My Problems with the Affordable Care Act aka #Obamacare

So, I had an email exchange with my mom discussing the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. Personally, I don’t like the official name for the act as it functions like the name of the Patriot Act did. “What do you mean, you don’t want to vote for the ‘Affordable Care Act’?? Don’t you want people to be able to afford health care?? You horrible monster!”

Regardless, my mom had some good points but ultimately I think there are a lot of things we simply aren’t discussing about the entire issue of health care. I addressed these things in my email reply. I also addressed her understandable confusion regarding the government shutdown. Here is what I sent her:

Thanks for your thoughts, Mom. I agree with most of them and you’re right, Obamacare does help a lot of people get healthcare.

However, I feel that a few things are being overlooked:

1) it’s not that I don’t want to pay anything for health care. It’s that all I want to pay for is health care. Not pharmaceutical company profits, not for treatments instead of cures, and definitely not for health insurance company executives’ yachts and multiple homes. I believe that there is something deeply immoral about making lots of money of off sick people.

2) you assume that health insurance companies want to pay for your health care. They don’t. They are all “for profit” companies and thus MUST put profits first (that’s the law, I believe). So, the medicine and procedures you need them to pay for will be scrutinized by insurance company employees. If insurance companies paid for what ever the doctor or you wanted done, I’d feel much better about the health insurance industry.

3) our country could do a national health system, like the UK’s. We tax American citizens for loads of things–why not tax just a bit more for health care the way we already tax for social security or any number of other things? Imagine how much money small businesses would save by not having to pay for their employee’s health care anymore.

Ultimately, my biggest problem with Obamacare is the mandate. I haven’t seen one compelling argument for why every American should be *forced* to have health *insurance*. The best argument I’ve heard is that it’s because if I get into a car accident, get medical care and don’t pay for it, the hospital has to spread the cost of my care across everyone else’s bill in order to stay profitable. To that, I say: “So, if a hospital can’t stay profitable, but is clearly providing an important service, then shouldn’t we all be taxed so it can stay open and continue providing those important services?”

Not every problem in the world can be solved by a corporation. We seem to not know this as a country.

As for this stupid government shut down thing? It seems to me like the Republicans throwing a hissy fit. Remember when the government shut down during the Clinton years? It was for a couple of days and we barely noticed. In the great scheme of things, it’s no big deal. It’s not like Al Qaeda is waiting to attack.

To me, America is about freedom and, to me, freedom is about choice. Not giving Americans a choice regarding how we treat our own bodies is positively unAmerican, to me. This mandate is a tax on life, itself.

via thepete.com* http://thepete.com/my-problems-with-the-affordable-care-act-aka-obamacare/