Tiffany Tassano

Dear Mr. President,

You may think that requiring health care is best for everyone, but, respectfully, I must disagree. This year my husband and I must find an extra $450 dollars each month to cover the required Bronze level plan. Where are we going to get that money? We each already work almost 50 hours each week to cover the costs that we feel are important.

Don’t get me wrong, we want health insurance, but what should we give up now that it is a mandate? Should we stop adding to retirement so that we can have health insurance? $450 per month is equivalent to what each one of us contributes to our IRA. So, which one of us should live without retirement savings?

Perhaps we should stop paying on our student loans? Or maybe I should just give you my budget and you can tell me what should be important to me and what shouldn’t. In fact, I challenge you to allocate the money we take in every month better than I am allocating it now.

I’ve lived for almost a decade without health insurance, and sure, it’s a goal, it’s something that we want, but I don’t like being told that simply because I exist, I must purchase health insurance. And from a private provider nonetheless! You are forcing us, all of us, to hand over our money to multimillion and billion dollar corporations, whose objective is to make a profit, and who in return offer us a pittance.

So, what exactly do we get for our $450 per month? A free visit to our GP once a year, and then a $4500 deductible that we must meet annually before the insurance benefits kick in, at which point we are still paying 40% of costs out of pocket. In what world is that a good idea? How is that considered coverage? Why would two healthy adults want to sign up for this? We’ll never go to the doctor enough to meet that deductible, so basically, we’re paying $450 per month for a GP visit. And if we do go to the doctor for the random illness or injury, we’d be paying out of pocket anyway because of the deductible so what’s the point of the insurance?

Why are we paying such steep costs and offered next to nothing in return? Because the objective of these companies is to make money! Their objective is not to provide or protect, it is to make money. And these companies don’t have to offer anything of substance because the government, our government, is forcing us to hand over our hard earned money so that they can claim all Americans have health insurance. It doesn’t matter what kind of insurance it is or if it covers much of anything or how much it bleeds us dry, we have it and that’s what’s important…

Sincerely,
Tiffany

I don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but I guess I’ll give this a try and see what happens. What’s the point of having an opinion, especially in this day and age, if I just keep it to myself?

The goal, if there even is one, is to write about what I think and create conversation about matters of interest. This should be about thinking, and creating discussion, for both of us.

I had all of these wonderful words swirling through my head earlier about how I wanted to introduce myself and what I want to do, but now that fingers are on keys, I find myself over-thinking and expressing myself in an awkward and self-conscious manner. This is my very first post and I expected it to be slightly less than eloquent but I’m hearing the words echoing through my head as my fingers type them out and they sound jilted and painful, even. I had wanted to say something meaningful in my very first blog entry, but I think I should just hit “publish” and get this beast out of the way.

So, hello. Welcome. Thanks for joining me on this ride. I hope that we can challenge each other to change the way we think and the way we interact with the world.