Healthcare Fine

[talon]

A fine of 2.5% of my income for not carrying insurance is far, far cheaper than the 20% I'm currently paying for health insurance that I can't use because I have no free income to spend on the co-pays and deductibles. I can place the difference between what I pay for insurance and what I'll have to pay for the fines into savings to spend on healthcare and be able to actually afford to see a doctor should I need one. That's thousands of dollars a year, each year, that I can save for real healthcare that doesn't have some insurance employee more concerned with the bottom line than with healing making my healthcare decisions.

I'm not happy with the increased power that is going to the insurance companies. I would have loved a healthcare reform that eliminated the health insurance model. I resent the enforced coverage. On auto coverage, I can choose not to own a car and so avoid car insurance premiums, but I can't choose not to own a body.

I don't mind paying taxes to provide government run healthcare coverage because in my experience with government run health care (when I was a military orphan, and later as a military employee, my mother's coverage as a military widow and then as a senior citizen, my military children and friends, friends on Medicaid, friends on Social Security Disability, friends on Medicare until Bush made it so complicated, etc), they've gotten the care they needed in a timely fashion, the care their doctor prescribed, not some faceless bottom-liner in a cubicle somewhere. If we received that level of care, I'd happily pay a bit more in taxes to expand the coverage to more citizens.

But I resent, deeply, deeply resent, paying premiums to for-profit agencies who care far more about making money off of me than helping me heal from whatever illness or injury I may have.

I'd far rather pay the penalty to be uninsured andsave the balance of the premiums I would have paid for health expenses than to be insured under those (or even under current!) circumstances.

The relationship between the doctor and the patient takes a back seat to the insurance companies' needs to make a profit.

I do believe we need health care reform. I am saddened (and somewhat sickened) that it is this ill-concieved one.