Halloween's over, but opinions are rampant below. So, beware. Boo!
Because it's clear that many Americans don't know that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Obamacare are the same thing, I'll tell you now that they are and I'll be referring to them as the ACA. Not to say there's anything wrong with calling it Obamacare. ACA is just shorter to type. Here we go.
Good, bad or ugly, the ACA (the Act, not the site) isn't working for 3% of Americans. That's 9 million people.
But the ACA was intended to bring the many poor/uninsured/uniformed Americans who use urgent care facilities or emergency rooms as their primary medical intervention into a sustainable market.
ERs are the most expensive place to get care.
And those uninsured people who use the ER are much less likely to be able to pay their medical bills.
Hospitals make up the difference for all those unpaid bills by charging the paying customers more.
For the sake of those 9 million who are paying a lot more for their insurance,
for the sake of the uninsured who need affordable care,
and for the sake of the regular Americans who want to pay fair prices for excellent care,
we need bipartisan cooperation.
Or a simpler title for this post: Mend It, Don't End It.
Or for some imagery, we need the losing party not to crash the ice cream truck just because they didn't get an allowance this week.
George Stephanopolous, ABC News, said in this last election cycle that he, as a journalist, feels it's his duty to stay impartial and for that reason he doesn't vote. He doesn't want to have a dog in the fight so that his heart doesn't influence his reporting. I chose to declare myself as "Post-Partisan" for the same reason. I don't want to file along a party line. I want to keep my allegiance open to new ideas and smarter thinking.
I wish there were more of both on the issue of healthcare reform.
What do you think?
(BTW, Flip It Friday is now FIF. Get it?)
