I work in healthcare. I do finance IT for a hospital. A major part of my job is assuring that we're not performing procedures on people who do not meet criteria for medical necessity. This isn't about my job.
This is about four friends of mine who need single-payer health insurance.
Really, the only things that the two couples have in common are that they know us and they are uninsured.
R & M have been married since April. He helped her escape an abusive marriage a year ago. She suffers from an inherited, untreated mental illness, for which she self-medicates, sometimes in dangerous ways. He's self-employed as a carpet layer & handyman, and he has a major White Knight complex going. M could probably get onto Medicaid if she got pregnant, something they would both love. She suffers from endometreosis to the degree that she's been told she cannot get pregnant without significant medical intervention. We used to live next door to them before we bought a house.
P & A have been married for almost 10 years now. They live across the street from my late father-in-law's house, and she mowed his lawn for the last year. He is a certified teacher who can't get a job teaching, so he works for the small town they live in as a maintenance man. She works part-time for city maintenance and drives a school bus. The city doesn't offer health insurance, so they don't have it for themselves. Their two children are covered by SCHIP. She has chronic back problems for which she has had to have 2 MRI's, and they still are paying off her appendectomy from three years ago.
I care about all four of these people. I know how expensive everything related to healthcare is. I can't make it cheaper. But, we can all work to provide them with the healthcare that they need. Obama's plan is a good first step to assuring that the working class can see a doctor when they need to.