I'm Right Again Dot Com

A New Commentary Each Wednesday       September 10, 2014


 

Can I say something good about Obamacare?

    I love Obamacare. Yes, the "Affordable Care Act." I also love my HMO and the several physicians who care for me...and about me.

    I will be 88 on my next birthday. I like that number so much more than 87, because the German Wehrmacht had the most powerful artillery piece in WWII. Their gunners fired an enormous shell that was 88 millimeters in diameter - and most often timed to explode 10 to 20 meters over the battleground.

    This commentary may have an even greater impact than the "German 88" on many of my readers.

    When I was a mere stripling at my mother's knee, Social Security came into being. My father and many of the Roosevelt (Franklin Delano) haters claimed it was a "Communist Plot." Even many who supported FDR said that if one ever misplaced their Social Security numbers, they would never get any money back from deductions. A great number of people had their numbers tattooed on their bodies.

     I started drawing benefits 23 years ago, and in the meantime Medicare came into existence.

    I'm far ahead of the game, trust me! Though I got my number at age 16 and contributed for 49 years, for many years my contributions were minimal.

    I really value my Medicare package, made available through AARP. I pay no monthly out-of-pocket premium.

    For some good reason—perhaps it was "Obamacare," that caused my pharmacy to stop charging me for all of my pills this year—and I take eight a day. I saw two specialists for $35.00 each visit last month, an unusually high-cost month at $70.00! One of those visits entailed two and half hours of intensive outpatient work by a surgeon and three assistants.

     I do not believe that the citizens of any other nation enjoy a better health/retirement  plan.

    Obamacare requires insurance companies to cover all subjects in various age and income brackets with certain minimum standards at the same rates, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and time and tide has brought many to my life.

    This commentary was provoked by the appearance of a grandmother (not actually Dora Hill Phillips, my real maternal grandmother), but doubtlessly someone's ideal, sweet, old, caring grandmother, located and screened by an advertising agency; a grandmotherly person of a certain age, from Central Casting, if there ever was one, who laments that an incumbent member of Congress has betrayed her and other senior citizens by supporting Obamacare.

    I can't help wondering what it is that I'm getting that she isn't? 

    I am not certain, but the prototype grandmother in the political advertisement (Will they never cease, or even give us a brief hiatus?) and I could probably fall into the same age bracket of a bill that 178 Republican and 34 Democrat lawmakers opposed. Of course, they've provided a sufficient amount of social security for themselves, haven't they?

    The Affordable Care Act has two daunting objectives: reduce the total cost of health care, while at the same time offering federal subsidies to enable low income individuals to buy health insurance. As of May of this year (2014), 20-million Americans had signed up for it. I've no numbers yet that would inform us what it would have cost for physicians and emergency rooms, and ultimately higher charges passed on to all of the rest of us, had these 20-million (plus) people still had no medical insurance.

 -Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller.

Phil's current post can be read at:  http://www.imrightagain.com

If you wish to comment, Phil can be reached at:  

k7os (at) comcast (dot) net


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