We finally got our tax return. YAY! And half of it is gone already. YAY! Of course it went to a good cause. Our Disneyland vacation. YAY! We have a measly 18 days left before we leave. I'm so excited. It's been 7 years since I last went to Disneyland. Jacob was 4, Chaunie was 2, and TJ was a sparkle in Cheryl's eye. It's going to be so fun.
So now that the fun stuff is out of the way let's talk about the healthcare bill that was just passed. I work at the USHS which is located in the Rio Grande building. It sits right next to the homeless shelter. Every morning I walk from the trax station to work and I pass the line of homeless people waiting in line for breakfast. These aren't just men or women who don't want to work. Granted some of them are but the majority of the people I see fall into 2 categories: mentally handicapped people and families. These people don't have insurance. The homeless shelter is great because they provide some much needed care. They give them food and a place to stay but they also help them find housing and a job. They are there to help people get back on their feet. There is a free clinic associated with the Road Home (the homeless shelter) to provide free and low cost healthcare to those people. After they leave the shelter they need to continue to have care. And I'm not talking about the mentally handicapped because they do have healthcare; they have Medicaid. I'm talking about the families and children who aren't getting what they need. But thanks to the inept Democrats and the self serving Republicans we got stuck with a watered down healthcare bill that won't really do much for anyone but the worst of the worst. That may be a start but let's run some numbers here. I have health insurance. It's through Cheryl's work and we don't have to pay anything for it. That's a benefit of Cheryl being a manager. Everyone at her work has the same insurance but managers just don't have to pay for it. We have a deductible for a family that is $3500 I believe. It could be more, I'll have to check. Cheryl let me know that the vision coverage gives us 1 preventive check-up per year and they don't cover contacts or glasses. Forget laser surgery. What good is this coverage that doesn't cover anything? I have to pay for pretty much everything when I or any of my family needs healthcare. So how does this new healthcare bill help me?
Frankly it doesn't really help me. It requires everyone to have healthcare but they removed the government option. That could really help someone like me where we have no other options but the one from Cheryl's work and we don't qualify for government healthcare programs. It regulates the insurance industry a little by saying they can't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and they removed the lifetime coverage amount. That's great. They can still hand me a bill for a deductible though. So who ends up paying for it in the end? I do. You do. We all do. There is no competition for the insurance industry. There are no other options for insuring. We are all at the mercy of an industry that made billions of dollars in profits in one quarter. They don't make money by giving you coverage; they make money by denying you coverage. The Incredibles is my favorite cartoon. If you've seen it you've seen Bob Parr at work at the insurance company. I believe that to be quite close to the truth of how those companies work.
So the healthcare bill passes and what happens next? Well, Utah along with 10 other states is now suing the federal government saying that this bill is unconstitutional. This is exactly what the Republicans wanted and why? To win the next election. It's all connected to power. That's why not one Republican would work to make this happen but instead they all decided to be obstructionists and just said no to everything that was proposed. Instead of moving us towards a one payer system like in Canada we were handed this watered down bill so that the Democrats can all pat themselves on the back and say look what we did. We reformed the industry.
I'm not buying it and I hope your not buying it either. I want to be able to go to the hospital and get care without worrying what I'll end up paying for this. I want to go to the emergency room with my wife when she gets a concussion and get her the care she needs without worrying if we went to a hospital that is covered by my insurance. I have $5000 in medical bills right now that we are trying to pay off as fast as we can but that's not good enough for the providers so they send the wolves after us in the form of collection agencies and lawyers.
So this brings me back to our tax return. The rest of our tax return will most likely end up in some provider’s hands where it will promptly be turned over to their insurance companies that protect them from getting sued. So my money will still end up going to an insurance company in the end. Thanks for the coverage. You can shove it.
Thanks for reading.
