Sorry If I Sound a Little Off-- Healthcare meets Six Flags

(Forgive me if there are typos, this will be brief and simple. I sense a migraine beginning...) For some reason I decided I wanted to clarify why certain parts of the bill are necessary, why we can't do a slow"incremental" approach, from a fiscal/capitalist point of view (other than the usual statistics which are EXTREMELY important anyway). The bills as they stand contain a personal mandate-- an old Republican idea (from early 1990s attempts at health reform) that places responsibility upon the people rather than corporations. Under this mandate, all citizens are required to have at least a minimum health insurance plan. And yes, without the public option or a cheaper option, a lot of people including myself think this is wrong. Here's the other catch though- the bills also outlaw insurance companies from denying people based on pre-existing conditions. Which is great. However, there's a problem with this - it's unreasonable to block insurance companies from denying people with pre-existing conditions without also mandating that everyone have insurance, because if not, people will wait until they are sick to get insurance, which would likely raise the rates of the people who have that insurance. All that pool stuff they were talking about. You're adding more "high-risk" cost to what is generally a "low-risk" pool, and insurance companies don't have a choice. Ditch the kiddie pools and jump in the wave pool! The more people in the group/ the bigger it gets, the less everyone has to pay for admission. Come on, you've been to Six Flags, maybe even Hurricane Harbor or whatever they call it in your state. You know how the group discount goes! We shop around online for our coupons to the park, trying to get the best deals, dragging our Coke cans and buddy passes. The public has the option to see the best deals online and shop around. You can even buy a pass to a Six Flags park in another state! It might even be cheaper than your local options, but you get the same basic package as everyone else anyway (unless you want to pay a little extra for better - you know, parking, food, etc...). And hey, if you just want to stay with your own local, private theme park, no worries. Do what you want. Either way, everyone gets a season pass for whatever they choose to pay, and none of the parks can kick you out because you already threw up on Batman last year. Doesn't that all sound nice?

As much as I despise capitalism, I can at least understand why we can't just throw it out completely (just yet. If we can eventually do away with insurance companies by at least 90%, that would be amazing...) We have to work with what we have to institute change. Steady progress lasts longer than sudden change. So I will be patiently waiting for the day I see my native country's single-payer universal healthcare system, while we work to make what we have better, for as many as we can.