Make believe. It has a nice ring to it. Living in such a land can be fun. Enjoyable. Enchanting even. We all wish we had a visa to this country. Because if we did, we would want to stay there forever. However, the hard truth is that when we visit this land, eventually we have to go back to the reality of everyday life. Where things do not always happen for the best. Where things we want must be worked for and paid for.
Such as some of the goodies that were promised in the euphemistically named Obamacare. They tend to be the most popular of the provisions in the bill. We all like the idea of our kids being carried by our insurance until they are 26. We mostly seem to be amenable to the idea that pre-existing conditions should be covered. What we tend to miss is that both of these are essentially a de facto expansion of the insurance rolls that will need to paid for somehow, by someone. And this has already occurred; it isn’t one of the provisions that will strike in 2013, 2014 or beyond. We also neglect to notice that these items don’t come cheaply. The reason that pre-existing conditions typically aren’t covered is because these types of policies are so expensive that insurance companies couldn’t sell them anyway. So now they are magically added to the insurance pool? One of the major touted benefits of Obamacare was the money savings that would be found. Adding these sorts of patients to the rolls of the insurance companies has to mean that premiums will of necessity rise for all. I don’t believe this aspect was explained very well to the country, if at all. Or maybe there was a willful blindness to the cost of these goodies. Because they sounded so...good. We wanted to make believe they wouldn't carry any cost.
It must be nice to live in the land of make believe. But we should realize that this land is not always just a frolic with fairies and unicorns; sometimes there is a big hairy troll. With a club. And sometimes, just sometimes, we could get hit over the head with it, which would bring us back to reality. That certainly hasn't happened yet. Some say that we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But you all know what might be lurking beneath that bridge...
Dr. K
Trolls...make believe and real ones all around...scare me! Wish more could see the ones I see. Thanks for articulating what I want to say. You always did have a way with words.
Posted by: Julie | 09/21/2012 at 11:57 AM