I supported Obamacare in the beginning when health care reform was under debate, but due to the lobbyist and corporate contamination of the bill, I lost my support for this most recent version of the overhaul.
Ninety percent of the law contains policies which I support, such as eliminating pre-existing conditions, providing a subsidy for people to afford health insurance, expanding Medicaid to the lower middle class, allowing youths to stay on their parents’ health insurance until 26 and the elimination of means testing for Medicaid.
Even with all of these great changes to the health care system, my main reservation is still the individual mandate, which forces citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty tax for not doing so.
President Barack Obama campaigned against the individual mandate, but as soon as he came to office, it was on the table. The Democrats these days trust “experts” and modeled the healthcare overhaul after Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan and the Heritage Foundation plan. Although this alienated many liberals such as myself, Obama went forward and excluded the public option from the bill.
If Obama was going to force the people to buy health insurance, he should have at least given us a public option. Obama shouldn’t just force everyone to buy insurance and call it “universal health care.”
The insurance industry couldn’t imagine a better world than the government forcing people to buy their product.
On a systemic level, Obamacare fails to address the problem of inflation in the health care system. There is no control over the price of procedures and pharmaceuticals. This law is a complete giveaway to the health industry.
There was one other major program that Obama dropped without much of a fight that didn’t get coverage much — the government’s right to negotiate the price of drugs. Ever since Medicare Part D, Big Pharma has been racking in profits to a higher degree and this health care overhaul has exuberated their earning even further.
Universal health care has been a top public concern for decades, but it didn’t become a campaign issue until 2008 because big businesses decided to support it. Corporate America, primarily from manufacturing companies such as General Motors, supported and began pushing for an overhaul of the health care system because it was costing many firms too much on health coverage.
The health industry was the second largest sector to support the Democrats in 2008. This isn’t a coincidence. The top three candidates, Obama, Hilary Clinton and John Edwards, supported universal health care, and one of them was going to win. After Obama’s victory, as expected, he put into motion a health care overhaul that mimicked the Heritage Foundation’s pro-business plan.
Medicare works for seniors and it is a single payer government system. If it works for seniors, then we should expand it for everyone. As a result, this will free businesses from covering employees and boost the economy and everyone will get covered while costing less. If France can cover everyone for half the cost of the United States, then how can we not?
The reason the United States has the most expensive health care system in the world is because we have so many different ones. If you want the British model, which is full scale coverage for all medical expenses by the government, you would need to be in the military or Native American. If you want to have the German model, work full time for a company that covers their employees which now under Obamacare includes all businesses with 50 or more employees. If you want the Canadian model, we have Medicaid and Medicare. Finally we have the Kenyan model, which is if you have money, you get covered.
The American people need to stop settling for corporate sponsored laws and calling it reform. Although Obamacare does benefit those in poverty and the middle class, it hurts the youth. It’s time for change, not Obamacare. We need Medicare for all. We need change, not Obamacare.