Where Is The Line For Government Protection?

On Saturday The Health Care Bill was passed in the House with a vote of 220-215. The democratic majority won the vote but just barely. One Republican voted for the bill and 39 Democrats voted against it. This is the biggest overhaul of healthcare ever. This is a bigger overhaul than the attempted healthcare reform by Bill Clinton, bigger than the introduction of Medicaid and Medicare, and bigger than the introduction of Social Security.

The issue is how to decide what is covered and where the money would come from. In the passed health care reform bill passed by the house, the money would come from new taxes and a cut in funding to Medicare. The plan is set to cost $1.1 Trillion over 10 years. That is over $100 billion annually. But the cost is worth it, extending to over 36 million Americans who are currently uninsured. Many Democrats did not fully support the bill but voted for it in order to have the ability to amend it later. “Our plan is not perfect, but it is a good start toward providing affordable health care to all Americans,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon.

But what is covered and who has to provide health care? The house’s legislation, which is over 2,000 pages in length, requires most Americans to obtain some kind of health care of face penalties. Although this seems counterproductive, the idea is to encourage the country to be fully insured. Most companies are required to provide healthcare to employees or face penalties up to 8% of their payroll. This makes sense because the government could provide subsidies to help people bye insurance from a government option or a private company. This helps keep private companies from being over run by a government option.

In order to pass the bill, Democrats were forced to limit abortion support. This helped the bill be passed but was a huge blow to abortion-rights activists. The government is obviously serving as our protector, as they are supposed to, but is it right for them to FORCE people into having healthcare or to limit what health benefits they do or don’t receive?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/policy/08health.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us