This article seems close to what the Health Care Act will provide.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-will-the-affordable-care-act-affect-you-.html
There are many benefits of this and even though none of these exactly match my situation there are a couple that do. One my youngest son would have not been eligible for insurance after he came off of ours. Because of the changes he can stay on ours until he is 26, so he will be out of school and working for awhile when he needs to get insurance if his employer does not have it. Now my husbands company provides insurance and whether we have 1 or 5 children it is a family plan and costs do not change and for some reason in the last 5 years there is no difference between a couple plan cost and a family so we don’t pay anything different for having 2 of our 3 boys on our policy right now. I am disabled and on SSD and so I am elegible for Medicare. I only have Medicare A which is the hospitalization that is automatic and no cost but instead of using any of the other (which would have cost us less) we decided to just leave me on our regular policy. Reasons to us are that we know that the hassles some people have with it and we know how ours works also if I do not need medical coverage from the government that someone else desperately does we would prefer they get it. With all the talk always going around about fewer people being able to get Medicare, I feel there are more out there that have to have it versus me who already has decent coverage.
I hear people complain that they have to purchase health care but what they do not realize is that this is something everyone should have anyway! The “I don’t get sick or go to doctors!” garbage is getting old! I do not want my clinic and hospital bills to keep going up when these same people get sick or in an accident of some kind and go to there ER and get treated but don’t have the money to pay. They won’t pay but the rest of us do. Those that say, they can pay for their care without needing insurance because they only go for their yearly physical or when they really need a doctor, are in for a rude awakening if/when they end up with a catastrophic illness and they lose all their life savings and then their home because they did not have insurance. I have seen people this has happened to. I have also seen people lose these same things when insurance companies were allowed to put a cap on the benefits and we were worried that I would hit my cap within a few years and then we would not know what to do. Without a cap people do not have that stress and with the insurance companies not able to deny you for having a previous condition is better than ever!
Now the amount of the penalty that shows on this article for someone who decides not to get insurance even though it would be affordable is low. The reason I say that is that $95 is really low and the $695 they show is around what we pay per month for insurance (health, dental, vision and prescription) so that to me is reasonable. Those that decide not to are not only hurting themselves they are costing those of us who do have it. I know plenty of people that cannot afford insurance but this will make it possible and only those that are clueless don’t believe it.
There are several countries that have universal health care in some form and it does work. Those idiotic commercials that they have people from Canada complaining about it are funny in the way that no matter what you talk about someone will always be negative! People complain that they should be free to choose and you still are, choose you insurance or choose a penalty but do not make it where so many will go uninsured because you don’t want to be.
What makes this so frustrating is that people listen but do not really hear the advantages of a health care act and they are so focused on being a diehard party follower that they would probably walk off a cliff becaus etheir parties candidate told them too, use a little common sense! If this is repealed and my son would no longer eligble for insurance and I would again have a lifetime cap I will fight! I doubt it will be but it will make a mess of things if it would. You have to see it fully working before you can judge and it isn’t yet! If you are so insensitive to the people around you (and there are many uninsured they just don’t announce it to the world) then maybe you should go find a nice uninhabited island so you can live by your own rules and not worry about anyone else! That would be great for everyone!
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