am ET. The New Moon aspected many planets, including the triple conjunction in Aquarius, as well as the Mars-Uranus square, and Mercury. Details on the Leo New Moon are in the member post below, The Holistic Sense of Self. This New Moon is about finding a balance between self and other, including the Big Other known as the rest of us.
The Sun ingresses Virgo Saturday at 7:39 pm ET, and is currently positioned in one of the most potent areas of the zodiac, the Leo-Virgo cusp. An open post below called Leo and the Sphinx describes this area in terms of its relationship to the Goddess.
I’m wrapping up a very late Planet Waves Monthly horoscope for September, which will be distributed on time to subscribers of Planet Waves Astrology News and Next World Stories Tuesday morning.
Tomorrow’s Planet Waves Astrology News will focus on the upcoming Mercury retrograde. We began the echo phase (also called shadow phase) Monday, Aug. 17. The retrograde begins Sept. 7, the station direct is Sept. 29, and the second echo phase ends Oct. 14. Many factors distinguish this Mercury regrograde, including the involvement of two signs (Virgo and Libra), a series of squares to Pluto and conjunctions to Saturn, plus the involvement of the Aries Point.
I will have the details tomorrow morning in Planet Waves Astrology News. If you’re not a subscriber you can still take advantage of our summer specials at this link.
I’m figuring it will be like automobile liability coverage, which most states mandate. It isn’t a bad idea at all, but forcing a small business owner to provide it is not good.
We already have coverage for the poor through medicaid, and the elderly have medicare. Flawed as they are, they provide good care for children and young people – not so good for the old.
If it is like the insurance I have as a federal retiree, it will offer the array of plans at different rates – but it boils down to whether someone is willing to pay the premiums or not. Doctor office co-pay is $20.00 and prescription coverage is not very good. You have deductibles out of pocket, so tests and hospital visits are always expensive. My out of pocket for a hip replacement was $5,000. My insurance rep tried to talk me into going to India for the surgery. Oh sure, fine. So it would be cheaper to send all the illegal immigrants to India for kidney dialysis, and such likes?
In Indiana you could buy a good plan through the state if you had limited income, but most people decide that they can must do without it for financial reasons. $300 or $400 a month is a chunk of money to hand out. My younger brother was in this group. When his employer dropped health coverage, my brother should have immediately purchased a policy – but he didn’t. Murphy’s Law – his wife had two major health problems and so did he almost immediately. He lost his job, so now they are in bankruptcy and the hospital comes out the big loser – only I don’t think they lose anything since it is the taxpayers that end up funding this sort of loss.
The poor are already covered, the unemployed are covered, and the elderly and children are covered. You will probably have to pull teeth and fingernails to get the rest of the crowd covered. The FDA is now saying that it takes $600 a month to feed a family of 4. Food, heat, water, and rent have to come first – $300 a month for health care is a large burden.
I suspect that we could end up with a single payer plan like medicare, down the road, if the problems continue. That is the worst case scenario. Medicare is not free, but it can be deducted from the paycheck like the rest of the taxes. We could end up like Norway, and pay 80% taxes. Is that what we want – is the question. Norway even supports the churches, so Norwegians do not give or donate. They don’t understand fund-raising. It’s supposed to be the nicest place to live on earth, if you like to eat potatoes and boiled fish day and night.
Patty,
Health care reform as proposed, especially with a public option, will give you choices between the array of private plans available and a government plan. As far as the mandate is concerned, which you refer to obliquely, I assume it would be enforced by a government agency. It’s important to understand that there are two kinds of mandates, one for employers and one for individuals. The individual mandate, as I understand it, is primarily geared toward preventing people from gaming the health care system. If you are already insured, you won’t have to worry about this. The employer mandate would probably be rigorously enforced with financial penalties, but the individual mandate probably won’t be (just like in Massachusetts). I don’t know exactly what enforcement is going to look like or exactly which government agency is going to do it, but I think this is a relatively minor concern in the scheme of things. If we get a robust public option that forces the private insurers to compete, your costs with your current insurer will almost certainly go down or you can switch to the public plan. One thing is for sure, if there are more laws on the books those laws will be designed to keep your insurance company honest. I see no reason to believe that taxes are going to go up to pay for this, at least not for anyone in the middle class.
Cheer up. It may not seem this way from the last 40 years of history, but our government is capable of making things better. But it’s up to us to keep our elected officials honest and loyal to the people. A major part of what this Saturn/Uranus opposition is all about is remembering how we can work together to do just that.
