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What’s So Bad about Obamacare After All?
By Chris Jennewein
As a new entrepreneur and father of two recent college graduates entering the working world, I find it hard to understand why the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is so vilified.
I’m applying because I started my own business and don’t have a cushy corporate health insurance plan anymore. One of my daughters is applying because the company she works for doesn’t offer insurance.
My personal experience with Obamacare is all about practical solutions to changing family situations. The same is probably true for most of the 10 million who have signed up so far. But many on the right still see Obamacare as an existential threat to the republic.
“It’s pounding the American people,” Louisiana Senator-elect Bill Cassidy said on Fox News Sunday. “People are upset about this law, and we must do something about it.”
Private insurance was certainly possible before Obamacare, but it was expensive. When I was my daughters’ age, I simply went without insurance and avoided doctors and dentists, a detail that makes my wife grimace.
Now the American public is required to buy insurance, and that angers many conservatives, who see it as one more attack on our freedom.
But why is the freedom to be bankrupted by a catastrophic illness held in such high regard?
A century ago, only the wealthy received medical attention. If the average American got sick, he or she recovered naturally — or died. Of course, there wasn’t a lot that doctors could do.
Thanks to enormous advances in medical science, it’s different now. Medical care can extend lives in almost every case today — but at a cost. That cost was the reason for the Affordable Care Act.
By requiring all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, Obamacare spreads the cost of catastrophic illness and ensures that families will not be bankrupted. In the process, most of those who are uncovered will get insurance, if only to avoid the penalty.
This is not national health care and hardly socialism, since private companies provide the insurance and private doctors continue to care for patients. Obamacare at its heart is a simply a new requirement that Americans take responsibility for their increasingly expensive health care.
If you ignore the heated rhetoric, it’s hard not to see real, practical benefits from Obamacare. A healthy daughter has to pay for insurance she will likely never use, but I’m relieved she has it.
Chris Jennewein is editor & publisher of Times of San Diego. Preceeding provided by Times of San Diego, a member of the San Diego Online News Association (SDONA).