I'm self employed and I'm not exactly made of money. At 50 years old, I don't have enough money for health care now, (no employer to cover half the cost) and I'm pretty sure I can't rely on the lottery to get it in time for the bill to take effect. If anything, my income is likely to go DOWN since I rely on ordinary people having work for me. (I'm a handyman.) Ordinary people who have increasingly less money.
Apparently, the fix for unaffordability is to fine me for not being able to afford it. Because that's what's going to happen. I'm going to look at my sorry ass options and take the one that costs the least money and hope like hell that I'll be able to cover it somehow.
My wife, who is the sole employee of her own corporation, will likely be hit even harder as congress gets tough with those companies that don't provide health insurance for their employees.
I am fairly sure that we will fall into the dead zone where we won't have enough money to pay, but aren't poor enough to qualify for assistance. The Senate and Obama don't seem to see this problem or they don't care. Either way, I am coming to the conclusion that being a lifelong Democrat has been a mistake.
I have always voted and always voted Democrat; yet I can no longer see a reason to do this. We were nearly foreclosed by the repercussions from the H1-B visa program and now we're staring at the likelihood that Congress will enact a bill that will put us in that position once again. Only I'm getting older.
The theory that I always went by was that the Democrats cared about people just a bit more than Republicans but I can't say that I see much of a difference. Enacting a health bill that does more harm than good isn't my idea of progress.
So why the hell am I voting for these people anyway? What the hell is the point if they're just going to cuddle up with big business and look for new ways to screw us over?
Perhaps the 60 Democrats in the House are actually serious about the public option, we'll see. I hope they are. If we can't get the public option then this thing just needs to be killed. Doing nothing is better than this. Right now, I just have no health care insurance. I can live with that. But having no health care AND having bills I can't possibly pay? That's going to suck a lot more.