GREG SODEN
Opinions Writer

Well, it finally happened, but not after things got extremely nasty. My country, the United States of America, has passed a near-comprehensive (excluding illegal immigrants) health insurance plan after the nastiest partisan bickering battle that has happened in my lifetime. I have to say; I think Obama fought like Ali in this showdown.

Unfortunately, this historic legislation from the world’s wayward superpower is causing quite the uproar among the population. There are many states, politicians and citizens filing their grievances and begging for support for the immediate repeal of the law. I get regular emails from Senator John McCain, for some strange reason (I sure didn’t support him!), that beg my support in showing that evil and radical Obama administration that the United States doesn’t want this law.

I respond to every McCain email with the short statement: “You are hurting America.”

The opponents should be cheering that I didn’t get my way. In my opinion (this is the opinions section, right?) this bill isn’t nearly radical enough. For starters, it doesn’t dismantle the health care industry or the “for-profit” model set up by that hack, Richard Nixon in the 1970s.

There are new regulations involved, such as forbidding the industry to reject clients based on pre-existing conditions and capping the amount of coverage that will be paid in a claim, but this isn’t enough. There is no public option in which the government provides a plan to citizens not interested in private sector insurance.

This bill could also be viewed as a success for the health insurance industry because now it is mandated that citizens purchase health coverage. So instead of people avoiding buying health care because it isn’t affordable, they have to scrape together the money somehow.

The American right is also calling for the repeal of the bill immediately and people are reacting to this. I’ve been paying attention lately to those who are opposed to this bill and I’ve come to a few generalizations about opponents of this bill. First of all, opponents are mostly rich, or at least well off financially. Secondly, they are mostly white. Hmm, suspicious. Can this possibly be a coincidence?

There are people in the United States who believe that there are lots of lazy degenerates who want to sponge off the system and coast through life. The people who believe this are also mostly professionally successful and believe anyone not as successful as them hasn’t worked hard enough.

I guarantee, though, that many of the people who are well off financially have been handed their position in life by graduating from a university and having connections in the world. Point being, I’m certain that many people who are poor and uninsured have worked 10 times harder than a great deal of financially successful people.

Health care reform opponents also seem to be people who have never in their lives experienced even a shred of neglect or discomfort. These people have always had their health taken care of, have had great experiences with doctors and, in their opinions, no problems really exist. These people cannot understand the plight of others because they have lived their entire lives in a bubble of comfort.

There are people in the United States who are going to benefit greatly from this bill and any subsequent legislation that results from it. I also believe that for every one lazy degenerate who will somehow leech off this new health care, there are 10 hard-working people who previously didn’t have access to a doctor without going into debt.

I’m against those taking advantage of the system just like everyone else, but hey, that’s politics. I’m much more concerned with getting the care to those 10 hard-working folks who need a helping hand. I only wish that the wealthy could think of someone other than themselves for a while. It would make the United States a much nicer place.

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image: Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0