Keep Your Hands Off My Obamacare
Jonathan Cloud September 20th, 2013
Some Republicans in Congress are determined to “de-fund” Obamacare by holding the government’s entire budget hostage. I beg to differ from those in the Tea Party who are supporting this move.
Our personal story is that we have enjoyed company-supplied health care insurance up to the point where my wife got laid off in 2012, and since then have paid for COBRA at $1500 a month to maintain these benefits. This ends in November, and we fully intend to apply for insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
This name says a lot — it’s private insurance that is expected to be affordable and held to important consumer-protection standards. We haven’t signed up yet, and we’ll be the first to complain if the system does not work properly when it’s launched in October. But there are currently a lot of good software engineers and designers working for the federal government, and we’re expecting to see any kinks ironed out as soon as they’re discovered.
At last year’s town halls, you’d see signs saying “Keep Your Hands Off My Medicare.” Since we don’t qualify for Medicare, this is the way I feel about my Obamacare also, even before I have it. With no income coming in, and no private plans we could afford, we’re counting on the Affordable Care Act to provide us with adequate health care protection at a cost we can afford. And even then, we’re going to have to arrange something for the gap in December, since complex conditions and prescriptions we can’t afford to be without health care for even a month.
I don’t know if one voice means anything these days, but after watching people like Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia promise his constituents to do anything to stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, I have to protest. And I’m wondering where the people who support this are getting their health care insurance, since I suspect a lot of Tea Party folks don’t have jobs either.
The bottom line is that America needs universal health care coverage, and this gets us much closer to achieving that without being “government health care.” Is this Tea Party really saying that it doesn’t support something that even the insurance industry is in favor of, and that will help reduce the extent of charitable care and get more young people paying into the pool to the extent they can afford to do so?
Please, Republicans, keep your hands off my Obamacare.
(First published at DeadRiverJournal.org, 9-19-13)