On March 21, 2010 the health care reform bill was passed. The House passed this bill with a vote of 219 to 212. This new health care plan’s budget is estimated to cover about 32 million people that are now uninsured. Even though this plan will cover a lot of people it will also leave 23 million uninsured people uninsured but about 1/3 of these people are illegal immigrants. Most Americans will be required to buy insurance or they will have to face penalties.
This plan has many benefits to it. One of the benefits is if you are a child with a pre-existing condition the insurance companies cannot turn you away they have to give you coverage. Another benefit is that kids can stay on their parents insurance until their 26th birthday. With this health care bill insurance companies cannot drop people off their insurance plan when they get sick. There may be some good advantages to this health care plan but there are also some disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that if you tan in a tanning bed you will have to pay a 10% tan tax. Another on is if you don’t buy insurance you will have to pay a fine every month until you get some.
The health care reform bill is supposed to apply to every American, but there are rumors that the elected have exempted themselves from this health care legislation. On page 158 of the legislation it says that senior Democrat staffers, the ones who wrote the bill, don’t have to purchase the health care plan in the same way as the millions of other United States citizens. If this is true it goes against the 28th Amendment. The 28th Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to Senators and/or representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”
I do not like this new health care system. I think that the government should stay out of our health care. I know there were problems with what we had, but I don’t like how the government is trying to fix it. If we stay with this new system I believe that we will have a government run system, worse care, and have to wait in outrageous lines just to get a checkup.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/health/policy/22health.html?pagewanted=2
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/03/23/whats-health-care-bill
http://www.americanconservationdaily.com/2009/12/amendment-28-of-the-constitution/
http://newledger.com/2010/03/exempted-from-obamacare-senior-staff-who-wrote-the-bill/
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