We do a lot of things because our government requires it of us: we buy car insurance, vaccinate our children, follow speed limits, educate our children, put our children in car seats, our children wear helmets when they bike ride, we do not smoke in public places, we don’t burn leaves, we put fences around pools and we don’t serve alcohol to minors. I’m sure you get my drift. Government passes laws to protect and promote the well being of its citizens.
How many people would educate their children if a law didn’t require it? How many people would not have their children vaccinated against the terrible diseases that now are almost unheard of in the United States?
I think we can all agree that there is a correlation between compliance to what we know is good policy and government legislation.
The Affordable Care Act may not be a panacea for all the health care issues facing our nation. It will be expensive (although it is not as expensive as the Afghanistan/ Iraq wars). It has not been explained very well, leaving most people wondering what it is going to cost them personally. The fact that it will not be fully implemented until 2014 makes it suspicious at best.
We know some of the benefits of the act already; children can be covered by parents insurance until they are 26, and pre-existing conditions will not prohibit one from getting coverage. Rates will not be raised and coverage will not be denied when someone is ill. Insurance providers will be required to invest in health care and to minimize administrative costs.
There will be more discussion and tweaking of the Affordable Health Care Act before it is fully implemented. It is in our best interest to put political rhetoric aside and try to find a way to make this policy work as efficiently and economically as possible.
To those who are of the belief that requiring individuals to purchase health insurance is equivalent to revoking an individual’s freedom I ask you how? Is this so very different from other government policy listed above?
There are real and there are imagined threats to individual freedom and I suspect that emotions run hot and cold as to what the threats may be.
Here are a few of the ways I think government is overreaching: having drones prowling the sky of the United States, posting cameras to monitor everything, allowing government access to personal conversations online and on the telephone, keeping files on private website use, killing American citizens in foreign countries and getting involved in an individual’s reproductive health decisions.
Requiring me to purchase health insurance does not make me feel less free. Big Brother, now that’s enough to keep me awake at night.
Pat