Obamacare should be renamed. Robinhoodcare, Jesuscare, Ghandicare or just Care For the Expendable. This session’s material on health care reform coincides with our discussions on poverty in this class. Our group assignment exercise showed that in addition to childcare, healthcare costs are a huge part of many household budgets.
For the poor, uninsured and underinsured, learning that healthcare is important always comes at the worst times. A cancer diagnosis for an unemployed person struggling on unemployment insurance can mean death. Health insurance companies are businesses dedicated to turning huge profits. Benevolence is not the issue for them. Denying healthcare coverage is not a means to making a profit, rather a means to increasing it.
According to the course material, people without healthcare in the United States has dramatically increased over the last two years. Considering the economic downturn and the fact that most healthcare insurance is paid for by employers, I am confident that these numbers will increase. People under the age of 30 are least likely to have health care insurance and represent the highest amount of uninsured. Senior citizens and children under 18 are most likely to be insured because of governmental programs. The southern states have the highest uninsured rates including Texas, Georgia and much of the southeast and the numbers of uninsured have grown over the years in these regions. Racially enumerated, it seems that Hispanics and African Americans have the least access to healthcare, followed by Asians and finally, whites.
I have personally been affected by the greed and evil of health care insurers. After leaving work to return to school, I am forced to purchase my own health care insurance in cash through COBRA. Since the premiums are extremely high, I applied for direct pay coverage through Kaiser Permanente. I was immediately denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. This means I am an unemployed student paying $410 a month for healthcare coverage through COBRA with the only option is no health insurance at all. Oddly enough, my car payment for my 2008 car is $409 a month. Since my only financial means is student loans and my retirement savings, I have recently been forced to choose between one of these items as my resources have dwindled. I have personally lamented over the decision and have struggled to keep both payments current in hopes that the Obamacare initiative would provide some relief for those of us who have preexisting healthcare conditions. It appears that I will have to allow my car to be voluntarily repossessed so that I can continue to have adequate health care. My logic is that I can live without a car, using a bicycle and a train pass to get me around Atlanta while I attend school. I can try to purchase another car sometime in the future and rely on neighbors to help me get groceries. My sister can lend me her car to get to important appointments and I will figure the rest out as it comes. I cannot live without health insurance and the medications that I need are very expensive without it. The first wave of relief for Obamacare is important and encouraging but my relief is still on its way. (I hope)
I see that health care coverage is in need of major change and its impact on the poverty stricken has been horrible. With no income, I understand its impact like never before and applaud our government for doing what it has done. I am proud to have cast my vote for the current administration and am making my way to the polls to vote for the mid-term elections. I feel personally responsible to ward off attempts to repeal healthcare reform by a republican controlled Congress.
To the smug opponents to healthcare reform, it may seem easy to devalue the necessity for coverage when a person or family is in the low income groups affected by it. However, healthcare affects us all. Disease, sickness, emergency injuries and preventative care are needs that everyone wants to avoid but that no man can eliminate.
I only agree on the part that health insurance companies are greedy and make a lot of money by screwing over people.
ReplyDeleteNow I do not agree that Obamacare is the answer to the healthcare issue. Lets emphasize on your own blog title "LAND OF THE FREE", if it truly is the land of the free, the government absolutely cannot force every American to buy health insurance! What would be the difference between us and Cuba? Isn't that more scary?
Now to some logical points about socializing healthcare. If everyone had socialized health insurance, do you realize the waiting list on surgeries and other medican treatments there would be? In Canada sometimes people even have to wait 8-10 months to get off the waiting list. This would also put a cap on doctors, nurses, pa's, np's incomes as well. Now if there is a cap on a salary in the "Land of the Free", why would anyone want to waste 6-8 years of their life gathering loans in medschool to practice? We would see a shortage of labor in the industry as well as a lot of them would move to other countries for better oppurtunities.
As far as your personal stuff, I truly am sorry you lost coverage and are having a hard time getting coverage, but is that truly a good reason to put all the burden on the middle class, the backbone of America? The healthcare bill is just going to put a bigger dent in the middle class and not going to effect the rich.
There are always other solutions to problems than jumping on the bandwagon. I too am on student loans and have a car for commute, but my car payment is nowhere near $400...I would recommend getting a cheaper car. There is also health insurance available through the university which you can research about as well. The key to the solution is budgeting smartly and using the available resources to find better coverage.
As I stated in my blog, I too am concerned about the state of health care. On the one hand, I do believe that health care should be reformed; but I do not believe that Obamacare is the answer. I am not trusting of government to procure the interests of the people. This is simply more bloated bureacracy like the IRS.
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