I’m glad McCain is getting on the ball about the health care. Now the battle on the issue is not only between Democrats but the Republican as well. When I worked for a large company, I could care less what kind of health care system we have. I had great insurance and my premium was only $70 a month (given that my company payed the rest of the premium). Now I am staying home with my four-month old, and my husband is self-employed. I quickly discovered that the insurance for $70 a month simply doesn’t exist. The next cheapest insurance has a huge deductable to meet, even though we are relatively healthy and have no pre-existing conditions. And another bummer, when I got pregnant, my insurance told me that they won’t cover any baby related expenses because I should have bought a separate maternity insurance.

Health care is definitely a major issue for the US. A lot of people can’t afford health insurance, but most people can’t afford paying the medical bills by themselves if they didn’t have the insurance. So how do we go about it? The choices are universal health care, where we don’t have much of a choice but to contribute, or a competitive market health care, where the medical community would have to compete to earn our business.

Check it out. Massachussets is experiencing the universal health care firsthand. There is already shortage of primary care physicians, and the wait to go see a doctor now is 4 months. What if this were to be implemented throughout US. Can we tell medical schools to hurry up, give us some more of them doctors? How long will it be for the system to balance itself out?
And now they’re talking about forcing businesses to buy health insurance for their employees or suffer a penalty of $300 per employee per month? It’s just a beginning, I’m anxious to find out what happens next over there.

McCain is proposing competitive health care and tax breaks. It definitely appeals more to us, since my husband is self-employed. Moving away from expensive insurance premiums so people can actually afford to buy insurance themselves without relying on the big corporations to cover the rest of it fits our lifestyle. There are a lot of people in US who stick with a job just because they can have good insurance. Older folks that are retired are forced to keep working because they can’t afford to pay their own insurance. Once the medical community becomes more affordable, the insurance premiums have nowhere to go, but down. Frankly I don’t understand, why anasthesiologist charged me $3400 for less than 10 minutes of her time when I was in labor. I don’t care how high your overhead is, it’s ridiculous. But the ‘funny’ thing is that, when I called and told them that I don’t have insurance and I’m paying from my own pocket, they dropped the bill down to $700. Now how does that work? Why does the medical community charge so much for their services? Is it because they have to treat so many uninsured who can’t flip the bill, so the ones that can, pay for them too? Is it because of malpractice insurance? I don’t know this system, but I surely want to find out because I live with this system.

In the mean time we will have a choice in November, I hope I make the right one!