Reality Bites

I have a good friend of mine – nice fella, well meaning…and conservative.  Like many conservative-minded folks, he gets a lot of his news from conservatively-oriented media.  No crime in that – it’s a free country.  

Most of us take what we hear on TV and Talk Radio as the God-Honest truth.  We never stop to check the facts.  Or, more importantly, the completeness of the facts we are presented with..

We're all guilty of this.  We've been trained to accept whatever we hear from an authoritative source as being the 'Whole Truth'.  

The funny thing about facts is that, if you pick and choose them carefully, they can tell whatever story you want them to tell.   Our favorite media celebrities use this to create sensationalist news stories to keep their ratings up.  News, for the most part, is boring.  Greed, corruption,  blood and gore are what gets us to tune in. 

So it cam as no surprise when, during a recent conversation, my friend recanted some alarming facts  about Obamacare that he heard on the radio.

“So you think that Obamacare is going to be a bargain?” He blurted, “ I just heard that a plan for a family of five will cost over $20,000 in 2015!”

He was right to be shocked - that's a ridiculous chunk of income right there. Plus, it doesn't include the costs of deductibles, copays, and non-covered services.  Under Obamacare, we're going to be paying an extraordinary amount of money for our health care.

The $20,000 figure is not made up - it's actually a figure presented by the IRS.

But, as shocking of a figure as it is, it just doesn't accurately reflect reality.

My buddy, like most of you, gets his health insurance through his employer.  Like co-pays, this has insulated him from what things actually cost in the world of healthcare.  Like most of us, he was blissfully unaware of what health insurance actually costs in this country.   So I filled him in.

My current health insurance bill (for my wife and myself -   a family of two) runs me a healthy $28,000.00 a year.  Plus, my carrier raised my premiums 30-40% a year over the last few years.

So if they raise me once more at this rate (before Obama plan to limit health insurance rate increases kicks in), I would be paying (for two people-not five)  at least  $37,000 a year in 2015.

So if Obama wants to sell me health insurance for $20,000 in 2015, all I can say is “Where do I sign up?”.

Because, unlike the current system, Obamacare is something that the average American might actually be able to afford.

And, like Paul Harvey used to say, that’s the rest of the story.

Yes, I know that this isn't what the Obamacare bashers on your favorite conservative talk show  wanted you to hear.

Sorry about that.

Reality Bites.

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