Monday Muse: Healthcare

Grandma: What a controversial subject! Healthcare! Boy if you want to discuss this subject with other people you get a lot of different views. Living in a town that is full of senior citizens I have to wonder where their views come from especially when they say "I don't want government doing my healthcare." What do they think Medicare is if it isn't socialized medicine run by the government!!!!

I am for universal healthcare, but I think they railroaded a bill through and didn't give it a lot of thought. Our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will be paying for it for years.

Where is the equality in the coverage when it forces people to carry it? If they don't have money to pay for premiums now where are they going to get it later? How do the homeless and unemployed people get coverage?

Making insurance companies take out the pre-existing clause in their contracts is a good thing. Uncapping the maximum to be paid out is also a benefit. I think we have a start with the bill passed, but it needs a lot of work to get coverage to everyone without penalties. It will be interesting to see what our representatives and senators do next.

Daughter: I'm a little lost when it comes to this issue. There have been so many different versions of this bill on the table that I found it difficult to keep track of them all. Eight months ago when this all started, I was excited to see what would happen and what would change. But now eight months later, I'm exhausted with the topic and all the political crap surrounding it. And I know that this is probably true of many of my peers.

I really got turned off listening to all the political back and forth and the stalemate between the Republicans and the Democrats. I think what will be more interesting to me is what happens now. What will change? And how will this all play out?

Mom: Assign a project for the government to complete and you can be guaranteed that they will make it as complicated as possible before coming to a conclusion. When the bill was introduced it contained 176,276 words. By the time Congress got through with it there were 395,096 words!

As many pages long as the healthcare reform bill is, I wonder how many of our esteemed representatives have even read the bill. Do any of them even know entirely what it is that they voted for or voted against. I think that our healthcare system needs revamping, but I get so tired of the bipartisan finger pointing that it seems like Congress is more of a circus event than a body of legislation.

If our representatives had chosen to work together to come up with a masterful plan for healthcare reform then maybe someone wouldn't have to explain to me exactly what it is that has been passed.