Is it wrong to be sick of the health care debate...?

I’ve spent this week trying to wrap my head around the whole health care reform / Affordable Care Act / this is the best guy available to be Solicitor General? drama as it was breathlessly covered by the relentless media which – for the most part – seems to fundamentally misunderstand it.  My due diligence took a few rewinds of the tape to sort through it all.  Here’s my take away;

Health care is stunningly expensive; that much is pretty clear to anyone unfortunate enough to get seriously sick.  Drugs are expensive, visits to your primary care physician are expensive and lord knows the high tech treatments are expensive.  I recently paid $578 dollars for a 90 day supply of a prescription medication that I have no choice but to take every day.   Every aspect of care is expensive. 

At the same time, the percentage of Americans who can reliably get insurance coverage through their employer is shrinking fast, right along with unions and the quaint notions of employment for life and a pension for anything other than a government job.  Lots of Americans can’t afford it and don’t buy it, period.  Many of those same Americans, however, get sick.  When they do they either go to the emergency room, turning those places into one more modern portal to hell – like the DMV -or if they don’t or can’t get their treatment from the emergency room, many of them end up in hospitals undergoing increasingly expensive treatments, none of which they are able to pay for. 

Since many hospitals are quasi-public or outright public, guess who pays?  One way or another, we all do.  To fix this vexing problem the Affordable Care Act – among many other things – requires everybody to pony up for some kind of insurance.  It doesn’t say who you have to buy it from; just that you have to be covered to some basic extent.  If you choose not to do that, you pay what is currently called a penalty – a strategic blunder of monumental proportions – but which is really a tax that’s collected to put into the reserve pool to help make up the difference and, more importantly, provide enough juice in the system so that insurance companies have to cover everyone.  The howling over this “individual mandate” has almost entirely drowned out the rest of the debate.

 When Antonin Scalia – charming as always – asked, “Can the government force you to buy broccoli because it will make you healthier?” and when Donald Verilli, the current Solicitor General went all mush-mouth trying to answer that question, the media pounced and declared the signature achievement of the Obama administration – and the hair-ball in the throat of republicans everywhere for some reason – dead in the water.  That remains to be seen.

My confusion comes from the fact that, if I get on a motorcycle the government requires me to put on a helmet.  Why?  Because if I lay the bike down or otherwise crack my noggin in an accident, I may very well become a brain-damaged ward of the state and that would cost everyone and burden society unfairly, as the majority of us don’t ride motorcycles.  We all would pay a cost associated with that admittedly stupid decision.  Likewise, in most states I have to wear a seat belt when driving my car because a serious accident could injury me and cause me to become a drain on the resources of the state – of all of us.  So “click it or ticket” is the law of the land.  I can no longer hold a cell phone to my ear while driving for the same reason; to prevent accidents which injure people and cost money.

 So how come what appears to be a majority of Americans are against this law?  It allows kids to stay insured on their parents’ policies until they’re 26, it compels insurance companies to insure little kids, even when they are found to have some condition that previously, it…well hell, this is right out of our favorite Wiki:

·         will require insurers to offer the same premium to all applicants of the same age and geographical location without regard to most pre-existing conditions (excluding tobacco use).

• A shared responsibility requirement, commonly called an individual mandate, requires that all persons not covered by an employer sponsored health plan, Medicaid, Medicare or other public insurance programs, purchase and comply with an approved private insurance policy or pay a penalty, unless the applicable individual is a member of a recognized religious sect exempted by the Internal Revenue Service, or waived in cases of financial hardship.^[23]
• Medicaid eligibility is expanded to include all individuals and families with incomes up to 133% of the poverty level.
•  Health insurance exchanges will commence operation in each state, offering a marketplace where individuals and small businesses can compare policies and premiums, and buy insurance (with a government subsidy if eligible).
•  Low income persons and families above the Medicaid level and up to 400% of the federal poverty level will receive federal subsidies^[27] on a sliding scale if they choose to purchase insurance via an exchange (persons at 150% of the poverty level would be subsidized such that their premium cost would be of 2% of income or $50 a month for a family of 4).
• Minimum standards for health insurance policies are to be established and annual and lifetime coverage caps will be banned.
•  Firms employing 50 or more people but not offering health insurance will also pay a shared responsibility requirement if the government has had to subsidize an employee's health care.
•  Very small businesses will be able to get subsidies if they purchase insurance through an exchange.
• Co-payments, co-insurance, and deductibles are to be eliminated for select health care insurance benefits considered to be part of an "essential benefits package"^[34] for Level A or Level B preventive care.
• Changes are enacted that allow a restructuring of Medicare reimbursement from "fee-for-service" to "bundled payments."
•  Additional support is provided for medical research and the National Institutes of Health.

What is it exactly again that has people so pissed off?  Cause I don’t see it.  It allows everybody to go to the doctor regularly – preventive care – and if you get sick you don’t go broke.  And for this someone at 150% of the poverty level pays 2% of their income or $50 bucks a month.   Check me if I’m missing something but isn’t this a hell of a lot better than the ridiculous system we’re using now, where one serious illness – cancer, heart disease, etc. – essentially drives families straight to a living hell? 

Do the tea party knuckleheads really understand what they’re shouting about?  The conservatives – are you listening, Paul Ryan – want to fix Medicare and their idea of how to do that is to take it away.  Doesn’t this seem like a better idea?  Is the right so full of blind hatred and fury about Obama that they can’t see straight? 

Somebody – and I’m serious – tell me what the problem is with this and what is the better idea.