Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Shut up and get off my lawn er, health care!

How stupid can people be?

The Affordable Care Act is law. That is a fact. Nothing the republicans can do now will stop it. And why should they? Not to sound like an ad but we are the last industrialized nation on the planet to have health care for all its' citizens. While it may not be a perfect program it is a start. A beginning of something good when you stop to consider life expectancy in this country has actually gone down over the past years. It reached a peak of 76 for men  and 81 for women or so I'm told. Have to check the exact number later. After further review as they say in football I find that the U.S. ranks 33rd in life expectancy behind such countries as Chile and Kuwait. I suspect those numbers to slid with the recession here in the U.S.

While it will be somewhat expensive at first the costs will go down once more sign up and many are. There were 3 million inquiries the first day. So many that the site crashed. Once the bugs are worked out you can sign up on line or go to an information center where people are there to answer questions. You can even sign up for the exchange here and compare rates based on age and amount of coverage you desire. Maximum they can charge is a bit over 9% of your gross income. If you're low income you get a subsidy. This should solve many problems we now have with the system. Those at the lower end tend to use the emergency rooms as their primary care which is very expensive for minor illnesses. It will also help fund those with more serious illnesses. The younger people may not think this is fair but they too will be old some day and need some type of care and of course accidents and illnesses do happen even to young people. There was a time believe it or not when most health care was non profit in this country, that is until Nixon got his grubby hands on it and started the HMOs (for profit group plans).

The lies. The government does not determine what is covered and who get what treatments. That is determined by the policy you pick. There are no "death panels" where some government agency decides who lives and who dies. What that referred to was life directives, that's you leaving instructions to the doctor or hospital in the event you become so disabled that you could not express you medical wishes. Lie number three is it will make health care more expensive. Maybe somewhat at first as all the bugs get worked out but from what I'm seeing costs are going down. If you happen to have a COBRA plan (extended coverage after getting laid off) you will see that prices in the exchange are less and yes you can switch to the exchange. So while the chicken Littles kept screaming the sky is falling those with half a brain knew that in the long run this would be a good thing. 

But if all this doesn't get your hackles up stop to consider that we the American tax payer are paying for some blob in congress not only a salary to do basically nothing to benefit mankind but for his cushy health care plan while he sits there trying to prevent us from having any.    

3 comments:

BBC said...

It's complex, a lot of these monkeys don't want to pay for health care insurance but want to be fixed when they get sick or hurt. And health care is damn expensive these days, BMW's and nice homes are not cheap.

Anyway, folks my age don't have to deal with that program, it's for the younger monkeys.

Roger Owen Green said...

Well, I do support the Affordable Care Act. But that Obamacare has got to go! Said 10% of people in a recent poll. I'd snicker except it's so pathetically sad.

Randal Graves said...

I just want my morphine prescription filled.