As part of that huge uninsured in the United States, this is an important issue for me. But what isn’t being talked about in any detail in all of these debates is how both Obama’s and Clinton’s plan, as Brown Femi Power points out on her blog, would fine people if they don’t enroll in their health care plan.

The tricky part comes when it comes to how to actually get people on the programs–and this is the part where my head is exploding because I can’t find any definite information about each candidate. Apparently both candidates would impose some type of ‘fine’ or ‘penalty’ on people who do not buy health insurance once the option is made available–thus universal coverage. At the debate, I couldn’t figure out what Hillary was saying at all, and all I took from Obama is that he will be all about fining parents/penalizing parents if they don’t cover their children.

The way the issue stands now, is that affordable is in the eye of the beholder. As BFP so astutely reminds us:

I can tell you why–even if health care is only 40 or 50 dollars for the entire family to be enrolled–you know what? I can buy groceries for a week and a half with 40-50$’s. I can pay for about two weeks worth of gas for my car, or stop a shut off for my water/gas, or god forbid, get a few clothes that actually fit for the kids.

Any poor person that is facing the emergency of eating or having electricity or water NOW versus the possibility of maybe an injury occurring at a later point (but maybe not if we’re all careful), is going to pick the week of groceries any day of the week. It’s not even a choice, really.

The thing is, people who are not struggling week to week literally are unable to fathom that 40$’s is NOT “just” 40$’s to a poor person. 40$’s is a lot of fucking money to a poor person–some times as much as a third or half of a weekly pay check.

To a poor person, 40$’s is the mark of what emergency can be staved off for another few days–hunger? Cold? 40$’s is survival.

And guess what? From our end of the spectrum, the parent that deserves to be penalized is the one who would spend 40$’s on something other than food or heating. The one that would let their kid go hungry so that s/he could pay for service that may or may not be used some time eventually up the road.

And the automatic enrollment issue is a problem as well. Here in NYC, when Medicaid was moving into managed care, health plans were going crazy to enroll people so they could get the $$$$, this meant often though that those who needed care the most, those with chronic health conditions and HIV for example, were being enrolled in plans, without their knowledge and would show up at the doc with their medicaid card and could not get service ( I am not making this up, I worked on an educational campaign when this happened and encountered this).

The future of health care still looks bleak.

Via / La Chola