I am sick of hearing about health care reform

I am going to just go ahead and admit it right up front. I haven't a clue as to what it actually means that a health care reform bill has been passed. I have tried sifting through the many "news" reports about it, but I glaze over after skimming through paragraph after paragraph describing the historic nature of it and the ugly process that it involved to pass it. The only thing I do know is that the government will now require everyone to have health insurance and that insurance companies will no longer be able to refuse coverage to people with preexisting conditions or cancel your insurance if you use it because you are sick.

Obviously the reporters writing about health care reform don't say much about what it actually means because they don't understand it themselves (though the MSN Money page has some better info as to what it means). And the scary thing to me is that I am probably more informed about health care reform than your average person (including I'm sure many of the senators and congress persons who debated it). I consider myself a fairly liberal person and have always voted Democrat. This doesn't mean I am a Democrat, I just find them less scary than the Republicans. I would just soon all of them just left me alone.

That being said, I am a bit skeptical about the government managing anything as large as a nationwide health care program. It's not that I don't think everyone deserves health care, I just question the logic of requiring people to buy it or get fined. If you can't afford it in the first place, fining you for not buying it seems pointless. And even if the government had program to subsidize people who couldn't afford it, the problem remains that many of these people would be unaware of the programs because they are illiterate or just plain distrustful of government.

I am also unclear as to whether this reform will improve the quality of care you receive. I've been to the emergency room at my local hospital with a family member and came out thinking we might have been better off applying leeches to suck out the evil spirits than deal with the on call doctors. I don't even have much faith in my regular doctor. The only thing he seems to do when I come in is refill my prescriptions and charge me $250 for 20 minutes of his time.

I do resent that the whole healthcare reform thing is being used by both parties as political maneuvering to gain control. Ironically, it doesn't really matter which party is in the majority, they all still muck about with each other's pet projects to make sure no one ever really gets what they wants, including the general public. It is a great truth that an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

I can't believe I am writing about political crap in my blog. I need to get back to focusing on things that really matter, like are clams really happy.