ObamaCare (Part II)

Continuing from "ObamaCare (Part I)": http://student-eyes.blogspot.com/2012/06/obamacare-part-i.html

The first case of mumps in Berkeley's academic year broke out from the house I was living in. This was inevitable for a house, called Cloyne Court Casino Hotel, roofed over 200 hippies. But I'll save the discussion of Cloyne's hygiene, or the lack of it, in another post. Waking up one morning with a sore throat and runny nose, I immediately checked myself in with the health center. I left the center with a dozen paracetamol in a white paper box and with $10 less in my wallet. Five dollars for the consultant and another five for the prescription. 

One would have hoped that the $1626 insurance could tide me over a common cold. What is the cause to such an advance country's bank-breaker healthcare? Later on, I downloaded onto my Kindle "Believe in America: Mitt Romney's Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth" for the price of $0.00. This generosity is currently still available here: http://www.amazon.com/Believe-America-Romneys-Economic-ebook/dp/B005LEY5Q0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1339491089&sr=1-1

The book says that the Obama administration aimed to 'radically change health insurance and healthcare'. How? Below are the two main objectives of ObamaCare:

1. Insure everyone (legal American citizens, that is). 
2. Impose greater government regulation over insurance policies and medicare. 

So why don't Americans buy into the change? 

To ensure that all Americans are insured, employers are now required to either provide their employees with insurance or pay out to the ObamaCare. Is this mandatory fringe benefit going to encourage employment? The simple answer is no. This increases unemployment rate and  Besides, if the unemployed are also given health insurance, someone must be paying for them. Tax payers are paying for them. The reform is projected to cost about $1000 billion in the next decade. The middle class and small businesses are hurting most when tax in US is higher than majority if not all of Europe. 

What about giving the federal government the power to decide that you take the blue pill instead of the red pill because it's half the price of the red pill and works just as fine? Would you be willing to let the government be the judge of you taking painkiller instead of having surgery? Those rooting for ObamaCare say that a tougher regulation raises competition amongst insurance providers. The only problem is that the White House is the big player and the big ref - another piece of evidence of Barack Obama's skepticism for the private sector. 

So unless you're like the Chinese guy I sat next to in class, you might just have to swallow the ObamaCare pill. 

ObamaCare (Part I)

As a penny-pinching student from the University of Manchester living on the UK government's student loan, expenses at the University of California, Berkeley was breaking my bank. In the third year of my degree, Manchester sent me abroad to America for a year to participant in an exchange program. Berkeley policy states that each student must be covered by health insurance provided by companies with headquarters in the states or, in other words, American companies. I purchased the default UC SHIP (student health insurance plan), drawing US$1626.00 from my account. 

It was the first day of school. Having found my way to all my morning classes, there was only one left to sit through in the afternoon. Sat in a small classroom of twenty or so seats, I engaged in a small talk with a Chinese guy next to me. My small talk was more like a rant of the steep SHIP payment. The Chinese guy agreed and revealed that he didn't purchase SHIP. 

"How much is your insurance plan?" I curiously asked, assuming he's found value with another insurance company.

To my surprise, he didn't. He isn't insured. I pressed on to see if he could enlighten me.

"It can work. But it takes some intuition," he replied without making eye contact with me. 

It seemed all too awkward for me to ask anything else, though I had a great urge to. At that, the lecturer came in and asked if everyone was ready for Algebra One. Damn, I was in the wrong class! Embarrassingly, I stood up to make my way towards the door, which seemed like miles away when the whole class' attention was enough to burn a hole in the back of my head. Neither did what the lecturer said help: "Looks like she's not ready for some algebra." The whole class laughed and the door now seemed light-years away. 

Nonetheless, I made it to my last class of the day, Quantum Mechanics.