Thoughts on the Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) is the law of the land, and has been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court.  It will keep children on their parent’s health insurance until they are 26, and that is a good thing.  It prevents health insurance companies from denying someone a policy for a pre-existing condition.  It prevents said companies from putting a cap on the amount the company will pay you for your health care.  It prevents said companies from cancelling your policy the minute you get sick, or have an accident.  It prevents said companies from using any more than 20% of their profits for big bonuses for their CEO’s.  It prevents companies from selling junk policies that don’t really cover anything.  It allows the individual to shop, either on line, by phone, or in person, for the best coverage the individual can get for the price.   

So far this advantage to the individual has been called slavery, akin to Hurricane Katrina, or been told it is taking away our freedoms, and turning us into a socialist state.  I’m not sure about you, but if I have to listen to one more TV pundit talk about this ACA roll out, I will stop watching TV all together, which, of course, includes all of the commercials.  But then we don’t watch commercials anyway since we Tivo almost everything we watch so we can fast forward through those.   

Since the states that agreed to implement the ACA themselves are doing OK, and people are pretty satisfied with what they find, I wish the media would just simply start presenting news instead of pontificating ad nauseum on something that can be fixed. 

As one of our daughters told me a Buddhist saying is, “If it can be fixed, why worry?  If it can’t be fixed, why worry?”  This is something that can be fixed, so stop worrying it.  It reminds me a lot like a bored, old dog who starts licking a spot, irritates it, then keeps on licking because there is something there.  We had an old dog that did that.  Every time he went outside the deer flies started in on it as well, so my husband sprayed it with OFF to keep the flies away.  After a week or so we realized he had stopped licking that spot, and it eventually healed up. 

My advice to the pundits is, use OFF, and get on to something else that has some value.