Myself, as a married woman who is incapable of having children after surgery, I am rendered at a loss by the assumption that I should be glad to see other women receive subsidization in this manner. Women have higher premiums because they have higher health care costs.

If you chose to have children, then you can choose health insurance to cover the pregnancy. Rendered sterile, there is no reason for my husband and I to pay the additional coverage for pregnancy related conditions. This has certainly not lowered costs for us, and instead would have increased them substantially… so we’ve had to cancel our insurance. For at least the first few years it will be cheaper to pay the fee and take our chances then the all encompassing insurance requirements now in place.

The “death” of the middle class in America is a common theme. As a staff accountant I work each year with dozens of families and business’s and I think I can at least add my two cents. The middle class has begun to dwindle because we attempt to legislate it as a bare minimum. Instead of being able to purchase catastrophic coverage, we are now forced to no coverage… because the government would like to legislate a bare minimum. This concept plays out in many directions. Another example is housing; houses have a minimum square footage for new builds which means that purchasing a small house and building on in 10 years is no longer possible. You must be able to purchase a medium sized home or no home at all. By doing this it removes the lower rungs of the ladder. You can either live in absolute poverty, or middle class. There is no place financially to transition.

Finally, if the USA, as a country, wants to provide a more affordable health care solution, the word “insurance” should not be part of it. Insurance is a specific type of savings plan in which people with higher risk pay in at a higher rate and are subsidized by the many who pay a much lower premium but never access the funds. When the government attempts to legislate “insurance” based on the idea that the higher risk prices will be absorbed by everyone and that everyone will take the value of their payments back in the form of healthcare, it is not only a lie, it is a fiscal impossibility. I flinch whenever I hear someone who should understand finance, refer to the new legislation as insurance.

As a “fiscal conservative” I can tell you that socialism doesn’t scare me and may be warranted here… but that is a whole different conversation.

Oh, and I very much enjoy your blog.

The mythology I hear about how Canadians hate their health care system always makes me laugh, because I have quite a few Canadian friends and they are very appreciative of their system.