...and many of the disappointments over the past several years are not about one man, but about how deeply sick our democracy is.
But I don’t think he’s going to win many people over by starting out with the health care fiasco. The “reform” that passed failed to do the most important thing that it needed to do, which is to make health care a human right for all and divorce it from employment. I make about $50K a year, gross – which should be enough to live on, but we are seriously struggling. My employer pays about $12K a year toward my health insurance premium and I pay about $6K a year out of my paycheck. I have no prescription plan. My co-pay to see the doctor is $40 to get in, $40 per test he has to run and a portion of the cost to run the test. I don’t have an extra $40-$100 in any given month. I can hardly afford to get my kid new gloves at the dollar store or replace the battery in our carbon monoxide detector. If my employer didn’t have to pay so much money for health insurance, we would all get raises and hire more people. This situation gets worse every year.
There are some “good” things in the bill such as expanding Medicaid to include 133 percent of federal poverty level which is $29,327 for a family of four. But think about that – I make $50K, have one kid and I fucking need help. A family of four making $30,000 is too well off to benefit from this reform.
We could have done the right thing with this bill, but we didn’t and that was a political failing.
If this is the big victory that we’re running on, we’re in trouble.
Edit to add:
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