For All

I have fully avoided talking about health care. I acknowledge this. Normally I am the first to jump on the political bandwagon and voice my ever-so-present opinion. This time I have refrained. I guess now that a bill has passed it is time to speak up.

I believe that health care is a right, not a privilege. I believe that we all should have equal access to doctors, medicine, hospitals, etc. I believe that it should be affordable. I believe that the current health care system is a big fat in-you-face failure.

I don’t know if I support this current bill.

It is hard, to be for health care reform and disagree with this bill. I strongly believe that there is reform needed but I just don’t think this bill is the answer.

Pre-existing conditions are unfair. Take this example. A man and his wife decide to have a baby. They have health care through his employer. He is let go due to the struggling economy. She works from home so doesn’t have access to work-sponsored heath care. She is three months pregnant and now has no health care. He can pay for Cobra (usually over $800 a month). But as they have just lost their main income, this is going to be tough. They can not find private health care because her pregnancy is a pre-existing condition. How is that fair?

The cost of private health care is astronomical. Take another example. My friend is married and her husband is self-employed. She stays home with their two daughters. They decide to have another child. Understanding that they do not have insurance she signs-up for a program with her doctor that allows her to pay (in advance installments) for the cost of visits and delivery. There are major complications. Her son is born with a hole in his colon. He has to spend the first month of his life in the hospital. Their total bill when all is said and done, over $200K. Is it fair that medical bills bankrupt a family?

We need reform, understandably and unequivocally. But this current bill mandates that every person has insurance, everyone has to purchase it. Pre-existing conditions are now gone… but can anyone say whether the astronomical costs are? My biggest problem with this bill? The government lay in bed with the insurance companies. Those devils that deny claim after claim to make a profit. Also, some states (even my home state of Nebraska) have special privileges while others do not.

I don’t know the answer, and will not claim to. But I do know when something stinks and this bill does. You can’t pass a bill just to pass one and then hope to later clean it up.