General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium Rates [View all]davidthegnome
(2,983 posts)The Affordable Care Act is what they're calling it - but you'd have to be a legal expert or someone possessed of the patience of a saint to read all the way through it, to really understand all the particulars. I don't understand them - and won't pretend to. I'll wait until this begins to effect me and those around me, I'll judge the affordable care act by the effect it has on my life, and on the lives of those I know.
What I will say is that it makes me uneasy. It makes me uneasy because it is a legal mandate, forcing people to buy insurance, whether they want it (or will ever use it) or not. I understand the reasoning for it and the need for reform, but this particular reform makes me uneasy. It would have been wonderful to have a public option, or single payer - or even some kind of reform that was laid out in simple language that punks like me with only a year of college could understand.
It makes me uneasy, because so much of the arrangements, from my understanding, were agreed to behind closed doors. It makes me uneasy because I don't understand it. It makes me uneasy because it's been promoted, argued about - and ultimately will be implemented by - the same sort of people who already have complete health coverage, the best in the Country. People who rarely if ever have to worry about paying their bills, feeding their families, or breaking a leg and being unable to work.
What most often strikes me as being bizarre in this age of super PACs, is that our elected representatives have so very little in common with the people they are supposed to represent. Somehow, I just don't think that THEY understand what it's like to be an average American, a working class American, a poor American. If they did, I believe they would fight far harder for a Nation that is clearly ready for something resembling a public option, or single payer system.