Bruce Wagner - Memorial

A burden lifted.

She felt even lighter as she swung onto the freeway, and — this time, aural navigation deactivated — wound her way home unguided by voices.

MAIL had accumulated since Big Gulp was in hospital.

He anxiously awaited the settlement agreement. Even though the attorneys said it was to be hand-delivered, the old man found himself retrieving mail with a lilt in his gait while the Friar followed, wagging his tail. Monsignor Tuck was in goodly fair shape. Fare thee well. Life was grand.

He opened the letter from an insurance company.

Frankly, Raymond, I’m puzzled…

Our marketing team is often confused over why more people don’t request the facts about long-term care insurance. Knowledge is power!

If you’ve been putting off getting information, Raymond, it’s time to take another look…

In 1999, with the enactment of The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, our government provided tax incentives for long-term care insurance plans that meet certain standards. Raymond, you should know about these tax incentives.

The way I look at it, Raymond, you have so much to gain and absolutely nothing to lose. Thank you.

There was another:

Dear Raymond Rausch,

My name is Max Kibblerohden. I write the “Equity Builders” column for MoneyInvest magazine and serve as Chief Executive of Kibblerohden Portfolio Investments™. My firm manages over $15 billion for institutions and high-net-worth individuals.

I recognize you may not be considering doing anything differently with your investments right now. Regardless, I’d like to send you a “care package” of useful insights, free and without obligation.

A separate letter contained the “Confidential Request Form for the Kibblerohden Portfolio Care Package™.” It asked for applicants to their “level of interest.” Total Investment Size:

O $0—500,000

O $500,000–750,000

O $750,000—1,000,000

O $1,000,000—3,000,000

O $3,000,000—5,000,000

O$5,000,000—10,000,000

O $10,000,000+

Mine’ll be “$0–500,000.”

(Ray wondered what would happen if someone ’d “$0.”)

Without the settlement, he’d be in a terrible bind. What would happen to his Big Gulp? He didn’t care about himself, he was a salty old dog just like the Friar, but he sure as heck didn’t have the kind of money you needed to support a newborn. The ACLU even worked a deal with the hospital so BG could stay all this time without financial worries. That was a lot of scratch.

Ray didn’t think of himself as political but it seemed like every day there was something on the TV or radio about how people were hurting. The article in AARP said that 700,000 families were driven to the poorhouse each year because of medical emergencies, middleclass folks with houses, college educations, and good health coverage. Going bust over things like copays and cremation fees. Couples were still paying $800 a month for medication. 800 a month! How could that be? The article said these people were insured. It made no kinda sense. Folks were alone and isolated, the highlight of their day being when Meals on Wheels dropped off supper. It was just like the Depression. Jesus God, he didn’t want to end up that way! He wanted to be a provider, to provide for his woman and child. He’d screwed up the whole thing before and wasn’t going to let it happen again. (He realized that he hadn’t properly apologized to Joanie when she was there — it still seemed like a dream — hadn’t apologized at all. He’d been so shocked by her visit, it made him cross-eyed. She left her phone number and he would make sure to remedy that in the weeks to come.) He was done with screw-ups. He just read a pitiful story in the paper about a man who was sick the day his fellow employees pooled their money for Mega Millions. The “Lucky 7” worked at Kaiser Permanente and won $315,000,000 for the $3 each they’d put in. The poor bastard was suing. Claimed he should have been included but the “Lucky 7” said there wasn’t even a casual agreement, that it was spontaneous, and anyhow the last time he’d gone in was over a year ago. Still, Ray could sympathize. “His day off cost him 39,000,000”—that’s how the article began. That would be damn hard to take. No, Ray wasn’t going to be left behind. Not like the captain in that Twilight Zone whose ship crashed on an asteroid and he became a kind of Mormonstyle patriarch, keeping crew and passengers — and the generation to come — together in sound mind and body with tough love brimstone discipline, until one day, 25 years later, they were finally found by an American search-and-rescue team. Everyone couldn’t wait to leave but the old man refused to board (his stubborn pride) and just as they were taking off he realized he was stranded. Alone. Changed his mind and chased after the ascending rocket. Too late. That hit Ray like a ton of bricks. Stuck with him from the day he 1st saw it.

He read a lot of magazines when he visited Ghulpa— Time and Newsweek and Forbes —they said big companies were dropping healthcare plans altogether and that seemed to Ray a crime. The corporations were gutting pension funds too (especially when they got bought and had their books cooked) and telling people to go invest hardwon earnings their damn selves. The workers could just go to hell. In his book, no one was supposed to be able to touch a pension fund, that was a God-given. Had someone changed the law? Social Security was going the same way with the blessings of the White House. Social Security was dryin up and they were putting an end to Amtrak too. The damn country wasn’t going to have any more trains! But all those CEOs were rich men and didn’t have to worry, they didn’t need trains unless it was a hobby, in which case they could just go out and hire a private railcar and take a tour on any timetable they pleased. The article in Time said these CEO gents — homely looking nabobs in eyeglasses — could make 60 or 70,000,000 just by quitting their jobs! The CEO of Morgan Stanley got a hundred-and-13-point-7,000,000 dollars for leaving. The contract said that after he was gone, he was still entitled to full medical plus $250,000 a year plus an office and a secretary for the rest of his life. (Why would a man need an office and a secretary if he wasn’t working?) That was no golden parachute — hell, there weren’t enough elements in the Periodic Table to say what kind of parachute that was. He shook his head in disgust and laughed. Then off they’d go and get another job, sign another contract. Being a Chief Executive Quitter got you into a special country club. Somebody figured out that when that Exxon fella retired, he’d been making $144,573 a day for 13 years.

He wasn’t on their level, but still thought himself a king. Ray had the notion that with the settlement from the City of Industry (he bet that BG would triple it in no time), he could buy private health insurance. If anything ever happened to Ghulpa or the baby, they’d have the finest treatment in the world. The old man wasn’t thinking of himself — his shelf life, as he liked to put it, had long since expired. Even so, he made the cousins do a little research, and they used their computers to find a special kind of coverage that would pay for a decent convalescent home; he didn’t want to drain money from the main account. The settlement would buy peace of mind and other things too, like the down payment on a house with a nice yard for the Friar.