Look at the plan, not the label
To the editor:
We have labeled the Affordable Health Care Act “Obamacare” but what do we really oppose about it? We do not hear complaints that the act allows parents to continue coverage under their policy for their children up to 26 years of age. That allows parents to keep children covered while in college. There are few complaints that the insurance companies must allocate 80 percent of the premium monies to health care. That 80 percent requirement is already met by the “Blues.” The requirement that insurance cannot be denied to individuals with pre-existing conditions is not being argued. What is being debated is the requirement that everyone must buy health insurance, the so-called “mandate.” What really are the alternatives if individuals are not required to buy health insurance? We can continue as we have in the past and allow individuals to go to the hospital emergency room generally when their malady is acute and more costly to treat and require that we all pay a larger hospital bill or a higher insurance premium and/or increased taxes for the “free riders.”
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, proposed the mandate in the late 1980s as a way to provide universal coverage. When President Clinton proposed that businesses be required to provide employees with health insurance, Newt Gingrich, then House minority whip, in 1993 said, “I am for people, individuals, exactly like automobile insurance, being required to have health insurance.” Mitt Romney, when governor of the state of Massachusetts, promoted the law that required residents to buy health insurance or pay a penalty of up to $1,212 annually. Romney in 2006 said, “to have people show up at a hospital when they get sick and expect someone else to pay, that’s a Democratic approach.”
An alternative that is totally unacceptable is to lock the hospital doors to individuals without health insurance or proof of the ability to pay. Lastly, we could provide Medicare for all similar to what exists in Europe. Why then do all the candidates for president expressly abhor the Affordable Health Care Act? I believe they have found that the label “Obamacare,” and not substance, has given them a direction for opposition. The repeated use of that label by a few has provoked many. In life it only takes the direction of a single goat to lead a flock of sheep.
Arnold Kempe
Cape Coral