Written by Roberta Biros
At the end of April, the House Republican Policy Committee and the Health Care Task Force got together to learn more about ‘government funded’ and ‘universal health care’. You can read a summary of the meeting HERE. After the meeting a number of Representatives took the opportunity to make recorded statements regarding their ‘lessons learned’. You can view many of those comments on YouTube HERE.
Health Care is an issue that is VERY important in my household. I’m interested to hear all positions on the topic. While I agree that ‘universal health care’ and/or ‘government funded health care’ are not the answer, I’m still looking for someone to address the problem of the ‘uninsured’. I watched the YouTube snippets referenced above and I found one of them most bothersome. Representative Tina Pickett made the following statement [view the video HERE]:
“Pennsylvania actually has 92% of our people insured at this point. I think we need to define why other people are not insured and attack those individual reasons and see what we can do to about making sure they are covered in some fashion, but the Government should not run our health care.”
First, I’d like to argue with the statistic that “92% of our people are insured”. Who exactly are “our people”? Representative Pickett surely cannot be referring to the entire population of Pennsylvania. Nationwide statistics show that roughly 15% of ‘our people’ are uninsured (leaving, of course, 85% who are insured). That said, it would seem that numbers in Pennsylvania are probably even higher. I sense that she is manipulating the numbers to make the problem seem less important, or the numbers that were presented to her may have been skewed unfairly. Either way, it is a bad start to a summary statement.
Second, I’m interested in Representative Pickett’s statement of “we need to define why other people are not insured and attack those individual reasons”. Well, Representative Pickett, I am one of those ‘other people’. We have not had health insurance in our household since 2007. If anyone would ever take the time to ask me why, I’d be glad to explain that it is because it is TOO DARN EXPENSIVE. Sure there are inexpensive health care packages available out there, but they DO NOT cover individuals with pre-existing conditions. Both my husband and I have pre-existing conditions (that are of no fault of our own). Unfortunately, this black mark makes it impossible to find ‘affordable’ health care coverage that will take care of even basic medical needs. As a self-employed individual, my health care options are few. We had good coverage through the Chamber of Commerce, but we found the $1000+ each month to be ‘unaffordable’. I may be self-employed, but our income in our business is modest. We are, therefore, left as being labeled as those ‘other people’ that simply can’t afford the luxury of health care.
Do I like it? No.
Do I accept it? Well, sure, but what other choice do I have? We simply try to live our lives a little different. We take care of ourselves. We try to eat right. We exercise. When we do get sick, we simply do without. This weekend I suffered through a kidney stone from the ‘dis-comfort’ of my own living room because going to the emergency room to seek medical assistance (or pain relief) simply wasn’t an option.
Representative Pickett and others need to understand that many of us are not insured because there are simply no affordable options available. I have no intention of ever being a burden on the taxpayers, and if something bad happens I realize that we could very possibly lose everything that we have. Unfortunately, that is the ONLY option available to us the present time.
Do I want FREE health care given to me by the government? Heck no.
Do I want the government to pay my bills should I end up in the hospital? Again, NO, NO, NO!
I do wish, however, that there were an option available for people with pre-existing conditions. If the private sector can’t afford the risk of an individual with chronic asthma, perhaps the government could organize a giant “group health care plan” that offers insurance coverage to all of us that want it. It could be a shared group with government workers, CHIP recipients, and other recipients of government organized health care that is big enough to share the risk of folks with pre-existing conditions. Would I want the insurance for FREE? NO. If the ‘group’ were large enough, however, perhaps the rate for those of us with pre-existing conditions would be more affordable. The fees could even be based on household income (like CHIP and others).
Maybe the members of the House Republican Policy Committee and the Health Care Task Force should take the time to talk about the issue with people that are living with it every day. We may not have the answers that they are looking for, but we can at least provide honest opinions about the problem.
As always, just my opinion.
~Roberta Biros, Mercer County Conservatives
Mercer County Conservatives 