Despite Republican politician feet being stamped and Republican politician breath being held and Republican politicians shutting down the government, Obamacare begins to go into effect today and a lot of people who had no insurance or junk insurance are now going to have the opportunity to sign up for real insurance.
The Affordable Care Act will almost certainly save the lives and/or livelihoods of people who are my very dear friends. Lives is obvious. Livelihoods a bit less so. Let me elucidate: medical bankruptcy, like all bankruptcy, treats copyrights as assets. Get too sick without proper insurance and you lose control of your life’s work. Further, I have friends who have died because of things that might not have killed them if they’d had this level of insurance.
I am a very fortunate artist in that I am married to a women whose insurance carries us both. If I were not, I would not have functioning knees, and I’d be down a number of teeth. That or I would have had to give up on writing to find other work. This isn’t an abstract partisan argument for me. This is personal and it is life and death.