The bill sucks a lot and keeps getting to suck more but in its current form it provides middle and low income people with billions in subsidies to help pay for coverage. Also, it eliminates the ability of insurance companies to refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions. CUrrently coverage can and usually is refused for disorders as common as migraines, depression, and pretty much everything else. People who are employed by companies who provide insurance are usually exempt from this problem because they are in group plans which allows for pre-existings. However people who are self-insured, self-employed, or work for employers who don’t provide benefits are pretty much fucked in the current system (which actually isn’t a system at all).

So I still support it because I think if they kill it now it will die a certain death come January and the election year bullshit.

And this still wouldn’t be the final bill. From what I understand it still has to go back to the house and then back to the senate again if this vote passes.

I think we have to learn the lesson from what happened in the clinton administration when they tried to reform healthcare. It died. People who were born during the clinton administration are now acting in porn movies to give you an idea of how long we might have to wait for another go at this.

Also- there’s the rarely discussed public health issue. If your neighbor has an infectious disease and doesn’t get treated for it, then you are more likely to get it. Diseases are social and they generally don’t discriminate based on wealth. Having everyone covered by health insurance benefits the health of everyone, not just the poor in this country who are often vilified.

I pay $550/month for insurance. I can’t afford it and pay the premiums using credit. Sure I could work for Starbucks and become an indentured servant to pay for it but I seem to remember from grade school that America is supposed to be a free country.

Although, yeah, being forced to pay for insurance isn’t exactly freedom, but then again neither is taxes. I think that angle is being overplayed. Everyone needs healthcare for the physical and fiscal health of this nation. Call it what you want and repackage it, but in the end, it is a tax and is not voluntary. But, it’s more fair than forcing sick people to die because they can’t get coverage and forcing healthy people to get sick because their community is sick and poor.

I could go on and on. Yeah, the bill sucks, but in it’s current form, I still support it.