Well as I have said before I am not sure about Obamacare, but I really don't have any opinions yet on whether good or bad. Way too complicated and hard to believe either pros or cons on it because both sides have way too much at stake for a non biased opinion. It is Obama's baby, but the AMA and Health insurance lobbied on it while it was being written and now they are against it along with the Republicans and Fox News. I don't know how anyone can trust what anyone is saying about it.
Yet we still have a major health problem in this country. So I am addressing a few points for now.
In a previous post I mentioned that some of the cost of health care should be readdressed based on how people take care of themselves. We are spending way too much on elder care, not that I want to take any away, but lets get real about personal responsibility. The only problem with this is how does a system measure health maintenance or lack of to reassign premiums for insurance or down the road medicare? Or you could make it even crazier, but there should be some adjustment for people who try and for those who don't. So some of this goes back to health education and responsibility.
An example is our current welfare system. I heard one person say shouldn't poor people look like they are hungry (thin). Person was complaining and somewhat rightfully but with ignorance that poor people shouldn't look fat. And on the surface person has a good point. Dig a little deeper and you really see the problem. People on welfare buy what is available. Yes and I have seen that they do buy snack food with food stamps, even junk food. And that is why they are fat. The food they can afford to buy is loaded with crap. Yes they tend to buy 20 $1 pizzas from the frozen food section and there is no health benefit at all to this type of food. Again this is the problem, we give money away and don't hold these people to using it responsibly. ( Another post is about a better welfare system and this would be part of it). Generational welfare doesn't help people learn to manage money or manage a healthy food budget. So one way to help with health care is to put some parameters on what can be bought with food stamps. And no this is not taking away anybody's rights. If we are to help the poor we need to do so responsibly and that means we take some onus on ourselves as society to make sure the children get healthy meals. Food stamp use should come with limits and education. And yes I know no one is going to drastically raise food stamp amounts, but something has to be done because healthy eating is more expensive than eating junk food and other crap. Better use of the program if we aren't going to change it is needed. Really though major change is needed and this is one area that needs to be addressed in the change. And people on food stamps use medicaid so better food stamp policy to fight obesity helps keep medicaid expenses down. Not the whole health problem, but an example of how to find ways to improve our lot.
And this is different than what Mayor Bloomberg's misguided 16 oz soft drink limit imposes on people. This is a really bad stop gap measure to a serious problem and in some ways this does infringe on people's rights. An admirable thought at best, but not as good a concept as maybe cutting back on people smoking in public areas because people shouldn't be subjugated to other people's bad behavior. That can be workable, but just imposing a arbitrary limit on a size of a soft drink will fail. At the very least restaurants will charge more for the 16 oz and let people get unlimited refills. Which is pretty standard in some places now anyway. We need new solutions to the health problem of this country, but we, as a society, need to put it back on ourselves. And I am sure there have been many comments, posts, etc with this same thought, just wanted to address that we need more than this PR ploy or whatever this is suppose to be.
And it seems common sense is missing from this country and this may go back to all the fumes we breath every day pumping our own gas. Yes this is half mocking and half serious. No way it can be good that we breath some fumes every time we fill up our tank and if you don't fill up you are going more often. Gasoline is made up of some serious poisons and you got to have your head buried in the sand if you don't think there is some health concerns breathing in all those fumes. Even if a little bit at a time. Or getting behind a car with serious emission problems. Yes I believe in a diversified energy policy and quite frankly this is one reason why. Even if you don't believe in global warming you have to realize the health concerns are enormous with this stuff. And if you don't think so quit breathing the crap for awhile and then think about it.
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