Obamacare: The Good, The Bad And The Angry
Connor Strange
Staff Writer
Obamacare -- everyone has heard loads about it, and everyone knows that if you’re Republican you should hate it and if you’re Democrat you should love it. Unfortunately, it’s still a topic that isn’t very well known. People have their opinions about the health care plan without entirely understanding the implications.
The United States government was in a shutdown for the first half of October, which is common knowledge to people who do live under rocks. The main cause for the shutdown was an impasse between the Democratic and Republican segments of the Congress over (the falsely labeled) Obamacare. The original title for the controversial plan was the Affordable Care Act, and it should’ve remained that way. Using Obamacare as a title was a way for Republicans to blame it all on Obama and for Democrats to… blame it all on Obama, but in a supportive way.
It caused too much discord in the capital for how simple the plan was, and how little it changed after the entire debate. The main idea of the Affordable Care Act was to create an easier, more affordable method to acquire health care. It did away with discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions and their inability to obtain health insurance because of that. And, perhaps most importantly, the plan requires everybody who isn’t insured under public insurance programs to purchase private and approved insurance. That means if somebody doesn’t have health insurance, he or she will pay a penalty.
That concept is very clearly contradictory to the core conservative belief: less government control. And thus the big debate sprung out. Most of the right side doesn’t believe somebody should be required to pay for health care. Terms like “socialist” have been handed out to Obamacare and its supporters by the Republican party merely for its efforts to increase accessibility.
Socialized insurance is a goal that we should strive for as a nation, however. It’s not only the ideal situation, it’s the morally sound plan of action. People shouldn’t go into crippling debt because they need help, and the Affordable Care Act attempts to make sure that doesn’t happen. It may not be the best way to go about it, but it’s certainly a valid attempt.
Unfortunately, there are some downsides. Reports have gone around about people losing their health insurance because of the bill, and initially the websites to access Obamacare were nigh impossible to work with. One would think that everyone paying taxes to an approved insurance company would lower rates substantially, but that hasn’t happened either. It’s distressing to say the least. To think that there was such a push for a system that won’t help is scary, and I can see where some of the Republican Congressmen were coming from. Such a large change to the entirety of health care is daunting, I’ll agree. But when it came down to it, there was minimal change after all of the dissent in D.C..
Hopefully Obamacare works out. I really want it to provide low rates for insurance and to stop shady business practices in the medical field. I guess we’ll just need to wait and see. Right now it isn’t looking quite as rosy as it was made out to be, but maybe the future will be brighter.
