If it were up to me, everyone in this country would have equal access to healthcare.

Providing proper, comprehensive healthcare for the most vulnerable members of our society, should be on the forefront of concerns.

Protecting women’s rights and access to affordable, unbiased health care should be one of our top priorities.

In her piece, “Over It,” Eve Ensler eloquently says, “The destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction of life itself. No women, no future, duh.”

“Duh” is right.

However, I don’t think Obamacare is the answer.

In fact, I think it is a system based on hierarchy rather than equality that will make an already dire situation much worse.

It is an “affordable health care act” that isn’t affordable at all. Unfortunately, it does nothing to actually control soaring healthcare costs in this country. It will actually make the burden of shouldering one of the most inefficient, yet exuberantly costly medical systems in the entire world, much worse.

Contrary to popular belief, this act will not benefit the nation’s unemployed recent graduates who still rely on their parents coverage, those struggling day in and day out to survive by the grace of G-d, those working tirelessly to support their families and still not making enough money to get by, all the “lazy” unemployed poor folk, societies throwaways living in our cities increasingly violent, drug infested, dead-end ghettos, or women whose reproductive rights and access to health care are used unabashedly as political bargaining chips mercilessly election after election.

Who has the most to gain from this health insurance mandate?

The multi-billion dollar medical industry will absolutely benefit. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical and medical supply firms stand to make a lot of money from this piece of legislation.

The medical industrial complex—much like the military industrial complex and prison industrial complex—promotes special interest at the cost of the common good.

In this case, the cost is the physical health of American citizens economic health of the nation.

Forcing people who do not have an employer-provided health plan or any other type of coverage, to buy an overpriced policy provided by the private insurance agency for themselves and/or their families and then punishing them with fines (taxes) when they fail to do so, does not serve the greater good.

Who will be most harmed by this health insurance mandate?

That is an interesting question. It’s a strange situation that is going on for sure. The nation’s poor will actually be the ones most negatively affected by this act, and yet somehow this mandate has only managed to create more feelings of resentment toward those who are living below the poverty line and built a stronger momentum around America’s war on the poor.

Many Medicaid recipients are going to be forced to buy insurance that they can not afford. When they don’t buy the government mandated insurance plans, they will be penalized by IRS.

I can’t even count the number of times in the past few weeks I have heard people saying they don’t want their tax dollars funding Obamacare. Translation, I don’t want my hard-earned being spent on poor people. Don’t worry, it’s not.

To me such a mandate seems more like a conservatives wet dream than a liberal’s dream come true.

In case you have been hiding under a rock the last few months, or maybe you are just purposely avoiding the news (for which I don’t blame you—it can be disheartening—but it isn’t all bad), you know that Mitt Romney is against Obamacare and vows to overturn it if he elected in November’s presidential election.

Interestingly enough Romney himself, though he adamantly condemns Obamacare, was responsible for launching a state health plan in Massachusetts that would similarly impose an insurance mandate and a tax fine.

I wish Obama would flip flop like Romney did.

I wish that the thinly veiled neoliberalisim paradigm at play that stands to benefit private interest and maximize the personal profit of our nationals most wealthy at the expense of the lives of millions and the future of our earth wasn’t masquerading as a do gooder social service, getting everyone access to healthcare.

“For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required.” ~ Luke 12:48

 

Carolyn is a daughter, sister, best friend, listener, lover, ice cream eater, sometimes writer, easily excitable, embarrassingly gullible yoga teacher in training who drinks too much coffee, makes a lot of mistakes and has too much fun for her own good.