Fe and all,
It is very sad but true. It is also very funny, thanks Fe. You will enjoy today’s article by Glenn Greenwald, if you haven’t already read it, about Tom Ridge’s book and his admission that the terror alert(s) were meant to scare. It has some very funny parts too! http://www.salon.com
Hey Thanks Astrodem – now I understand myself better. I have Saturn at 29+ degrees of Virgo – always have had very bad luck with medical care but I have spent my lifetime trying to achieve good health for myself and family. Uranus is right on my Sun. Health care reform doesn’t seem like health care reform to me. it just sounds like more laws and higher taxes, and more overpaid federal elmployees telling people what they can’t do. It will be dandy if everyone buys a plan and makes the monthly payments, but who is going to enforce it? Oh yeah – I’m a libra rising too. I make a nearly $400 a month health insurance premium and a $45 dental premium that doesn’t pay all that well, and I suspect that what the government contracts with private insurance companies will cost about that much per month per family. It won’t be free, and it won’t be cheap. The insurance companies will be in hog heaven. We should buy insurance stock and count on getting rich in 2010.
Astrodem/ Eric:
Leave it to the Onion to floss the crap out of the health care reform debate:
FROM SUSANG AT DAILY KOS:
Via (what else?) The Onion:
WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.
“Both parties understand that the current system is broken,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. “But what we can’t seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue.”
The main thing that comes to mind is Saturn opposite Uranus. The bulk of this transit occurs with Saturn in late Virgo, and it coincides temporally with the debate we’re having over health care reform. A) Obama won the November 4th, 2008 election with health care reform as one of his top three issues. The opposition was exact that day. B) Obama signed S-CHIP into law, considered by many political experts to be a major precursor to and precedent for comprehensive health care reform. It was signed on February 4th, 2009, which was the day before the second exact opposition. C) I noticed that September 15th has been set as one of the deadlines for some kind of bill from the Senate Finance Committee. That just happens to be the day of the next exact opposition.
There are two remaining after this, one in late April 2010 and one in late July 2010, the second of which will be exactly on the Libra/Aries point axis. If I’m interpreting this aspect right, Saturn is actually the good guy here since that’s the planet in the region associated with health issues. Uranus in Pisces is a good metaphor for all the radical/imagined/projected/conjured-out-of-thin-air crap the right is coming up with to oppose health care reform. Notice that those interested in health care reform are also heavily invested in the details of the proposed reforms and the processes (legislative/policy) by which they are achieved, both Saturnian themes. Anyway, Saturn is about to enter Libra, and Uranus is about to enter Aries.
If we extend this metaphor forward in time, it suggests that we’re going to get a just and fair health care reform bill probably right before Congress goes home for the August recess next year around the time of the final exact opposition. But it also suggests that some of the extreme right wing nutjobs (like the irrational and angry ones showing up in the town hall mobs) could radicalize even further, and could even commit acts of violence around the time Uranus hits the Aries point. Whatever the opposition does, it looks like we’ll be getting some kind of health care reform next year.
There’s also Mercury. Mercury passed through the Virgo region in August last year, when health care was still a dominant issue in the presidential campaign before economic issues took over. It is doing so again this year, and will do so again next July and August around the time I expect a bill to be passing. This year, Mercury entered Virgo right around the time the town halls started flaring up. It moves into Libra on August 25th, no doubt right around the time the August recess town halls will start winding down. Health care is THE hot topic on the news this month. Everyone is talking about it.
I haven’t looked at the US chart yet, and I’m probably not really qualified to be giving interpretations of progressions. But those are my thoughts right now. Hope this answers your question.
hmmmm….just noticed (how quickly we forget) that Mercury is still squaring Mars, and they are also activating the Saturn/Uranus thing. Something I will be watching when Mercury passes back this way.
Astrodem —
Brilliant.
To your point astrodem, Venus would be linked to the Libra side of the axis and the asteroids associated with Virgo. In the Solar Eclipse (July 21) Venus was square Saturn and Ceres was opposed Uranus, activating the Saturn/Uranus series of oppositions. I heard one of the many talking heads on MSNBC or CNN remark, today in fact, that the healthcare reform issue had “eclipsed” everything else in Washington politics!
The old guard is not going to give an inch to any new reform of anything, so the Saturn vs. Uranus stands out like a sore thumb. But it didn’t occur to me, until you said it, that the justice aspect of Libra would be such a key factor. Nice work!
be
Hey astrodem, will you throw out the transits/points that allow you to view this perception? I think you’ve got something as far as insight….
…and shit man, there is no such thing as “flawed perception”. Don’t ever subscribe to that B.S.. Your brain is just as valid, (if not more) than anyone else’s.
Curious J,….
Maybe it’s just my own flawed perceptions, but I feel like the Virgo/Libra axis (or the Libra Point, if you will) has been quite active whenever the health care debate has flared up. If Virgo is associated with health issues and Libra is associated with justice (among other things), we can begin to see the special connection this region of the zodiac might have with public health issues, especially the late Virgo region. Just tossing this out there.