Election & Welfare

I stayed up late last night to catch the results of the Massachusetts senate election. They had a special election to fill Senator Kennedy's seat, a seat he held for 46 years. The democrats outnumber the republicans 3 to 1 in that state. However, they voted in a republican. This will put 41 republicans in the senate, enough to filibuster the health care reform bill. I don't normally follow other state's elections so close, but due to the power this held I stayed up. I was hoping the race would go the other way. See we are in favor of health care reform and especially the public option. For the last 4 years we have been paying for private health insurance out of pocket. I know how expensive it is, our premiums go up at least $150 a month every year. We have even upped our deductible but still pay enough to feed a small country. Also, I have asthma, which means if our insurance was to ever laps... good luck getting that covered ever again. So, yes we support health care reform. I would like to see a public option drive down the cost of private health insurance. I understand people not wanting it and I say to them, pay for your own private health insurance. I know people who don't currently pay for health care would have to pay, this is a sore topic with me. I feel if you can take extravagant vacations and have brand new vehicles sitting in your driveway you can more than afford to pay a monthly premium. I know a ton of people who do this and it is frustrating to see my tax dollars paying for their lavish vacations and lifestyles. We too could go on one or two even three extravagant trips a year if we were on medicaid. We could own brand new $45,000 vehicles if we didn't have to pay health insurance. However, we actually claim all our income and do not qualify for a free ride. We are still paying on Kaitlyn's appendectomy which cost over $5,000 for our share, plus our monthly premiums. Our health care is so messed up in this country. I have a sis-in-law who racks up hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in hospital visits, she also has thousands of dollars a month in prescriptions, yet she has to fight to get help from the government and she doesn't drive a brand new anything! She should qualify in a heartbeat. This is why I feel our health care needs a major overhaul, I think a public option is a good place to start. I am not so sure we would actually use the public option, it would take some serious research, but it would be nice to have the "option". I know people feel strongly about this but this is my opinion, we are all entitled to that.

On a side note I want to make sure I stress that we are grateful for what we have and we know that it could be worse. We could have a child with brain cancer down at Primary Childrens right now, but we don't. We do have a slow economy and finding constructions jobs right now is not the easiest thing to do. Right now with everything going on in congress it does affect us and we are hoping to catch a little bit of a "break".