Emily Kelley / Roundup
When I was 6 years old, my doctor diagnosed me with a condition known as kidney stones.
While not immediately life threatening, it is a painful and bothersome affliction that can turn serious if complications arise.
I had health insurance my entire childhood and adolescent years, so I never had to worry about going to the doctor or getting sick.
For the next 13 years, I was almost perfectly healthy and in no real need of serious medical attention. I saw my doctor once or twice a year for the occasional shot or check up, but that was it.
The day I turned 19, my insurance was up. My security blanket was gone. If I became seriously ill, I’d have nowhere to go in an emergency. Since I’d been healthy for so long, I didn’t worry about it too much.
Until I ended up in the emergency room at 4 a.m.
Because of my condition, I was more susceptible to urinary tract infections, which was what landed me in the hospital. An infection can spread to your kidneys, and if untreated, can cause permanent damage to the organs or spread to the blood stream.
That’s when it can be life threatening.
That night in the hospital, I sat in a bed for two hours while they ran one test, which just affirmed what they already knew. The doctor wrote me a prescription and sent me on my way.
The cost of such a fun night? Almost $2,500.
Paying for my college is already a burden on my parents, and adding another expense would just further that.
I want health insurance, and I think that Congress has made at least a baby step in the direction of reform is good.
However, the bill doesn’t address the needs of the country’s largest population: the middle class.
The rich can already afford health insurance, and the poor will have more of an opportunity to obtain it under the new bill, but what about the average family? They are still most likely too poor to afford to buy healthcare from the insurance companies, and too rich to qualify for Medicare.
The healthcare bill started out as this historical endeavor, something to rival President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” in terms of the amount of people it could help.
But as soon as it hit the House floor, it was torn apart. Granted some things should have not been included in the first place, but the gapping hole in the bill’s more than 2,000 pages is the missing public option.
Republicans hear “public option” and squirm. They hear $940 billion and squirm.
However, they don’t squirm over our socialist public school system, the largest socialist institution in the world. They also don’t squirm over the $900 billion price tag the Iraq Conflict boasts.
The thing about the public option that most people didn’t understand was that it would not be mandatory. It would be available for people who don’t want to get price gauged by the insurance companies or didn’t need government-run health programs.
Everyone balked at the idea of a public option, but some how fining people who don’t get health care by 2014.
According to the bill, individuals could face a $695 penalty and families could face $2,085. How do they expect us to pay a fine if we can’t even afford health insurance in the first place?
Insurance costs will just go up because of this, since they know we’ll be willing to pay a higher price to avoid the fine.
This section of the bill makes the need for a public option necessary. The government cannot expect the American public to spend beyond our means without a cheaper option in place.
The bill is nowhere near perfect, and nowhere near as historical as people are making it out to be.
Our country is having a hard last few years, but one of the government’s priorities should always be the people, not the money they can make off of them.
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