As if there were still any doubts about the Democrats’ true intentions regarding their healthcare “reform”, I’ve found yet another article that clearly outlines a few nuggets of truth hidden throughout the latest healthcare bill to come out of Congress.
This time the article is from the NY Post of all places. They’ve discovered that – besides outlawing personal private health insurance policies – there will be an entirely new government agency whose sole purpose is to evaluate every single health insurance company and the policies they provide. This agency will then select certain specific policies which will meet some sort of arbitrary set of guidelines (and who knows what those are); these bureaucrat-approved policies will then be called “qualified plans”.
The kicker is, if you or your employer don’t select one of these government-approved qualified plans, you’ll be fined thousands of dollars via the IRS and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan against your will. So in other words, even though you’ll have the freedom to pay through the nose for a private health insurance plan, whose cost will skyrocket, you won’t have the freedom to choose a plan that fits your own needs. No, silly mindless puny human, obviously a government bureaucrat knows far more about what you need than you do! How could you be so naive…
Yet again, this flies in the face of Obama’s campaign promise that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” even after he reforms our healthcare system. Yeah, well, what if I happen to like my current plan but a government bureaucrat isn’t as fond of it as I am? I guess then Obama’s promise won’t mean squat. But hey, maybe there was fine print hidden at the end of his teleprompter that we just couldn’t see.
In all honestly, I’m absolutely thrilled with my health insurance, just like 87% of Americans who are very satisfied with theirs as well. Through my Father’s job, my family has a plan with Anthem/Blue Cross Blue Shield. They’ve been absolutely wonderful, even when dealing with my rather obscure and difficult to treat disease. Compared to the treatment my friends with the same disease get from their socialized medical systems in the UK, Canada, & Australia – i.e. no care at all – I think I’m much better off under the current system than I would be under ObamaCare’s medical dictatorship.
To give you some idea of the quality of my care, I have three nurse case managers, one with my Dad’s company and two with Anthem, all of whom help to track and coordinate my care so that I can get the most out of my coverage. They’ve never disputed anything that I’ve had done, and believe me, I’ve had a LOT done. My medical bills just for the past couple years have added up into the millions. Hell, a few years ago when I desperately needed five rounds of high volume liposuction to keep the disease from killing me by age 22, Anthem actually paid for all of it, even though they’d never before in the history of the company ever encountered medically necessary liposuction, let alone paid for it in full. And that’s just a small sample of the great working relationship I’ve had with Anthem – I could go on and on about all that they’ve done for me and my doctors.
So all in all, I adore my health insurance company. I love them to pieces. In fact, if it weren’t for their help, I’d be dead by now. I’d damn well like to keep Anthem as my health insurance provider. But if Obama and the Democrats have their way? Well, their good track record of taking care of me won’t matter anymore – it’ll be up to some no-name in a suit who has never met me, sitting behind a government desk, whether or not I’ll get to keep paying this company for their wonderful services. That hardly seems fair, that hardly seems free, and that hardly seems to be in keeping with everything Obama and his fellow Democrats have been saying about their true incentives for passing their healthcare “reforms”.
You know, as I was reading that NY Post article, I couldn’t help but think of something. If their healthcare plan is going to cost us a whopping $1 trillion dollars in the first year alone, only to go up by the trillions from there, couldn’t we use that money in a more effective way, without stripping those of us who have health insurance away from our current coverage?
I actually came up with an idea that I’d find more palatable, but still as radically comparable to Obama’s proposed reforms. As I’ve already explained, despite everyone claiming there are 40 million Americans uninsured in this country, the truth is the actual figure is closer to roughly 12 million or so, once you discount illegal aliens, citizens making more than $50k a year, and those who already qualify for existing government programs. How about we take that $1 trillion dollars from the first year of the Democrats’ proposed reforms and instead split that up amongst the 12 million uninsured? We could give them some sort of government coupon that would only be applicable toward purchasing health insurance, that way they couldn’t go and blow it on big screen TVs and exotic vacations. If we did that, each and every one of those 12 million uninsured Americans would receive $83,333. Don’t you think that’d buy one hell of an insurance plan? Hell, even if there really were 40 million uninsured American citizens, they’d still get a whopping $25,000!! That’d definitely be one way that Obama could actually fulfill his campaign promise of ensuring that those who are already insured won’t lose their coverage, yet we’d still be able to get the uninsured covered without creating another massive, bloated government bureaucracy whose sole purpose in existence is to siphon off our freedoms.
Oh, and it’d also help with Obama’s unnamed – yet painfully obvious – goal of drastically expanding our deficit. Hooray.
Whaddya say, Obama? Or gee, is getting people insured not your real incentive here at all? Cause honestly, my idea’s sounding a heckuva lot more appealing right now than yours is.
