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| Barack Obama | |  |
President Barack Obama beginning his 2009 Notre Dame commencement speech with a prayer. "...I was not raised in a particularly religious household, but my mother instilled in me a sense of service and empathy that eventually led me to become a community organizer after I graduated college..." | Photo: Notre Dame |
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I'm for universal health care, health care is a right and not a privilege, and my health is my property. I also believe you should always have a choice to opt-in or opt-out of any government or private program. Unfortunately the Affordable Care Act, which was upheld this week by the Supreme Court, is neither universal health care, nor does it allow one to opt-out of paying for private health insurance.
Health insurance has never treated or cured anyone. Doctors and nurses do that, monetizing your health, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with treating human beings. Forcing us all to pay into that for-profit system is an assault on common sense.
As it stands now, if you fail to opt-into the Affordable Care Act, you will be fined by the IRS, which means if you avoid paying those fines, they could legally put you in jail for your debt. Obviously only a few of us will end up in that situation, but the mere possibility that you can end up in jail for not buying something from private corporations is egregious.
What the Affordable Care Act does well, is to force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, which was sorely needed in the health care industry. Like all things, nothing is perfect, but the watered down Affordable Care Act will also allow thousands of people in poverty to gain access to the Medicaid system.
Many conservatives and libertarians will see this as the great welfare state giveaway, and they are right in a sense. But until labor shares in the ownership of production, and in the products or services they produce, we will always have wage inequality, and the need for such inefficient fixes, like Medicaid and welfare.
Forcing us all to get in line and pay the same folks who tirelessly work to deny services, and overcharge us all over the past twenty years, doesn't sit right with me. Paying into a for-profit-health care system, where my health gets monetized, and I can only get treated if I have enough fiat, also doesn't sit right with me.
Ultimately, I believe an opt-in optional universal health care system is required, and the Affordable Care Act is the next step, or stumble forward, towards that end goal.
