Jack,
The other people are missing an important point.
Insurance is having other people help you. That is the entire concept behind insurance, to spread risk among as many people as possible. I don't care how much an individual + their employer pays in premiums, when individuals face serious illnesses those premiums cover a fraction of the total costs. Even if you and your employer paid $10,000 a year for every person in your family for your entire life, it's almost a certainty that those premiums would end up only covering you for a month or two if you faced an illness like cancer.
A great deal of what this legislation is about is not giving away a freebie, it's about allowing people to have the option to buy insurance. You see it as a restriction on your freedom, and it is, because you would be required to always carry insurance. For a great deal of others, including myself, we see it as liberating. Finally, we have the freedom to take advantage of any opportunity we want and not worry about if we will be able to see a doctor or get treatment. I can assure that this is a REAL problem, I had to debate turning down a $60,000 scholarship because I was unsure if I'd be able to maintain health insurance.
We all benefit every single day of our lives from the money of fellow countrymen, whether we expect them to help or not. Roads, police, firefighters, EMTs, public schools, a military, ect. In addition, hospitals and doctors are already required to treat us when we go to an emergency room. When we can't pay for that care, the people who have insurance do. So we already had universal health care in America, just a horrible implementation of it. Even if this wasn't law, doctors would be required to treat you anyway. That's the Hippocratic Oath that has been around for thousands of years. This is the modern version from wikipedia.
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
Lastly, I see no reason to even bother surviving an illness like cancer if it means a person is financially ruined for life. Or if it means that an individual must live in constant fear that it will come back and die slowly and painfully because they lost their insurance. I've managed to keep my insurance, but trust me, I've lived this fear everyday for the past 5 years, and I am a person who has worked hard my entire adult life. Being covered under Medicaid for a couple of years did not turn me into a lazy government sucking waste. I worked hard to complete my undergraduate degree, starting 2 months after I finished chemo/radiation. I would GLADLY pay more in taxes in order to prevent anyone from ever having to experience the fear that I've lived with every single day since I was diagnosed.
I hold social responsibility higher than personal responsibility. Basically it's the belief that individuals, groups, organizations, companies, and government act for the best interests of society as a whole. It isn't communism or socialism, I do not expect equality of outcomes, and I absolutely want government involved in our lives as little as possible. I expect equality of beginnings, and for government to work to fill the potholes in the road along the way. It's up to the individual to go as far down that road as they can. Life is unfair, but we don't need to deliberately leave it unfair. It does not mean that I believe individual responsibility is unimportant. If individuals don't do their part, the whole thing collapses. Frankly, it's a more idealistic view of the world we live in, which I personally see as "me first."
-Carmen