A Pagan Response to the Affordable Care Act

[icymist]

Jason Pitzi-Waters, of the Pagan Newswire Collective, asked a few of us to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Here’s mine:

A Pagan response—or rather, this Pagan’s response for there no universal agreement among Pagans on any issue–to the upholding of the Affordable Care Act has two aspects: is it good for us, individually and as a community, and is it in concert with our Pagan values.

While the Act is not as good for me, individually or many of us as a single-payer system would be, it is definitely an improvement over the callous and greed-ridden system we’ve got. Like many other Pagan writers and teachers, I’m self-employed and have been pretty much all my adult life. I’ve had health insurance since my mother brow-beat me into getting it in my twenties, with the same company. While I’m pretty healthy for my age, I’ve seen my premiums go up and up every year, to the point that they were costing me more than my mortgage, more than my food budget, more than anything else. Now, if I were being taxed for a single-payer system, when my income went down my payments would go down. But with private insurance, the price just keeps going up and up and up! When it finally reached over $1200 a month, I started looking for other options. I tried switching companies, but I’m now over sixty, overweight (not alone among Pagans in being so!) and with minor but irritating health problems that somehow drove my projected premiums up even higher! So I switched to a lower-cost plan that has a $6000 deductible. That would keep me from losing my house should I get a serious illness, and having lost five friends in the last five months, mostly to cancer, I can’t ignore that possibility. I’m still trying to save up the $6000 to have ready in the bank should I need it suddenly—because if I do get sick, I won’t be able to travel and teach which provides the bulk of my income.

http://starhawksblog.org/?p=746#comments

[LWolf]

1. The "affordable care act"

has helped to push my premiums much higher, much faster, than they were rising before. I'm paying more and getting less care. It's not a pagan issue, it's a human issue.

I have the lowest-priced plan I could get; it's still as much as a smaller mortgage. My deductibles and co-pays are such that I won't seek care unless I literally can't force myself to work without it. Then I risk bankruptcy to pay the costs. There's not a penny left to "save" for anything in my budget.

I don't pay all of that premium myself; my employer pays some of it. If I WERE paying all of it, and getting regular care, the combined total expenditure would be MORE than my mortgage every month.

Paying more for health insurance than for a house is insane.

Especially if you then can't afford to use the damned insurance.