Does This Make Sense to You?

 *I’m rambling a bit here.  Last night’s vote has me very upset.  Please excuse me if I make little to no sense.*

I could go on and on about the immorality of the Health Care Bill which was passed last night, but other people are doing that much better and more eloquently than I am capable of being at this moment.  I keep getting caught on one point which nobody has been able to adequately explain to me.   How does this help?

There are people in this country, who for reasons best known to themselves, choose not to pay a monthly premium for health insurance and choose instead to pay out of pocket for their expenses.  I’ve thought about this at times, and have dear friends who have made this decision for their own families.  Premiums for my family run around $1000 a month.  I don’t think this is unreasonable, there are a lot of us.  It’s just a lot of money.  It has only happened once in the 14 years we have been married that our medical expenses were higher than our insurance costs.  Last year, for example-If you add what we pay plus what my husband’s employer pays our insurance cost roughly $14,000 for the year.  I had a baby, so we actually went to the hospital that year, and yet our total health care costs were $12, 890.  When you consider what we paid in co-pays and out of pocket expenses, we lost $2700 on this deal.  We would have been better off putting the money in a separate savings account and paying it all ourselves.  This might actually have been the fiscally responsible alternative.  I don’t know.

Families who have made this decision for themselves have thought long and hard about this.  They are not making this sort of decision lightly.  They are spending their own money in the best way they can.   How does it make sense to fine them for choosing how to spend their own money?

Even more puzzling are the same fines levied upon families who can not afford insurance premiums.  The government is essentially saying “We know you can’t afford to pay for this potentially helpful thing, so here’s a bill for your fine, which gets you nothing.”  Except you don’t have to go to jail if you pay your fine and you do if you don’t pay it.  Enforced consumerism.

People have equated this to the provisions requiring drivers to buy auto insurance.  It’s simply not the same thing.  People have the choice about whether or not to drive, or own a car.  I suppose it could be argued that we now have the right to decide whether or not we want to live, and I’m sure the Democrats will make sure someone picks up the tab if we decide not to.