Implementation Issues

This past week they ruled that the healthcare law is constitutional. I have no problem with that. In fact, the vast majority of this healthcare law I like and support. My main issue is in one teeny tiny bit, one small road bump, that I was really hoping the supreme court would toss. I don't want the whole law repealed...just one small portion.

It's that requirement that gets me.

For those of you who know me, you know I hate the idea of any thing forced on me, whatsoever. Force a union on me? Gain a rant. Force me to purchase healthcare that I cannot afford at an ever increasing rate? Get a much longer rant. I've been informed I start soap boxing if it's brought up. Oops.

Well, seeing as how this is my soapbox, and a lovely one with flowers even, I think I shall stand on it and, if you'll forgive me, soapbox a little.

Look. I like universal healthcare. I like inexpensive healthcare. In fact, once the overhead of insurance is removed, I find most costs for healthcare to be reasonable enough, baring you know, big emergencies and the like. Big emergencies are costly pennies, don't you think?

But what I don't like is the current implementation of the healthcare law. Change the implementation, I might be feeling more kindly to it. While I have to pay college bills however? Tell you what. You pay all my college, and I'll purchase health insurance. It'll just work out.

My biggest beef with the healthcare law is the requirement, entirely because of that big gaping hole in income earners where you make too much to be on medicare/medicaid, but still can't afford health insurance for the family. Where you aren't considered poor, but you aren't rich, and you are just barely maybe middle class, clinging tenaciously to that title. Where you are trying to make it work...but can't afford insurance.

Healthcare is a necessity. It's lengthened our life span significantly, and the more it improves, the longer, it seems, we live. While living forever seems an awfully boring thing, I'm in no hurry to die, I admit. I'm grateful for healthcare! It's given me more time with my family than I ever could have imagined before.

But here's the rub. The insurance. Okay, I admit that I have some health issues that some people may or may not consider significant. As for me? I've lived with them this long, and I seem fine. Everything is attached, and I can still live a normal life. So for now, until I can afford it, I'll live with it.

I wouldn't mind paying an insurance company to pay most of my healthcare bills...if I could afford it. I'm lucky the age went from 23 to 26 on healthcare as it is. Otherwise, I'd be one of those penalized (next year) for, you know, being poor, but not poor enough, or too confused by all the paperwork, or denied for no real good reason other than someone had their panties in a twist that day.

I'm not certain I even know how to go about purchasing insurance. I suppose when the time comes I'll spend several days feverishly researching online, and take about a month to decide who I want to bleed my paycheck dry.

If I can afford it.

If not, I guess I'll pay the $95 or 1% total income (whichever, by the way, is greater) in a fine and sigh dramatically. By the way, to pay the $95 dollars, you have to make $9,500 or less a year. If you are making that much, I would like to point you to the lucrative business of unemployment. You can have 2.5 straight years of making just barely enough to afford a home and food on, and still be in a better place! But that's a very different rant for another day, and it's not one that anyone want to hear me go on. I'm no economist, after all, and I will freely admit it.

If I wasn't required to have the insurance, if this was simply an actual tax, than I would have no problem. But this is not the tax that the supreme court has labeled it as. It's forced consumerism. For raised taxes, I won't mind if they tax me to pay for free healthcare, so long as I am paid a wage that I can still live off of. They'd have to raise the minimum wage for people to be able to afford it, but hey, I'm all for raising that anyway, and what a nifty way of confusing people who don't realize that they'd still be making the same amount of money.

Of course, then business would hire less, so aren't we in a conundrum.

I want universal healthcare, but this is not that. It's been labeled that, and called that, and I've been told off my people in Canada and Europe for not supporting universal healthcare because I don't support the entirety of this bill.

In short, we have implementation issues with this law, that seriously need to be fixed before I ever even begin to think about supporting it.

One Final Byte: One tiny road bump makes a big headache.