Finally a video that isn’t about death panels and rationed care and communism. In a complex world with complex problems solutions aren’t easy and they don’t come packaged up in a bow. Very few people – left, right or center of the political spectrum- actually like ObamaCare. It’s either goes too far or not far enough.
But it’s something. It’s a start.
ObamaCare is a bold effort to do something to change to ROI on our health-care dollars as well as improve the real-world human outcomes for Americans.
I am alive today because I happened to work for a company that had (and has) a good health care policy. My $500,000+ surgery and after-care treatment was not going to happen if I had been laid off. Or if the plan didn’t let me chose my hospital. I would have been one of the 5.6 people who die every hour in our country because they don’t have health care or the dozens more because they have inadequate health care.
And of those 45 people who died while I worked today, 2 were mothers who died in childbirth. During those hours I worked 721 children were born without health insurance and 64 children died before they reached their first birthdays*
In 2007 a 12 year old boy died from a tooth abscess because the mother couldn’t find a dentist who would take Medicaid coupons. Two emergency brain surgeries later, the boy died from brain infection. Wouldn’t we be better off if we, as a society, had footed the bill for the $80 tooth extraction?**
So like ObamaCare don’t like ObamaCare it doesn’t really matter. We have a crisis in our country and real people are really dying. Since the Affordable HealthCare act has passed, 95% of all children in America are eligible for health care. That’s 38 million kids just like yours. And young adults struggling to find their first jobs after college are now insured on their parent’s insurance. And up to 17 million kids are safe from having their insurance cancelled due to asthma, diabetes, cancer or other health conditions.
Perfect? Not by a long shot. But it’s something. It’s a start. And we have to start somewhere.
Filed under: General, Health Care, obama Tagged: | children's defense fund, Health Care
