"Never discuss politics or religion in public," or so the adage goes... but I just have to get this off my chest! Here it goes: Recently, my father-in-law, a Venezuelan citizen and resident, flew to Boston seeking medical help for a potentially very serious medical condition. In a little over two weeks of tests and treatment, he accumulated a $40K+ hospital bill (and the actual doctors' fees haven't come in the mail yet.) He ended up being OK (yay!), and since he's wealthy and has insurance, his bills were settled quickly and without problems. The whole situation, however, got me thinking...
I'm a 25-year-old married woman. Between me and my 29-year-old husband, we brought in enough money last year to put us well above the median household income in America, which is about $50K a year. We're both healthy and certainly not in any kind of desperate financial situation, but that could all change in a heartbeat if either one of us got sick and needed medical care: we're among the roughly 50 million Americans who have no health insurance. We simply can not afford the $12K a year it would cost us to get a comprehensive health insurance plan on our own in Massachusetts.
A bit of a recent history lesson: Our ex-governor, Mitt Romney - after being heavily lobbied by the insurance industry - passed a law that supposedly aimed to make health insurance affordable for all Massachusetts's residents. The idea was to make purchasing health insurance mandatory for every uninsured person, thus giving the state increased negotiating power to get the insurance companies to lower their rates. Unfortunately, Romney only delivered on the first half of the law: he made purchasing insurance mandatory, but unless you're close to or below the poverty line, the actual rates for said insurance stayed virtually the same as they were before the law was signed. What Romney did was essentially equivalent to attempting to cure cancer by legislating it away! Mitt Romney betrayed the people of the state of Massachusetts, just so his fat-cat campaign donors and their lobbyists could line their pockets with our money. I will spare you the specifics, but for me and my husband this has become the single most important campaign issue we will consider when the time comes to choose our next president. It's an issue that affects us personally in a very real and direct way. We even cancelled our subscription to the Boston Globe (an otherwise fine periodical) in protest when they endorsed Romney's health insurance extortion plan.
So when we started looking at the current potential candidates for president, we were shocked to see that Hillary Clinton is now the top receiver of health insurance companies' campaign donations (even more than Republican candidates!), and that her plan to solve the nation's healthcare crisis mirrors the travesty that was perpetrated on the people of Massachusetts by Mitt Romney in ways that are downright alarming. Unless she somehow ends up running against Mitt Romney, there is simply no way that Hillary Clinton will get my vote for president.
A vote for Senator McCain would be a vote for business as usual, as far as this issue is concerned, so like Romney, he's off our list right off the bat. Of all the viable candidates still in the running for either party's nomination, Senator Barack Obama is the only one with a realistic, comprehensive, progressive healthcare plan that regulates the out-of-control health insurance companies, makes healthcare both cheaper and more accessible to all, modernizes the system, and makes it better and more efficient. His opposition to the war, and his positions on energy policy, the environment, education, et cetera, cinch the deal for me. The fact that he seems so intelligent and sincere (at least as far as one can tell these things through the media lens), and that he's such an incredibly inspiring speaker certainly help, too.
And that's why on February 5th, I'll proudly cast my vote for Senator Barack Obama to get the Democratic Party nomination for president. I encourage you all to do the same.
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