The Senate approved a budget bill on Friday that gives full funding to Obamacare, President Obama’s plan to get the United States one step closer to universal health care. According to their website, ObamaCare is “the new health care reform law in America, increasing the quality, availability and affordability of private and public health insurance to 44 million uninsured in order to curb the growth in healthcare spending.”
To say Obamacare is controversial would be a serious understatement. Obamacare has many congressmen on the edge of their seats. U.S. Representative John Fleming of Lousiana even said that Obamacare is “the most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed,” something which President Obama mocked publicly in a recent speech.
Obamacare is a good thing. We need to do something about health care. Anyone who thinks we should just leave people to fend for themselves when it comes to medical bills just doesn’t pay attention. We have to do something to help the people who have medical bills they can’t pay, because it can happen to anyone – your parents, my parents, your cousins, my sister, and the list doesn’t stop there.
Even as an Obamacare supporter, I can see the drawbacks. Obamacare’s main target audience is healthy people between the ages of 18 and 34 – in a word, us, or “the young invincibles,” as we’ve come to be known. We hold the key to helping Obamacare flourish. The program needs healthy people to buy and pay for health insurance – but not use it for the most part, because overall, we’re healthy. Our payment will therefore keep health care premiums low for everyone, even people who are really ill or elderly and use it all the time. Many people are outraged at the thought of this. How dare they expect us to pay for other people when we don’t even need health care! But I have two things to point out: what is social security if not exactly the same idea? We have money taken out of our paychecks to help keep retirees afloat. In addition, what if you do need insurance? What if you get in a car accident, or you need a tonsilectomy? Then what?
One of Obamacare’s leading opponents, right-wing organization Generation Opportunity that is tied to a couple of billionaire businessmen, has launched a six-figure campaign to coerce “the young invincibles” to opt out of Obamacare. One of their primary steps so far has been to release two ads – sexist ads, if I may point out, since we’re broken up into boys and girls like pre-k. The boy and girl versions depict a prostate exam and a pelvic exam, respectively. In both ads, the doctor sets up the patient to begin the exam before unceremoniously leaving the room. Then a terrifying representation of Uncle Sam makes an appearance. I admit that I’m biased because of my gender, but I found the girl ad is particularly horrifying, because Uncle Sam pops up between the girl’s legs, pinching a pair of foreceps menacingly. Not only are these ads a tasteless excuse for advertising, but these kinds of representations are also exactly the kind of things that perpetuate rape culture. It’s clear from their horrified expressions that neither the man nor the woman in either commercial consented to the nature of this particular exam. The ad then cuts to a black and white text that reads, “Don’t let the government play doctor. Opt out of Obamacare.” The Generation Opportunity ads were an attempt to make a joke out of the big choice coming to us while at the same time shocking people enough to learn more about Obamacare, but what they ended up doing was disturbing and disgusting for too many people to count. If the intention of their rape-validating ad was to make me curious enough to learn more about Generation Opportunity, they succeeded in doing so – so I can warn other people about their absurd antics.
Clare Haggerty is a third-year student majoring in English. She can be reached at CH757342@wcupa.edu.
Fri. Apr 26th, 2024
