On Nov. 1, open enrollment for government healthcare begins, and Americans are once again free (ha, ha) to pick their health insurance.
It has become difficult for me to talk about America’s health insurance disaster without getting upset. It gets even harder every year when I open up the “premium change notice” from my insurance company, like I did this week. There has been a standard rate increase anywhere from 20 percent to upwards of 50 percent per year over the past few years since Obamacare was enacted.
I wrote an editorial in this paper back when it was first put into place, warning of the “bait and switch” we’d see as Obamacare progressed. Now that this has come to fruition, guess who’s feeling the biggest squeeze? Yep, middle class working Americans — particularly the self-insured. Many of my friends, along with myself are paying well over $10,000 per year for health insurance premiums. These people are typically healthy, young, working class families on the highest deductible plans allowed.  It’s no longer a car payment, it’s a mortgage payment. Something’s got to give.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of subsidizing our dysfunctional government. So what do we do about it? The change for Obamacare is not found anywhere close to the 2016 Democratic ticket. I’m not sure that true reform can be found in the Republican ticket either, but it’s most likely the best chance we’ve got for changing the current healthcare insurance situation in America.