Opinion: ObamaCare Socialism? Not on Your Life

(Dec. 6) -- A recent poll indicates that 58 percent of Americans favor repealing at least some of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I'm guessing that many of these opponents either oppose it because of misunderstandings about the abortion provisions or because they have been told -- and believe -- that this act represents fiscal madness and/or the slow creep toward socialism in the United States.

If the Affordable Care Act were socialism, it would have had the power to remake every agency in the government and redesign how government spends its money.

But the Affordable Care Act is not a new form of government. It's not even a new branch of government, nor is it a new agency. It is several steps smaller: legislation to make the current health care system, flawed as it is, more affordable and less confusing. It's the health care equivalent of "lemon laws" that protect consumers from getting tricked by used-car dealerships. Right now, we're making lemonade out of the lemons given to us by a for-profit system.

If ObamaCare were socialism, it wouldn't include an opt-out provision. But it does. Under the law, states can apply for waivers in 2017.

Could the government make some minor tweaks to a for-profit health system and suddenly socialism would explode like a lady jumping out of a cake? Surprise! If we had changed to a nonprofit or universal health care system, I would volunteer to be the lady bursting up through the icing. I promise I'll do it the very day we have decent health care. Am I a crazy socialist who will be told to "love it or leave it"?

I want a universal health care system precisely because I love this country and the specific individual people in it, including those with lupus, Type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, hypertension, depression and anxiety, hypothyroidism, temporomandibular joint disorder, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma. Those are just a small collection of the ailments shared by me and people in my immediate circle of friends and family.

Every single one of those people has had to deal with small and large nightmares over "Explanation of Benefits," unfair and inaccurate evaluations of what should get paid for, denials of coverage and ever-increasing costs. Most of the exorbitant costs are created by the administrative bloat in our current system. Some of that will change under the new system, and some of it won't.

There's a simple reason I'm not jumping out of a cake: We're not No. 1. We're No. 49. When you control for people's eating choices and smoking habits and other lifestyle factors, the United States has slipped from 24th place in life expectancy to 49th since 1999, according to the 2010 CIA Factbook. We're below Jordan, Bosnia, many of the islands in the Caribbean, South Korea and Puerto Rico. Well, at least we're living about four and a half years more than residents of the Gaza Strip do. And a study specifically targets our health care system as the problem.

In other words, people in this country have not been able to get health care because they can't get into the system, even though they're really dying to. That's why many reformers want to see the system improved beyond the tweaks by simply expanding and improving Medicare or developing another cost-effective universal system.

Confusion abounds in this debate, and I'm confused about why people care much more about for-profit insurance than they do about health care.

I wrote "Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir" not about a worst-case scenario but about the minor but life-changing annoyances of this corporate system: getting denied for pre-existing conditions, being charged exorbitant fees for getting sick out of network, spending one-tenth of my gross income on health care, having a baby and then being offered a health plan for my family that would have actually cost more than my entire paycheck. Who knows what will end up changing and what won't?

All change is stressful, and for many, the idea of risk and positive change is too much. We simply cannot imagine what life would be like if we did not have to do bake sales to fund the costs of medicines associated with heart transplants.

The lesson here: If you put two words together, it sounds like socialism. Maybe it actually sounds controlling to us because it's classic corporate jargon. And we know corporate control of health care. We're soaking in it, living and dying in it.