Health care reform we can all be proud of

First off, I haven’t read the 1,000-page-plus document on health care reform seemingly everyone is talking about.

I’m not planning on reading it either. I simply don’t have that much free time. And I won’t even get a vote on it. That’s up to the people in Congress.

What I will do, though, is my own research on the issue, listening to the pros and cons.

So far, I’ve watched a couple of videos on YouTube.com of debating Congressmen, as well as read about the proposal here and there.

Yesterday, I was reading healreform.gov, the White House’s site on all the benefits of health care reform. They break it down, state by state, so I clicked on “How health insurance reform will benefit Louisiana.”

After three minutes of reading, I nearly fell asleep. Talk about a boring read.

Here’s a snippet: “Under health insurance reform, insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.  Insurance companies will also have to abide by yearly limits on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses, helping 28,500 households in Louisiana struggling under the burden of high health care expenses.”

I don’t even know what all that means. I do, however, consider myself lucky enough to have health care insurance with the company I work for, although it costs me something like $60 a month.

But sometimes I think about what I could have done with that money instead of spending it on health insurance. At $60 per a month, that amounts to $720. In turn, that amounts to a nice getaway to Harrah’s Casino or maybe even the IP or The Hard Rock in Biloxi.

With $720, on a good day, I could it turn into $14,000. Now that’s what I call healthy insurance.

Of course, I’m probably more likely to be diagnosed with some terrible disease than win big at a casino, so the rational part of my mind tells me to keep on paying the $60 every month for health insurance.

But as a veteran, I have other options. Which is one reason I can’t wait until the Veteran’s Affairs clinic finally opens in Bogalusa. Last I heard, it’s supposed to open in December.

As many of you may know, many veterans around here have to drive to New Orleans or Mississippi to reach a VA clinic. I’ve actually never been in a VA clinic, so the one in Bogalusa will probably be my first.

Hopefully, it will be good, and I can drop my health insurance in favor of the health care the VA can offer me. Plus, there shouldn’t be any monthly fee, which means I can save that $720 every year.

The way I see it, if everyone joined the military, we’d have far fewer problems in our country. Those who needed discipline would get it, plus it’s a steady job with a steady income and a great experience builder.

And we wouldn’t be arguing about this complex health care issue, because we’d all be entitled to free health care that had been earned.

Now that’s reform.

Jacob Brooks is managing editor of The Daily News and can be reached at 732-2565 or jacob.brooks@wickcommunications.com.