A rant in Boston's Weekly Dig lays out why the healthcare problem is a wage problem:
Dearest Governor/ Presidential Candidate/ Botox Abuser,Thanks for leaving us with the mandatory health insurance law. I really appreciate being told that I'm legally obligated to have health insurance by January 1st (which I don't), and pay $196/month (which I can't afford), or be subject to a $219 yearly penalty (which will soon be $912). To repeat: I can't afford to spend $196/month for health insurance, so somehow I can afford $912 for the year for nothing???
So basically, because of your landmark law, I can now look forward to bussing tables at Applebee's, or whatever mid-level chain restaurant I'll be forced to work at for a second job.
Don't get me wrong, it's every kid's dream to work away their 20s, just to eat ramen, drink Pabst, and pay rent for a two bedroom in the student ghetto (Allston). Thereby joining the growing list of postgrads who are too old to live this way. But hey, it could be worse: I could be living in a state where laws proposed to help the less fortunate are actually thinly veiled corporate expense cuts. Oh wait; I DO!
Whether it's healthcare per se, or preventative healthcare (e.g., eating healthy, exercising), the healthcare crisis is, in large part, an income problem: people can't afford it.
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Absolutely. And the fiction that there is some kind of competition at work in the existing private insurance business doesn't help. Oh, sure, you do get a choice of several different unaffordable plans.
And of course, people tout "choice" as a reason for loving the system we have today. What they fail to point out is that rather than choosing your doctor or choosing what procedures you undergo, you're "choosing" which corporation you'll have making those choices on your behalf. Hooray for choice.
I found it very ironic that the plans were announced as giving people more 'choice' and then were really about forcing people to have Healthcare that they couldn't afford. Sure its a choice ... a choice to pick your oppression. Almost sounds like a board game - if I was talented enough, I would draw a comic about it. Any artists about?