Healthcare reform?

Give me a minute as I need to climb upon my personal soapbox. Oh good, there now here I go.

I had the pleasure of listening to one of President Barack Obama's town hall meetings on my satellite radio the other day. I love listening to this guy speak. He clearly makes sense and has nothing but the best intentions for this health care reform. But you know what they say about good intentions right?

Health care in this country has an affect on me in two ways. One as a health care provider and two as a consumer. For our purposes here, I am the consumer as is my entire family. Almost all of us in our small family have some underlying condition. It is quite obvious that Daniel has an underlying condition and that scares the SHIT out of me.

The president wants for every American to be able to obtain health care no matter if you have a job or a preexisting condition. This I believe is a great idea, in fact an idea that is way past its time. However, my concern seems to be a reality and that is that this "reform" bill that will someday go through the motions and become law will not look like what the president or any right minded individual had in mind. Why? Well, because there are several thousand lobbyists right now sitting down and getting their own interests and ideas into the bill. Then come fall, or whenever the congressional staff goes back to work, the bill that may or may not be passed will look so watered down that maybe if we are lucky, some families will have some benefit from it.

I am not under a spell of belief that Mr. Obama's reform will do a damn bit of difference for me or for my family. Nor at this point do I need to worry about that. For all our financial misfortunes over the years, we as a family have been fortunate enough to have good health care. Not the so called "Cadillac" plans but good--maybe more of a "Dodge" plan. And god willing we will be able to keep this up. However, should Jason lose his job or even one of us (god forbid) have a lengthy stay in the hospital then we are done--bankrupt and severely in debt. I suspect that is the truth for many Americans out there.

Or maybe Jason gets another job someday with different insurance and they look at Daniel with his underlying condition and deny him. What do we do then? Like I said, we have been lucky. We have had a majority of our health care bills taken care of and we have been able to not go into debt but I cannot see into the future and with all of Daniels specialists, who knows. Like many Americans I live in this fear everyday. I know that no country has perfect health care, including our country. We may think we do but we don't. How can we when there are literally millions of families and children without any health coverage? How can we when hardworking families can go into debt just by getting sick? In a perfect health care system, this wouldn't happen: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=386