We Should Only Allow Sick People To Decide On ObamaCare

The more I defend the importance of America finally deciding to enact universal healthcare, the more I realize that American's don't understand much at all about healthcare or health insurance.

It's not hard to find someone who truly understands insurance, or someone who truly understands healthcare. Finding people before the ACA who understood both was rare.  Add the changes from the law and you are talking about a really confused nation.

But it is not our fault.  We knew for some time now that healthcare was getting out of control which meant expensive and confusing.  There are a lot of people without insurance in emergency rooms, but a lot us have insurance and just put off our illness until it was urgent because we are universally afraid of the whole beast.  Basic checkups are the only thing that seems to be simple and cheap enough to endure and even that can take a few hours out of your day and $20-$30 in copay if your insurance is the "I rarely go to the doctor" variety.  Somewhere into hour number one we all wonder why we pay the premium if it still will cost $30 and 2 hours to get a 5 minute talk about family and a handshake?

As we consider the points of importance in this debate, it is valuable to start to separate the health insurance conversation from the healthcare conversation.  Healthcare is vitally important and something that we need to promote for obvious reason's.  Health insurance is simply the manner in which we pay for healthcare.

Just for the sake of agreement I would love to direct the rest of my comments at all of the people who actually use health insurance on a regular (weekly or more) basis.  The problem is, I try not to spend a lot of time preaching to the choir.  They already understand the problem.  Every person that is so ardently opposed to this new law seems healthy to me.  Some of them may have chronic illnesses that they just don't care to talk about on television, but it seems that the major concern for ObamaCare is that it forces people into choices that they did not wish to make.

When we finally get people going to doctor's instead of just having insurance than I would love to have the real debate.  When we finally get healthcare into the hands of those who need it and can say that it is being used (and is not just a premium) than I would love to revisit the cost concerns.

Right now America is sick and needs to get healthy.  If we truly call ourselves Americans than our overall health should be the most important focus right now.  Physical health and mental health to include education should be as important to this nation as war, and we seldom ask how we will pay for war.

How long will it take to get healthy?  Forever if we don't turn this conversation into a universal healthcare debate and not a debate on health insurance premiums and who should pay for them.