It has been very interesting listening to the news and the politicians dealing with the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. The online website of the program has been a disaster, but the GOP is trying to make it out that the program is a disaster and as a result the Obama presidency is going down the toilet.
It’s simply a system of getting insurance to people who either just don’t have it or can’t afford it. Two to three years from now it will all be a memory. The masses of people in this country have insurance either through their employer or Medicare, and these people are not being affected once the system is up.
The vast majority of people being affected are the people who don’t have insurance. My biggest fear is the young people from the ages of 18 through 26. I know ACA allows parents to keep these young people on their insurance, but what about the thousands of young people whose parents don’t have insurance. What about the thousands coming out of Foster Care, the prisons or college? The Republican party is trying to do all they can to destroy Obama, and the ACA any way they can which has led to them making more out of the delay in the implementation of this law than it really is. Since there’s nothing there now what are we missing out on? And what’s really odd to me is that they aren’t offering any kind of alternative or ways to fix or improve it. Even though practically every American knew and stated that the Health Care System needed to be reformed, the GOP hasn’t offered anything. And still haven’t other than to try to repeal Obamacare.
I’m looking forward to the Obama administration getting the online implementation of the program fixed, and people finally being able to sign up for the health care insurance of their choice. And I hope that with this comes the competition among health care providers that creates more of them and lowers the prices of health care cost, hopefully more so than automobile insurance has.
Because despite competition, it seems like hundreds of auto insurance companies, they are still entirely too expensive. But when one gets out of hand at least we have several others to pick from.
Whatever changes need to be made, should be made.
For example, the controversy over some policyholders having to pay more for insurance in comparison to what they have. If they like what they have better, they should be able to keep it, at that price. I still don’t know if this is going to be better or worse for low and moderate-income people. But I do believe it will be running just fine in two or three years, and eventually in every state.
I do know that everyone should have health insurance, and once this law is put in place, we should still continue to fight to make sure it stays affordable. The ACA is moving in the right direction, but we need more laws like this that help low and middle-income families. This is why it’s so important for this law to work, and shut the Tea Party and Conservative Wing of the GOP up once and for all, because if it doesn’t there will never be anymore health care reform in our lifetime.
Without the ACA look for the big health care insurers and the pharmaceutical companies to grow into the largest corporations in the world, forcing more people to have to decide between “do I eat or do I purchase this medicine” or “can I afford to have this procedure done that may save my life or ease the pain or do I just live with the pain and suffering because I don’t have the money to do both?”
All I know after a couple of near death experiences with cancer and a heart attack I understand how important having health insurance is, and how important good health care is, especially after looking at the cost of this care. I can’t even imagine having to pay for this care by my family or myself.
Health care is extremely expensive, and it should be a right for all people to not only have access to it but to have it. If we can demand people have auto insurance, then we all should have health care for our family and ourselves. And I strongly feel this is why we have a government in the first place.
To look out for the masses, because even though the Tea Party fools, and the Conservative Republicans as a whole believe that everything should be left up to private business, I for one don’t believe health care should be all about profits.
I know that doctors should get paid well, and nurses and all the other people who deliver the great care we receive in the hospitals should as well. All these people can get paid and the top notch equipment that they use paid for, without putting people into bankruptcy, or taking everything they’ve worked hard for all their lives.
(Ulish Carter is the managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier. He can be reached at ucarter@newpittsburghcourier.com)
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