Though I’ve been a vociferous critic of President Barack Obama – most notably on his failure to “put on a comfortable pair of shoes” and join Wisconsin’s public employees as they fought against having their collective bargaining rights taken away – I can’t deny that the health care reforms that have already taken effect as a result of the Affordable Care Act have had a positive impact for families across the country.
One such family is the Lihn family from Phoenix, Arizona, whose daughter Zoe was born with a heart condition that would require three heart surgeries to correct. Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies were allowed to set lifetime limits on the amount of coverage each individual gets, which meant that under the old laws at just two years old Zoe’s medical bills would have amounted to approximately half of her lifetime cap on health insurance coverage.
Zoe’s parents Stacey and Caleb have paid for health insurance their entire lives so it doesn’t seem fair that their health insurance company would get to choose an arbitrary cap on how much coverage their daughter needs or deserves.
Here’s some video of the Lihn family talking about their situation.
While I’d argue the Affordable Care Act didn’t go far enough towards reforming our nation’s for-profit health care system and providing health coverage for all Americans, it’s certainly better than the alternative.
Corporations are simply making too much money off healthcare facilities, cabals, drugs and media to allow government to seriously regulate an industry that has overwhelming control of society. Yet, the competitive nature of business requires that maximization of profit be the prevailing goal, not the care of the patient–in this case, consumer. Corporations never have enough profit, so, rather than curing patients, the natural course is to create patients. It is like putting NFL teams on the field without referees. They would “play” to the death in a game of “winner takes all.”