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What About The Obama Healthcare Plan?

I don't know about you, but I am definitely confused. So far I haven't seen anything written that says what the new Healthcare Plan will be. I am getting pulled back and forth from both sides saying I should want it (especially since I'm one of the millions without any healthcare), or I should be fighting it because even without healthcare, adopting his plan would be worse. What I'm wondering is how in the Sam hell do I know without seeing it?

I know I don't want socialized medicine. Everyone talks about Canada, but when I was married to a Canadian they took 50% of his check to pay for the "free healthcare" he had. When he needed an operation on his leg, it took months to get us in and it wasn't as if we could just go somewhere else.

I did find an informative .pdf this morning that outlines what they want to fix. My problem with it is no where do they say how they plan to fix it. Personally I feel like you or I could have written this. I think most of us know what's wrong with the health care system, but just like this paper, we don't have the "how". I've always thought that a lot of health care costs would be cut if more insurance companies paid for preventative medicine instead of waiting until someone's got a full blown disease and then paying to try and fix it. Most companies pay for very few preventative measures, which has never made much sense to me.

Another excellent article in Fortune talks about how our freedom to choose our own healthcare plan would really work. There's a lot of information here that I haven't even heard brought up. I'll have to start my list of questions so it's ready when we get our "Townhall meeting" here. LOL.

This is what I do know. I know that the "stimulus plan" spent a ton of money but didn't anticipate very accurately what people would do with that money, and thus didn't seem to stimulate the economy much at all. People spend that paltry little bit by paying a bill or putting it in savings. Lottery winners stimulate the economy. LOL. The money businesses got, a good portion of them (like banks) didn't even have to account for where the money went, until the second hand out. When they did have to account for their spending (there were strings attached to the hand outs) many gave it back or paid it back quickly.

I know that people with fairly new cars are turning them in to the "cash for clunkers" program. One lady turned her newer (2004 Ford) car because it was in an accident and she didn't want to pay to get it fixed (or tell her insurance company). Meanwhile people driving 1988 gas guzzlers are still driving them because they either can't afford or don't want a car payment. Here's the good part. They didn't even make it mandatory to buy a car made in America! You would think when they handed out the second round of cash they would have fixed a few "holes" in the system.

I know that offering big banks a $1000.00 incentive to keep people in their homes is nothing. The execs at B of A and Wells Fargo probably wipe their butts with that money. It was just $500.00 and then they wonder why that program isn't doing anything. The programs they enacted to help homeowners refinance out of their current problems, some of them the guidelines were so strict, one program has only helped one homeowner in all the months it's been in force.

When President Obama took office I was right behind him with my support giving him the benefit of the doubt. I think that's as it should be when you love your country, but I'm afraid it's not like how I love my kids, right or wrong. I have to say so far I'm not impressed. It all just looks like one more government, bureaucratic screw up to me.

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2 comments:

mugwump said...

Right on, sista! ;^)

If more people were able to work, I'd bet there would be fewer people not covered by insurance.

If the government would take some of the stimulus money and hire a few people to crack down on waste and fraud in the medical insurance industry, the costs wouldn't be as high.

And if insurance companies actually had a conscience, they wouldn't deny people with "pre-existing conditions" (like me).

I, too, voted for Obama as an agent for change - but not for him to increase the country's debt so much that we'll never recover . . .

Steve Huff

Lauri Ann said...

Steve,
Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving your comment. It looks like we think a lot alike.