Healthcare

Today for a while I felt fear. Fear that maybe I had skipped some years of my life and was living in the horror of Obamacare, and the horrendous waiting lists that would come with it, just as in the UK, Canada, France, and the rest of the industrialized world. I felt a chill down my spine.
But then I realized that it was still 2009, and I felt much better. I felt great that I had not lost those years, that hopefully I would be able to live and enjoy them.
But then reality hit me. Those nightmares of having to wait for months for a doctor's visit were not part of the future, they are the present that I, and many others, have to live with. My son needs to wait until November for an appointment so he can get medication that he takes every day during school year. The previous doctor said one day that she couldn’t see my son anymore because the institution where she attended patients would not accept insurance any longer because Medicaid and Medicare paid her more with less paperwork. So much for the great choices we have now.
For those of us who have family members who need to take medication due to some illness , and whose insurance companies do not want to pay for doctors visits, or who require us to pay large amounts for medication and for co-pays, the concept of having a system where the haves would be obliged to pay for those of us who are less fortunate sounds like a logical idea. For those who have, have because the US has blessed. So the right thing to do is to give back a fraction of their blessing, and not to spend more than what they would have to share just to defeat legislation, and keep those who have not always under their control.

It is very simple for people who don’t have any disabilities to believe that paying for those who need it is not their obligation. Neither is it for the retired person to pay for other people’s kids education. But that is what living in society is.

I used to work with a gentleman who, although with residence in Canada, was contracted by the company where I was working at the time. And I noticed that one day he comes in with braces, so he was telling me that as an adult he had to pay in Canada a small fee for those braces, and that if you were a minor they were free. We recently finished paying for braces for my daughter. The cost was $5,000.00. When my son made his 6 month teeth cleaning the dentist said that we should be considering braces for him as well. Just the thought of it makes me depressed. I love when conservatives overlook all these details. They only point out to the fact that people need to wait 6 months for a breast implant. And they do this because we (unfortunately) live in a clueless, uneducated, uniformed society who can be told that the Martians are coming and they freak out.