This is the week when the Supreme Court will reveal its decision about the Affordable Care Act. I’ve been waiting, as the result may dissipate a couple of whethers on my horizon.
I see merit in most every objection to the Act, except the one primarily responsible for putting its fate in the Supreme Court’s hands: The government could make us buy something. Personally, I’m relieved that Congress picked this option instead of imposing a health care tax. If the government were to take in the money instead of insurance companies, it could twist our health system, already overly bureaucratic, into an impossible mess. I say thank you, thank you, Congress, for facilitating universal health care without socializing its delivery!
Quality health care for everyone. I’m not aware of anyone objecting to that. Surely the idea is entwined with our equal rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But how do we achieve it with fairness and financial wisdom? I certainly don’t have even the start of an answer, but I think it’s high time for an experiment – as long as someone is watching over it, ready to adjust the formula.
As for my personal issues affected by the Court’s decision, one revolves around my younger daughter and the other around my mother.
My family has been one of the beneficiaries of health care reform. My husband’s former employer sponsors the insurance that covers both of us and our 24-year old married daughter. If the law is thrown out, I’ll soon be helping her shop for private insurance, as I did six months before the law went into effect. When our children were little, we taught them to cover their mouths when they cough and to wash their hands before they eat. When they grew up, we taught them that carrying health insurance is not an option, it’s a necessity. Showing my daughter how to shop for it is part of the lesson. And the lesson is all about keeping her safe, physically and financially.
The Court’s ruling will affect me more keenly in regard to my mother, who passed on in 2004. What? Am I crazy? No, just deeply moved by history.
In the last year of her life, which ended at age 83, my mother underwent four major surgeries. They were paid for by Medicare and supplemental insurance. By the time the fourth surgery came along, the doctors surely realized that her body was simply giving out – but they did what it took to save her life . . . for a few weeks. I was with her for ten days after that surgery, and I’m grateful for that intense one-on-one time.
Nonetheless, I was keenly aware of who was paying the bill – all the working taxpayers of America, from the highest paid to the lowest. And I remembered a conversation with a friend some 20 years earlier. She told me about a young mother she knew who had breast cancer. This young mother of two small children consented to surgery, but she had to decline chemotherapy because she didn’t have health insurance. I don’t know how the story came out, how long the mother survived. But I am appalled by the knowledge that she and her husband chipped in on Medicare, which paid for my dying mother’s surgeries; yet the couple couldn’t pay for the medicine that would give her the best chance to take care of her children as they grew up.
If the Affordable Care Act remains law, young mothers in the future will be taken care of. If it is repealed, I will have another whether to weather: whether to start an organization that raises funds to provide life-saving care for women with young children, or whether to choose among alternative actions requiring less commitment but making amends to some degree for this great injustice. This is the time, now that I’m not too retired.
No matter what the high court announces, I expect a storm with plenty of thunder across the United States. It always happens when there’s change, even a change of change. I’ll be cheering the storm on, whichever side wins, because I believe that out of such a storm can come the best solution for all. And I’m ready to weather whatever whethers result.
Not TOO Retired 
Barb
/ July 10, 2012I loved how you intertwined the “whether” into this. Thank goodness the bill was upheld. Now maybe we can look toward some real changes in health care.
sgumerman
/ July 11, 2012Unfortunately there will still be millions uninsured, in part because the states can’t be forced to expand Medicaid. So I’m still left with a “whether” to weather.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Barb.